PB&...P?

No, I'm not talking about the sandwich, of which thankfully I have never bitten into. The thought of peanut butter mingling with jelly between two layers of thick - or thin - bread, is disgusting to me. As is peanut butter itself as of late. Give me a ham, cheese and salami sandwich please!

When you start rhyming words within sentences, you know it's time to start a different topic. But first, let me apologize for not posting a new blog post in what, two weeks has it been? It's simply a matter of schoolwork getting in the way, not having an opportune moment...or a lack of inspiration. One of them still plagues me now, the latter, but yet here I sit, intent on writing a blog post for Wednesday, Sept. 28th. Speaking of the date, it seems crazy that September is almost over, let the "burr months" begin! *Insert unenthusiastic wave here*.

So, back to the title of today's blog post. You're probably thinking, the last time I checked PB&P wasn't any sandwich I've heard of, and maybe you'd be right. But it could be something like peanut butter and pickles, or peanut butter and pretzels. Okay,  now I'm just having too much fun with it. The real meaning behind the title is an abbreviation - not the real name I know, I'll be damned if I remember it though! - of my three favorite photo-editing sites: Picnik.com, Befunky.com and Photobucket.com. Just like everyone else, I go through 'fads' in life, some are temporary - like my obsession with the Christian-pop group Jump5 in middle school - and some, it seems, are intent on lingering longer even as I look on in puzzlement - like my summertime transition to listening to strictly 80's rock music on my iPod, almost exclusively, turning my back on the 80's and 90's country music that was there long before the other genre was, while still even more fads have settled in comfortably amongst the packed recesses of the rooms where I house my myriad passions, and have found amicable conversation with them all, finding a common ground...I'll end the metaphor here, since I realize this has been one rambling sentence since the word "just".

It seems the "fad" I developed thanks to my fellow photosnapper - I couldn't help but pen that phrase, it just popped into my mind like delicately browned toast awaiting a thick blanket of butter on a Sunday morning - and cousin, Kelly, is here to stay, and I don't mind! Photo eiditing seems like a natural extension to my photography passion, and also an excuse for me to exercise my graphic-artist ambitions - damn, I hate settling for a lesser word! There was a word I was going to place there instead of "ambitions" but I can't think of it. But what, you ask, is so 'addicting' about embellishing photos?

This rhetorical question, humorously enough, makes me think back to one of my favorite - and I don't normally like/watch them - sitcom shows, Reba, where Barbara Jean - the classic blonde, in every way - goes nuts with a bejewler and a sewing machine and totally buries a once modest denim jacket in jewels and sparkles. It also brings to mind the bedazzler for jeans, what a crazy idea. Now I feel like one of my favorite characters I've created, Lorraine Lansing, where I single-handedly steer my thoughts off course, or find myself sitting back and silently laughing at the humor of my wayward thoughts. Now I know for sure that in every character I create, there is certainly some part of myself reflected in each of them.

But to answer my own question, I guess I just like seeing the extra potential in each photo. Or what different effects can add to it when I'm on one of the three websites I listed above. Also, like I said before, it gives me a chance to exercise my graphic-design muscle. And obviously I love just plain photos, and sometimes there's nothing I can add to a photo, but sometimes when I snap a picture my mind excitedly leaps forward, way ahead of me, thinking how I can edit that photo, what certain phrase I can add to it, what effect I can apply to it to make it a trifle better than what it is.

Adding text to my edited photos is my new favorite thing. And if any of you, my fellow blog readers and posters!, know me...it just can't be any saying, or word. It has to be strategically thought through, until not just the letters themselves settle perfectly into the picture...but phrase - or simply a sentence - does as well.

I really do have a lot to owe to my cousin. This past summer I took dozens upon dozens of pictures, and I was inspired to get back into photography because of the photographs she was regularly posting. And albeit she doesn't share my passion for old/abandoned houses and such, she does love the countryside, small town life, and walking amongst the woods and silence. In my life I have met very few who share so many of my passions, and unfortunately most of the people I have met that do...live far away, like my cousin the U.P. Perhaps then, that's another reason I write, so I can connect with people - albeit only in my mind - who share my passions, and whom I can 'converse' with about the things I love, and my reasons for loving them.

To end this week's blog post, I'll share a photo I have edited on one of the three sites I mentioned. It's an old house I found while trolling the streets of one of my favorite small towns, Calumet, Michigan. It's an old copper mining town that literally has dozens of either abandoned or derelict historic houses, and let me tell you when I discovered these troves of such houses, I was estatic! Well...only on the inside of course. If I were to start shouting and jumping in my seat, and my roommates came running...only to discover that I was all excited over street after street of shoddy-faced houses in a U.P town I've only been to once - sad fact, let me tell you! - they would probably cock an eyebrow, an awkward silence would follow, and I'd be left fumbling to explain why I'm so excited. But what would be even more awkward, would be if they caught me holding my camera up to the computer screen, positioning it just so, so I can capture one of those said houses in Calumet, and then edit it on either P, B or P and then post it to my Facebook albums.

Yes, you read that right, I take pictures of old houses on Google Maps because I don't know if I'll ever get to see them in person. God knows I wish I could! Maybe someday I'll be that traveling photographer and then I'll have the perfect excuse! How scrumptous that would be! Such is the case with the photo I'm posting along with this week's blog post. Who knew Google Maps could be so delightful?

(Okay, so I failed to upload an edited Calumet house picture, so the next best thing is a favorite spot of my cousin's in the U.P called "Powerlines", and from the photo it's so secret why it's called that. And after visiting the spot - photo was taken from a rock named "Baldy", I can understand why she loves it so much! Amazing views! Plus, so many telephone poles! This photo's patina was created layering several different effects. It always makes me think of perfectly aged wine. And the song "Dust on the Bottle".)

Oh, by the way, the U.P is my favorite Google Maps exploring spot, especially Calumet and Ishpeming. :) For some reason, exploring Wisconsin just seems boring.

A flickr of an obsession

You know what I saw when I logged into my Blogger account? That this week's post - the one you're reading right now - is my 100th blog post! Now honestly I'm not really that excited, but inwardly I'm just mulling that number over while my fingers - stiff from the slightly-cool early September wind - become more limber and accepting of the keyboard.

But just as a year doesn't feel like a year anymore, and a hundred dollars in your pocket means you're set for a month - maybe more than that if you're pinching the pennies, I guess writing my 100th blog post doesn't seem like that much of a landmark. Now on the other hand if I were writing my 100th novel, then I think that would be something worth getting excited over, but not with my blog. Not that I don't value it of course, but I know that I view my novellas and my blog posts differently.

It feels like I'm rambling, so why don't I get to the point. If any of you are familiar with the site, maybe you'll pick up on my intentional spelling error in the title. You see, there's a site called flickr.com where users can share their photos and comment on and favorite them. Most of the photographs I've seen were taken by professionals - you can distinguish on your account if you're a professional photographer - but yet a lot of them are just amature photographers like me, who wish to share their photos with the world.

So what exactly am I obsessed with when it comes to Flickr you ask? Well, just like in music and food, there are certain types you tend to stick with, and I'm not one of those people who feels inclined to stray out of my "favorites-rut" and discover something new. Which is a long way of saying that just like with Google Maps I look at...old/abandoned house pictures! Yes folks, I'm just a barrel of eclectic tastes! I'm all over the map! No pun intended!

But then again, it doesn't really bother me that I don't have varied tastes in things - to use the word "things" as a flimsy substitute for my interests - because when it comes to the things I'm interested in, I know I have a deep-seated passion for them, and don't consider it a waste of time if I sit at my computer for an hour when I'm supposed to be getting to bed and flipping through picture after picture of abandoned houses and farms. And this is where my "mega-curiosity streak" comes in.

My mega-curiosity streak is what sometimes leads me to finding that tantalizing abandoned house hiding alongside the crumbling, silent lip of a narrow country road, it's what causes me to cruise down the streets of some small town in Google Maps - mostly in the U.P, eh! - searching for a dilapidated house, or just wondering what's down this road? Where does this corner open up to? It's also the same curiosity that has lead me to some of my favorite artists, or where I've found myself watching the music video for the latest pop song because I was wondering what it was like. Which, let me tell you, I'll be doing less often! Some of those videos are quite interesting...to use that word loosely because I don't want to waste time talking about the latest pop sensation. My mouth is filling with a bitter taste already.

And also I want to steer away from those subjects because I have a tendency to get cynical and sarcastic. But apparently I didn't get away from the subject fast enough because somewhere deep in the traitor part of my brain Katy Perry's "E.T" is playing. Speaking of weird, right? I mean, any song that has Kanye West in it - shudder - has got to be unnerving. The guy's a creep.

You know what I think would be fun? Some day, when I decide to let the part of me sitting down at my computer right now to just dissolve away and let Side B of me settle into the comfy dorm computer chair and just start plucking random keys like a bored cat pressing piano keys, a discontorted song rising up from its fluffy paws, I would love to just unload all the sarcasm, frustration, confusion and sometimes slight anger and disgust I have towards music of the pop, country and modern rock genres. I mean, I'm sure we all have it, for different reasons, but I think I've always practiced restraint, both in my writing and my lift. Well, part of it comes from the fact that I honestly don't know how to translate the sarcasm that flows so easily in my novellas...into my actual everyday life. Because essentially that sarcasm is more so on my Side B, rather than my Side A. And as I'm understanding both now - and probably a while ago too - Side B of me is almost translated entirely in my novellas, and funneled through the characters I create. Which brings me to a favorite quote of mine spoken by Ann Tyler - I'm assuming she's a writer of some sort? I'm not sure, can't remember anymore - which is: "I write because I want to have more than one life". And that's why I write! So I can release Side B of me. I can blare it over the crackling speakers of some old, faded-red, convertible Mustang while I wind down country roads, the tires hugging the crumbling shoulders like spindly winter trees wrapping around the weather-beaten sides of an abandoned house, providing both a steady shoulder yet a close reminder of death, a constant, tightening touch.

And even though all of the characters I create inevitably have their problems - most of them in the past, since I seem to focus on each character's past - I still find freedom in their lives, as if just as I give them life, they give me life in return. It's as if they're saying they can live without me giving them words to pages, but their life becomes so much more when I do. Which could lead me back to my blog post about "picking up hitchikers". Each character comes to me as a whole jigsaw puzzle, it's just that only a dozen or so pieces will have pictures on them, and even then they might be faded while the rest of the pieces are blank, staring up at me like an umarred piece of paper, awaiting the pen to summon the words that are hiding within.

Well, I certainly haven't talked about flickr.com much have I? I believe not that long ago - in fact, sometime this summer - I created an account with Flickr, for the sole purpose of favoriting my favorite abandoned house pictures, and as o fright now I think I'm at more than two-hundred. Some users will have literally hundreds and I'll just keep clicking through their photostream, enticed and excited by the small thumbnails of the photos and I can't resist clicking on them to make them bigger. More of the curiosity thing, remember? Also, by way of Flickr I've also discovered some amazingly interesting abandoned towns, most of them in sparse states like Kansas and North Dakota.

The more photos I favorite and enjoy - secretely, slightly jealous of all the photographers who capture such amazing shots of beautifully dilapidated houses - I can't help thinking how much I would love to be a traveling photographer and capture such beauties for myself. Getting paid to roam America's crumbling backroads like the decomposing spine of some once-loyal and well-feared guard dog within the dusty remains of a city dump or regal dairy farm that now only has his legends, his hilariously infalted tales told by wide-eyed children to let others know that he was once much more than what he is now. Some may find such exploits lonely or disturbing if they were to deliberately seek out such crumbling facades and sightless windows wide shut, like visiting an abandoned, overgrown cemetery to chat with the centuries old bones, keeping company the remains of a great-great grandparent you never knew.

But I wouldn't see it that way. There's a certain, ambigous flame that ignites within me whenever I spot an abandoned house. It's something I haven't fully been able to grasp, and perhaps I don't want to. For in the same way it's like that curiosity that drives me to new and far-flung places, I can't quite desribe what draws me towards one lazily curving country road and not another, or why I am inexplicably drawn to the sodden-faced, embarassingly-outdated old houses of Calumet and Ishpeming, Michigan and not the newly restored old houses that stand in regal comparison. But what I do know is that with each of these things I have a flickr of an obsession...which can ignite so much more than just a meager flame, for while my obsessions are pale flames stuttering in the wind, my passions that arise from said flames are fires rolling through layers of parched forests, gasping on the dry wood succumbing to ashes within their zealous grasp.

Wildflower's Dance

Perhaps as writer's nature inspires us all. But just as there are many sides to nature, so are there myriad ways in which we are inspired by it. Of course, it isn't just the writer who takes something away from this grand earth of ours. Everyone can gain from its beauty. From the photographer, to the musical director, to the singer/songwriter, to the painter, to the farmer, to the retired couple RVing across America to the toddler taking his first steps, grasping at anything that moves, watching a fluttering butterfly with rapt attention, seeing minuscule wonders we as adults inadvertently pass over, beauty lost in the rush of things.

Just as we each reflect upon and feel inspired by nature's beauty in different ways, so can we learn so many things from each other's point of view. Take the toddler's view for instance. A butterfly slowly folding and unfolding its wings on a wilting wildflower beneath a glaring, unblinking sun is a pretty sight to anyone but to a young child just beginning to turn the pages of nature, watching with infectious giggle and spit-streaked lips stretching wide in a grin that instantly becomes your own that butterfly is a world within itself. Colors fitting perfectly together on delicate wings, like paper-thin mosaics designed and set by hands more delicate than a mask of cobwebs shielding belongings beneath an attic's eves, fending off time even though time has deftly woven them there. He may reach out, chubby fingers unsteady, eyes reflecting the wonder before him, his mind reaching out along with his hand, yearning to understand, yearning to touch, to feel.

Whenever I'm a photographing mood I like to get down to the ground and see what I'm missing. Granted I stand a measly five foot two so needless to say I'm pretty close to the ground already, but I mean actually flattening yourself along the ground, aiming the camera up at something, rather than down. Nature is like a thick, worn book on a table. The ends of each page may be ragged and curling in all directions like a bad 80's layered cut or an even worse perm but that pockmarked surface just begs for you to reach out doesn't it? To reach out and fold back the pages, wondering if the rest of them are as peeled as the edges. Your eyes may travel to words upon the pages, faded and smudged into the slowly dissolving material of the paper itself. As if as it ages the book itself is digesting the words which birthed it, perhaps trying to claim its own identity, acknowledging the fact that it will most likely remain on this table which never gets dusted, for just like the table, it will never feel the weight of purpose. Their only purpose now is to reflect the passage of time with a steady sprinkling of dust, like rotten confectioner's sugar sprinkled atop a lumpy, fuzz-cloaked cake.

But before I go off on yet another simile gone crazy, let me get back to the point. Just as we should all yearn to discover nature from all angles, so can we learn from each other's point of view. Being interested in photography myself, which rekindled itself a few years ago thanks to my cousin living in Upper Michigan and her penchant for taking winter pictures, I began thinking of our own personal interests in photography when it comes to nature.

As I mentioned before, my cousin loves taking winter pictures. Now being from the U.P one would assume this to be natural seeing as that part of the Midwest receives more than their far share of snow! But she's told me that isn't the whole story. She loves winter because of its inimitable beauty. For its unending cloak of white tossed haphazardly or delicately upon the land, for the way mighty pines bend and sag beneath their fluffy bonnets of white, for the roads marred with browns and blacks only to have a fresh coat obscure man's stigma like a mother hastily bleaching a child's white shirt, desperate to see the stain gone.

Living in Wisconsin we get our fair share of snow as well, though not nearly as much as in previous winters. And I'll admit, living here in the city I don't appreciate winter like I do when I'm out in the countryside. There what looks like a mere square of white cloth sewn and cut to precise measurements in our neighbor's backyards and on their roofs become blankets that meld with the earth's gentle slopes and subtle rises and valleys. It melds uninterrupted with the pale sky above, straight lines of barren trees and snow-burdened pines like tightly sewn seams tying together this blanket white. Hoar frost is what really fascinates me. Everything is encased in a transparent jacket, as if someone had meant to shield nature from something but ended up shrink-wrapping it instead. Trees creak within their cages, perhaps viewing the world through blurry panes of glass like an old house staring at the world through the wavy panes of its windows. Streets and country roads become slick ribbons of silk, rivers rush gaily underneath their shields, a world ignorant of the frozen atmosphere beyond.

Also, when out in the countryside I love the crunch of snow underneath my boots. I love breaking through that crusty layer of snow on top and feeling my entire body sink into the real confectioner's sugar underneath, that sweet layer of frosting hidden below the hardened top, itching to dig into your teeth and dance with your taste buds. I love the way snow falls from a tree when you shake it, those whispers in a thousand voices raining down upon you, white snow saved just for you, snowflakes caught between your eyelashes, their beautiful intricacies melting away. I love the way a heavy snowfall looks from the safety of my house. The way the world is pushed back and a constantly shifting mosaic of hypnotic snow cascades in every direction, a thousand lungs expelling their breath upon the world, each melding with the other, dancing before you, luring you into a trance, into their depths until you feel like you are clinging to the curved edge of a glass globe and the hand shaking it is ignorant of your confusion, ignorant of anything but the blissful blizzard swirling within and the music playing as long as the handle turns and time is left to use at his whimsy.

Well there you go, it's the middle of summer and I'm talking about winter. Honestly, I'm more excited for fall. A couple weeks ago Sheboygan's experienced fall like weather and I felt my heart skipping in front of me, beckoning me to come find fall, come seek it out. I was anxious for the trees to turn, shedding their uniform green coats and donning their cheerfully colored cloaks of rusty reds and aged browns, golden yellows and flaming oranges. I yearned for that blissfully warm cup of apple cider to fill me in every corner and crevice, for that apple fresh from the orchard to break between my teeth, for its succulent flesh to burst upon my tongue like a dam unable to hold back its wealth. But most of all I yearn for those silent walks through the forests with color raining down around me and layering the ground below, as if two quilts woven with every shade of fall were on a clothes line billowing in the wind, each time sending forth another square spinning wildly in the wind, until they tangled with one another, snagging in the trees, sticking to the ground where they were sewn deftly together by the creator's hand, a thick blanket upon the earth, a cheerful welcome mat for winter to begin its descent from the mountain tops and from the very bellies of faraway valleys.

Just as each of us gravitates towards different aspects of nature that we draw inspiration from, so do we each like a different season. Granted we probably like all of them, but we may like a certain one for a particular reason. Through my cousin's passion for winter in the U.P and her excitement to capture its beauty I have come to respect winter and begin to pay more attention to the beauty she so often displays in her photo's. Just as I'm sure she has come to appreciate flowers and the beach due to my penchant for photographing them. I never got to talking about flowers did I? As you may have noticed from today's blog post title, I had indeed intended to talk about my passion for flowers, of all kinds. But, like always, that is for another time. My habit of writing whatever comes to mind has once again rudely shoved what I had intended to write about out of the way, like a petulant child shoving his younger sister out of the computer chair, then with a wild grin going on her facebook page and proceeding to reek havoc. Thank God my brother isn't like that!

Anyway, I intend to post pictures of the flowers I have photographed onto my blog, and perhaps sometime get around to talking about why I love them so much. But until then, to all you photographers out there, whether you be a person with a basic digital camera just following your passion or whimsy - like me - or a professional, traveling photographer capturing your passion on film every day - and to you people may I just say you're living a dream of mine! - happy photographing!