Straight Edge Life

I feel like an ass. I’ve been listening to Henry Rollins mp3s that I shamelessly downloaded from Limewire for free. I feel like shit about it. If there is anyone I should be supporting and buying cds from it’s Rollins. To ease my guilt I offer you all a link direct to the official Henry Rollins website. And as soon as I can I’m getting down to House of Records to pick up a couple disks. The guy is killer.

Steve passed along a couple of ideas for the site. I had been thinking about putting some sort of bulletin board system into this site but couldn’t figure out how to moderate it. So Steve will probably bounce some ideas around with me until we come up with a good way to do it.

You know one of the coolest things about being straight edge is learning to say yes while learning how to say no. Does that make sense? Say no to one thing, get some creativity and learn how to say yes to other things. Skip the beer, go for a night climb. Stay home, read a book.

The more I learn about this community the more I realize how damn cool and diverse it is. A lot of social boundaries that are just standard enforcements in the drinking community are simply ignored. I’ve got friends who are engineers, jocks, artists, accountants, mountaineers, photographers, thespians, and just about everything else. Nice bit is that we all play well together.

Damn what an episode tonight. Jack is dead. Tortured, killed. Kate Warner is unconscious on the ground while racists kick the hell out of the middle eastern man with the microchip that might prove that the audio tape was fabricated. Michelle Dessler and Tony were caught kissing by the evil girl (what’s her name?). President Palmer is about to be undercut by his own staff. And the top president’s aid is locked in a closet. Bad news. Not very good for anyone at all. This is the single most rivetting show I’ve ever seen on TV. Hands down. X-Files does not even come close.

Bill added some of his shots from Smith to Pixenter. Cool stuff. Go to Pixenter and search for William Soule to see his stuff. I’ve been cranking all day on my job and my other job, and a little bit on this site as well. Been busy, but life is good. Also got another call from a potential freelance client so things might be getting better.

My man Dave lent me his D100. I’m warming up the the little beasty. I still think some of the controls are in the wrong place. Just totally the wrong place. But then not every camera can be as perfectly engineered as the F5, or as simply elegant as the old FM2. Fact of the matter is, that it’ a 6 megapixel SLR for under $2,000. And even though a couple of years from now that’s going to sound insanely expensive, it’s $2,000 less than the next better camera with a lower resolution. The D1X. How sad is that?

Anyway, the point is that I will be shooting in Georgia and I’m ultra excited about that. I haven’t shot in a long time. And it’s been much much longer since I’ve shot for myself. So stay tuned, I’m planning on posting a small gallery of my stuff from Georgia when I get back.

And I’ve added a software section where I can sing praises to my favorite applications.

I’m going to Georgia this week. Can’t wait. Can’t wait. Can’t wait. Sarah, yes another one, my really good friend sorta from college, is getting married. I’m shooting the wedding and speding a couple of extra days in the area just for a bit of relaxation. Might get to chill with Les. I plan to eat a lot of sushi with my sister and her husband. It’s going to be a good trip.

There’s a killer storm outside and I’ve been inside all day working on a freelance gig. It’s time to play. I often consider getting the hell out of this industry and transforming myself into a bauhaus movement artist. Nothing I do is tangible. I’m not making prints to hang on the wall. I’m moving electrons around so that they make pretty web pages. I miss having something physical to show for all my effort. I mean it’s weird. I feel like it’s wonderful to be good at something that is sort of silent and unrecognized. It’s exactly the kind of low-profile existance and level of privacy that I love. But I also really don’t have a lot of pride in what I do. There is no benchmark for accomplishment, no prize, no summit, no goal even. Web development gives me almost nothing in return for all the time and effort I put into doing it well. Damn, there isn’t even a print, or a negative to show for all my hard work. There is nothing. It’s weird. It bugs me.

I wonder if I have become a coward. Should I be building houses, climbing and taking photos instead? Would I be happier if I were worried about money all the time? Because for the first time in a long time I’m not worried about money 24/7. And if I were to drop all of this and go back to climbing, and shooting, it would be a struggle. For months. Maybe years. I don’t know what to think anymore. Not today anyway.

I’ve added a books section where I can list some of my favorite books.

Since this is my site I think I’m to take the liberty of doing any damn thing I want with it. And, more importantly, change the site and it’s focus as often as I like. I think I just want this thing to be a slice of my life. Maybe just an insight on what one straight-edge dude’s life is like. Nothing especially exciting but I just don’t see this site turning into some sort of preachy site dedicated to straight-edge mantra, in all it’s variations. The truth is, most days I don’t even think about being straight edge. And I think I would like to have my site reflect this underlying and nearly silent influence in my life.

“Man’s deliberate destruction of his own habitat–planet Earth–could serve as a mighty theme for a mighty book worthy of a modern Melville or Tolstoy. But our best fictioneers confine themselves to domestic drama–soap opera with literary trimmings.”

– Edward Abbey

“Style: There is something in too much verbal felicity (as in Joyce or Nabokov or Borges) that can betray the writer into technique for the sake of technique.”

– Edward Abbey

“A man without passion would be like a body without a soul. Or even more grotesque, like a soul without a body.”

– Edward Abbey

“There is science, logic, reason; there is thought verified by experience. And then there is California.”

–Edward Abbey

“Rocks, like louseworts and snail darters and pupfish and 3rd-world black, lesbian, militant poets, have rights, too. Especially the right to exist.”

–Edward Abbey

“The artist in our time has two chief responsibilities: (1) art; and (2) sedition.”

– Edward Abbey

“Liberty cannot be guaranteed by law. Nor by any thing else except the resolution of free citizens to defend their liberties.”

– Edward Abbey

“Delicate arch, a fragile ring of stone. If it holds any significance, it lay in the power of the odd and unexpected to startle the senses and surprise the mind out of their ruts of habit, to compel us into a reawakened sense of wonderful.”

– Edward Abbey

“One final paragraph of advice: Do not burn yourself out. Be as I am-a reluctant enthusiast… a part time crusader, a half-hearted fanatic. Save the other half of yourselves and your lives for pleasure and adventure. It is not enough to fight for the land; it is even more important to enjoy it. While you can. While it is still there. So get out there and mess around with your friends, ramble out yonder and explore the forests, encounter the grizz, climb the mountains. Run the rivers, breathe deep of that yet sweet and lucid air, sit quietly for a while and contemplate the precious stillness, that lovely, mysterious and awesome space. Enjoy yourselves, keep your brain in your head and your head firmly attached to your body, the body active and alive, and I promise you this much: I promise you this one sweet victory over our enemies, over those deskbound people with their hearts in a safe deposit box and their eyes hypnotized by desk calculators. I promise you this: you will outlive the bastards.”

– Edward Abbey

by Dave Patterson.

“It is strangely fantastic to reflect back to these early days, when all our dreams were open-ended and unfulfilled. Not so many years have passed, but life is measured by the potholes, not the length of the road. A person has but one chance in life, when he is young and foolish and ignorant, to absolutely and perfectly desire something as I desired to get onto the high crag. It’s the genius of not knowing the “proper” proportion of things, of focusing everything on what you wanted, not what others thought you needed. The best part of it all is how clean and honest it all felt, following desire so precisely, with no pathos or pretense or second thoughts at all. It seemed that if we didn’t folow our calling, all was lost, and life would never make any sense to us. Only later would things get too complex and muddled to think and act so decisively, and only later would I realize that those early days on the boulders were the best days after all.” –John Long (Rock Jocks, Wall Rats, and Hang Dogs)

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