Straight Edge Life

Well, my soon to be ex-wife has invited me to her opening. She’s got an installation piece opening on Monday. It’s just weird. We’re barely on speaking terms, haven’t seen each other in months, and yet she’s still trying to peripherally keep me in her life. I’m not sure I’m comfortable with it. It’s not all that hard to remember why I fell in love with her in the past. But it’s also not that hard to remember the ongoing sting of the last 6 months.

My life has always been intense. It’s been laughter or tears almost constantly. The few times when I’ve been numb have been the worst times of my life. So the emotional load of this situation feels normal enough… I just have no damn idea how to solve it. But then maybe there’s no way to solve something like this. I can’t predict the future. I have no idea if Nichole and I will eventually become friends or stay as we are now, at arms length (and then some). It’s hard to imagine it now, but I think it’s dumb to have expectations of the future. I try to keep an open mind. No matter how hard it is to think about being friends with someone who betrayed my trust repeatedly. See? It’s just screwed up. A maze even. And I alternate between wanting to figure out how to get through it, or simply to leave the game entirely and write her out of my life… Take a trip to the hills and shoot a hell of a lot of photos and forget about my problems in the city.

I swear, my drug is photography. But it’s better than drugs. It helps me forget AND helps solve the problem at hand. It’s a form of meditation almost. It’s so involving that I either find a relief from the stress, which can solve an issue on it’s own, or I find another perspective (a different lens, if you will) through which I can view my problems, or both. Now that I think about it, simply finding a relief from the stress of a problem can make the problem less important and less worthy of my attention, concern and time.

And, to take this conversation even further than my original intent, I have always advocated that people find a healthy passion to follow with all their hearts. I can’t say that being in love with what you do automatically helps you solve all your problems. I have no idea if people get the same perspective from their bowling passion as I do from photography. I guess it just takes at least a mildly philosophical inclination and an enternal desire to see things get better. What things? All things. I’m always looking for a solution. This was something my ex never really understood, for all our problems. I would have done anything to make it work out. But infidelity and her total loss of affection for me was out of my hands. Completely.

That moment of discovery, that point in time when it all falls together. I love it. Maybe it’s in the studio when I’m reviewing thousands and thousands of images and the right ones just pop up to the surface and beg me to print them. Maybe it’s when I’m on a climb, staring up at the next move which is nothing like anything I’ve ever done before, and some combination of past moves comes together in my head to pull through to the next clip. On-sight, flash, even a redpoint. You face it, you tap into something you can’t define, and you pull through. There’s a moment in time when you discover. That’s what I’m talking about. It’s magic. It’s like shaking up a box of puzzle pieces and getting a picture when you open the box. Everything you need is there in the box and who in the hell knows what it takes to bring it all together. I sure don’t. But I love opening it. I love discovering what my brain can do to find a solution, almost without effort. I can’t count the number of times I’ve been in the shower and the answer to a programming question just popped into my head. Or woken up knowing exactly how to loop through some burly array of variables so that just the right data comes out on the page.

I was talking to a friend about this earlier because that moment of discover happened to me today. I was face-to-face with a problem that I hadn’t been able to solve for two days straight… Then it happened… I was staring at the screen and I turned, grabbed a pen and a piece of paper, and mapped my solution. How, I do not know. But how fun is that? It’s killer. I suppose I could look back and see that my solution was only a recombined patchwork of things I’d done in the past. But that’s not what’s important to me. What’s important is that I made something new. Women talk about how men only know how to destroy, but I know the joy of making something. And it’s much more fun that breaking things. Most of the time anyway.

Holy crap. Get your hands on one of these before they are gone. Why am I so excited about the Epson 3200 Photo scanner? Because I just spent $300 (with $100 rebate) on a scanner that competes directly with a $2,400 scanner from Nikon, the Super Coolscan 8000. Another photographer friend of mine sent files from both the 3200 and the coolscan 8000. Add a very minor unsharp mask to the 3200 image and they are visually identical.

This thing is an amazing deal. I’m sure it’s soon-to-come replacement, at $449, will be just as awesome, so if you can’t find a 3200, wait for the new model. The sofware works. The scans are clean and very high resolution (up to 12,000 dpi interpolated, 6,400 optical). The only funky thing about it is the fact that it doesn’t seem to work with firewire on Mac OS X, Panther. It’s not slow using the USB connection, but I have to unplug a printer to use it with USB. Even so I give the Epson 3200 Photo scanner a solid, way solid, 10 out of 10 rating.

P.S. The 3200 photo is discontinued, soon to be replaced by a new model, and has a $100 discount on them until the end of January 2004. See if you can find one, excellent deal. Incredible.

“Work as if you have no money. Love as if you have never been hurt. Dance like no one is watching. Sing like no one is listening. And live everyday as if it were your last”

Anonymous

“When you own your own business, you only have to work half a day. You can do anything you want with the other twelve hours.”

- Anonymous.

“Always two there are, a master and an apprentice.”

- Yoda

“Don’t do drugs, don’t have unprotected sex, don’t be violent…leave that to me”

- Eminem

“There is more to life than increasing its speed”

- Mahatma Gandhi

“Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.”

“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.”

- Mahatma Gandhi

“Trees cause more pollution than automobiles do.”

- Ronald Reagan

“Behind every successful man stands a surprised mother-in-law.”

- Hubert Humphrey

“The trouble with the French is, they have no word for entrepreneur”

- George Bush

“We in America do not have government by the majority. We have government by the majority who participate.”

- Thomas Jefferson

“Our democracy, our constitutional framework is really a kind of software for harnessing the creativity and political imagination for all of our people….The American democratic system was an early political version of Napster.”

- Al Gore

“Strength does not come from winning. Your struggles develop your strengths. When you go through hardships and decide not to surrender, that is strength.”

- Arnold Schwartzenegger

“‘I want to walk through life instead of being dragged through it.’”

- Alanis Morissette

“Acting and music are two completely different art forms that complement each other. Modeling really pays the rent…. With acting, I get to be in different people’s shoes…. Music is where i get to be brutally honest with myself. I don’t need a director or a good script because it’s my life that I’m drawing from…”

- Milla Jovovich

“Canada is the essence of not being. Not English, not American, it is the mathematic of not being. And a subtle flavour - we’re more like celery as a flavour.”

- Mike Myers on the secret of his Mojo

“People equate sexy with promiscuous. They think that because I’m shaped this way, I must be scandalous - like running around and bringing men into my hotel room. But it’s just the opposite”

- Jennifer Lopez

“Everyone seems to think I’m very ladylike. That I’m very cultured and intelligent. I drink alot of Diet Coke and belch. I’ve been known to use the F-word. I’ve told a few dirty jokes. I arm-wrestle.”

- Helena Bonham Carter

“Congratulations are in order for Woody Allen - he and Soon Yi have a brand new baby daughter. It’s all part of Woody’s plan to grow his own wives”

- David Letterman

“I don’t need plastic in my body to validate me as a woman.”

- Courtney Love

A very good friend of mine, Dave Patterson, took a ground fall while climbing this weekend. He ended up in a hospital in San Jose with multiple broken bones and an injury to his spine. He’s a fellow geek, uber-geek even, with a life and got hurt doing what he loves the most… climbing. It sucks. Dave’s got some serious guts. I’ve seen the dude take some crazy risks and not get hurt. And this time, while simply climbing up to a high first bolt (something all climbers have to do from time to time) a piece of rock he was using for a layback busted off and sent him to the deck, and then down the canyon.

So, if you will, he could use all the good thoughts you can send. If you pray, pray. Do whatever you think is good, but this Dave is a good man. He’s a guy who can inspire you on and off the rock. And he definitely deserves all the support we can give him as he gets on the train to recovery. For now, he’s laid up in Valley Medical Hospital in San Jose. Contact me if you want to send flowers or something. I can give you his room number. I’m sure that would cheer him up and amuse him. If you want, post a message on this blog entry, he reads SXEL frequently. I’m sure he’d be jazzed to read your support.

What a day. I’ve been working hard for 9 hours and am only now getting into a good flow. Now would be a reasonable time to quit. 9 hours is a pretty average day for most workers. If I were at an office I would probably be forced to go home because of overtime limits and stuff like that. But no, I’m here in my home office working for myself. And you know what that means; I’ll probably be working until I pass out under my desk. At which point my space heater will shrivel me into a prune. Blech.