Straight Edge Life

I’ve just finished framing 7 prints for my new apartment. 5 out of the seven images are from this summer and that feels really good. I’ve been sitting on a lot of old images for a couple of years now, it’s good to have some new work to nail up on my walls. I’ve got at least 5 more images at my old place that are ready for framing. Life is good. The whole process is treating me well. Like I mentioned a few posts ago, I’m involved in every step of these images. Capture, processing, printing, and framing. Only the raw materials are out of my control. It’s good. Feels really good.

So… I thought I should tell you all about Lynn Weyand. She’s one of my newest customers on Pixenter and I really dig her work. She shoots, prints, mounts and frames all her own work as well, and I can tell you from experience her prints are gorgeous. And her prices are still reasonable. So if you like gorgeous black and white photography, and you have a bit of open wall space, you should have a look at her site. Also, a local photojournalist, Tom Boyd, who is another new customer on pixenter has posted a portfolio of his wedding and portrait work. I’m hoping he posts a few sports shots as well. His work isn’t for sale, but he is for hire for upcoming weddings and such.

I was thinking a bit about who and what I can trust. As much as it sucks I feel like one of the few things I can trust is that I will get screwed or that things won’t turn out just the way I want. Waaa, waaa, right? Shut up and deal with life I often tell myself. Shit happens, that’s the way the cookie crumbles, etc. But all of this pessimistic / realistic crap has the surprisingly efficient effect of killing hope. I mean, if the world is out to get me (even in very subtle ways) why should I even bother? Just hunker down and protect myself, live safely. Or, as I tend to do, lose myself in my work.

I’ve been busy for the last few weeks. Lost in my work. Not so much paying work as love labors. Of which there are many. In the last few weeks I’ve been shooting, climbing (yes climbing), printing, working my ass off on Pixenter, and making frames for my photos. I’m losing myself in these things, on purpose, and I haven’t fingered exactly why yet. Maybe I just need a break from myself.

Someone named Hannah sent me a message asking if I would answer some questions for her history paper. Sure, be glad to, but you must have typo’ed your email address because it didn’t work when I tried to send a response.

My man Dave has pretty much recovered from his hideous climbing accident a while back. He’s planning on sending this image (taken last month) to his surgeon to let him know that he’s back on the stone again. Dave went through months of physical therapy with fierce determination to get mended enough to climb again. I know his plan is to successfully climb the route that he fell on when he had his accident. I hope someone gets a shot of that too.

Sometimes I wish I were a cat. Eat, nap, run around chasing bugs (imaginary or real), nap, pur, sleep on owners head, scratch furniture. Rinse, repeat.

Today was a shitty day. I was juggling four strategically coordinated deadlines for work, my apartment is still in the midst of minor construction and I’ve been battling to keep foreign cats from eating the food I’ve set out for my cat, Josie. But that wasn’t very successful because the people working on my apartment kept opening all the doors and while I was putting one damn cat out another would hop up onto my desk and have a seat on my warm laptop keyboard. I would have gone back to my old place to work for a bit, but the painter dudes showed up over there and started sanding 17 years worth of crud off the window inserts and the work environment just wasn’t any better. In fact, it would have been worse as the net connection over there is just about as fast as a snail and I’m moving big files today. Grrrr.

So I juggled phone calls from clients and customers, attempted to sync up with the net admin at my ISP to insert a bunch of CSS into a customers shop site and tried to debug a few pieces of a 500,000 line program I wrote a while ago. Oh, and I worked with a new client who shorted my most recent check by $600, who also wants his site done like yesterday.

I’ll likely get a chance to work out later tonight. God knows I need it to help burn some frustration. For now it’s a few more hours of work while the apartment is quiet. Man, I’m never getting sick again. Playing catch-up bites ass.

After four days feeling pretty damn sick and totally unable to sleep due to a certain amount of early morning construction being performed about 10 feet from my bed, I managed to get myself out of the house and out to the coast with my dad for a half-day of shooting. Might have been a longer trip but he had a tweaked foot from something earlier in the week. After his shift at the aquarium he wasn’t up for much tromping around the beaches while I shot seaweed and birds.

Even so, it was a good day. I probably wasn’t up for a full day shooting because of my cold. I got lucky with good light and enough inner-calm to see a few images in the things around me. I photographed the bridge, a common tourist subject, finding shapes and form that really have nothing to do with the bridge itself. It felt good. I felt like my eyes were open. I wandered around and shot a few other subjects as well, having the same open-eye sense as I shot a few hundred frame.

Unfortunately, my friggin’ CCD was hella dirty so it’s going to be a few hours here before I can post any of the images. Much cleaning to be done.

So my new place is really close to the river. I’m jazzed about this. Expect to see a couple of shots from the shores of the Willamette on SXE in the near future.

I’ve been thinking pretty seriously about switching to Canon lately. It’s not like I have a bunch of extra money to spend on equipment. I don’t have any actually. I’m just tired of waiting years for Nikon to catch up with Canon’s offerings. Take for example the EOS-1D Mark II (8.2MPX, at 8.5FPS for 45 frames) compared to the Nikon D2h (4.1MPX at 8FPS for 40 frames). I think the release dates on these cameras are only a few months apart. What’s up with Nikon offering less than half the goods?? Well anyways. I think the EOS-1D Mark II is basically my dream camera. I don’t feel especially bound by the smaller 6MPX D100 which I’m using now, but I’d like the ability to crop my images just a bit more than I do now. right now I can make a print as big as my printer can handle with the D100, if I don’t crop. Anyways. Just random babble here. This has been a weird week so far. I need to get out and shoot. Ain’t no ifs ands or buts about it.

I get a lot of requests for detailed information about the straight edge movement. I’d like to start gathering and organizing what I can into list of resources on this site.

If anyone knows of any film, video, or audio documentaries on Straight Edge, Straight Edge Bands, or Straight Edge Living in general, please let me know. I’d like to compile a list, and post as many straight-edge documentaries on this site as I can. For that matter, if you want to go out and make a film about any part of the straight edge movement I’d be happy to post it on this site.

The same goes for academic papers, stories in the news, or hand-written straight-edge manifestos. I’ll gladly post pretty much anything you find or write. It’s time this site started giving back a bit more to the straight edge community.

My girl is going out to a bar with a couple of friends of ours from high school tonight. I’m at home working, as usual. My 9:00 am meeting is demanding another couple of hours of work out of me today and the hell if I’m going to get up at 6:30 to get that done. So here I am, once again thinking about how much of a fool I can be at times.

When I really want something I’ll make it happen, even if I have to invent it. I so willingly convinced myself that she was giving it up for good. She never actually said that, but that’s what I heard. And it’s been nearly a year since her last drink (so she says). So, that’s what I told myself; that she was giving it up. And for a short while I was happy in that illusion.

Tonight she came in and casually said she was probably going to have a few drinks tonight. Out of the blue, for no particular reason. I guess she never quit drinking officially, and certainly for not any kind of ideological reason, so I should not be surprised. And I’m not, I guess. I’m just disappointed. I can’t guess at her reasoning for drinking or not drinking. Perhaps because she’s on vacation, away from her job, which requires exacting clarity, she feels a few drinks are totally cool. Perhaps it’s some social thing because the people she’s going out with are pretty heavy drinkers. I don’t know.

The thing I know with amazing clarity tonight is that I’m still not ok with my friends drinking. I have the most amazing admiration for people who don’t drink. For the ones who choose not to drink specifically because of ideological reasons. The ones who don’t make it a conditional or situational choice. They are the rock foundations of my world. And I want to be surrounded by that kind of strength. Because I think it takes a stunning amount of character to choose the straight edge life. Strength, courage, stamina and intelligence.

Anything that tests your will in such a healthy way just can’t be wrong. I mean, when’s the last time you committed to something as healthy as living straight edge and stuck to it? How’s that diet going? How’s your commitment to spend more time with your kids? Or to work less? Those with the resolve to see and understand a healthy idea and follow through with it for themselves by demonstrating it in their lives are heros. My heros. They will never see my disrespect.