Impermanence

I think I'm losing my mind. In fact, I'm pretty sure that I am, or have. I have lucid moments. Those become the most terrifying. The recognition of ephemeral clarity. I've stopped caring about many things, or have begun caring disproportionately about minutiae. 

I've returned to sleeping in the nude after many years of sleeping in boxers. There is something slight but oddly liberating about it. Even under most emergencies I would need to put on pants anyway, so it's still a sensible thing to do. It reminds me of being young again. It was Rachel that encouraged me to ever wear underwear in the first place. Something about going renegade seemed to go against her sense of propriety. 

Jesus, that was such a very long time ago. Maybe it was before Rachel. I don't wish to unfairly tarnish her legacy, her tenure. I can't remember any more.

I'm considering buying a used D4S and returning my D810. The price is right, and it is much closer to being the camera that I wanted. Though, I do like the images that come out of the D810 (above and below).

Later today, the boy and I will have an adventure. We will go into the city and spend the night with a friend. Something easy, to get away. It is all that I used to wish to do. Well that, and to never wear underwear.

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Bark's don't bite

(Barkley)

(I must really be getting old. I wrote this post yesterday but never published it…)

Wow, nobody liked my nerd post, but *almost* everyone I know sure likes it when I stop by their house when they're having a technical problem. There is always a glass of wine waiting and an empty chair in front of the computer, eagerly expecting my arrival, the drifting waft of warm cooking chicken in the kitchen. 

Not always, that's unfair, often. 

Often.

Ah well. I expected at least one nerd to come crawling out from the crevices to tell me I had chosen a poor case for my system, or something.

Better luck next time, nerd.

The weekend is mine and the boy's. We were going to have a big adventure and go "to the Kingdom of Far Far away" but circumstances have hobbled us, so we might just spend a night in the city with a friend, watching kids' shows and eating popcorn. We'll see. Nothing is written.

The boy has been asking about death lately. he wants to know if I'll die, and more importantly, will Mommy? Never an easy conversation, as difficult, perhaps, for me as for him. I'm never satisfied with my answers, and never convinced when I say that it won't happen for a long, long time.

And then, not to worry.

My response always seems to have a bit of the why are you asking? tone in it. What do you know that I don't? When he asked if we could go away somewhere for the weekend he added that we should go to a place where no one dies. The boy has endured an unfair amount of it at such an early age. He seems to understand the concept a little bit too well for my comfort. 

Well, enough about death, for now. I'll be rewarded similarly with this talk as I was with my shiny new RAID setup. I'm not sure what it is that I'm preserving, or trying to. I question whether I'll listen to MC5 bootlegs at the age of… well, at any age on the other side of right here.

Maybe. maybe. maybe. maybe.

Aw, just shoot, 

but then shoot it to kill it.

Is not death, what is shot towards us.

An office of the law does not discharge its weapon withwash reasonable certainty.

You see, there are things that happen out in the field that you poor honkeys might never glimpse.

Just call.

A bullet unshot is a life unwasted.

To see something is to sure shoot something.

Say, say, say.

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RAID 1, 4TB

I'm a nerd and this is a nerd alert, a red alert.

During the recent visit of my friend from Japan I decided to finally set up a hardware R.A.I.D. system at my house. Just a small mirrored setup, though it should prevent me from worrying any futher about losing my music and photo libraries. That is, as long as nobody breaks into my house and steals the actual hardware. I'm going to try to hide it behind some books. Nobody steals books, at least not as part of a breaking-and-entering operation.

If only CS would have hidden his cameras underneath some volumes of literature in his car. Byron just might have saved him. 

I can joke about it now. The shock has passed. I used to steal books nearly every chance that I had from a chain store like Barnes and Noble, B. Dalton, and the very best name for a bookstore ever : Books-A-Million.

Because nothing speaks to the American intellect as does the number, a-million.

There is always that to surf along the intertubes about. The internet, what a fucked up place. In an apocalypse my books would eventually be eaten by rats, but at least they might love me for it.


The concept of property - ownership - is an odd one, yet one that I cling to in some ways and then denounce in others. It is the American within me, I guess: highly idealistic, practically retarded.

We rush headlong into another season of campaigns. It is sport for the lame, fashion for the straight.

Big investors still hunt big game, those that can be taken down with the pressing upon of a trigger.

Trophies.

As people mention how many gun deaths there are in the US, I am often tempted to point out how many guns there are here, and then how few people bother to ever use them to choose, like the vote.

It's as if there are a bunch of pre-suffragette women that aren't even bothering to kill people to get their point across.

As if.

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… certain of nothing

I am certain of nothing but the holiness of the Heart's affections and the truth of the Imagination - 

What the imagination seizes as Beauty must be truth...

- John Keats

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The Special K Sisters

Lovely dinner at Kin Khao last night, best Thai food I've had in many years.

Am running across the street soon to meet my lil' sis for lunch (above), possibly my Old Testament buddy, Abraham Lohan, also.

Yep, all that stuff happened earlier. I ran out of time to write a post today. Here are some images from the new Nikon D810 and the 50mm f1.4 G.

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Power, Corruption & Lies

(Gerhard Richter)

Nothing much to report today. I am itching to spend money online. Don't know why, just am; boredom, I guess. I began an ambitious apartment cleaning effort last weekend, but don't feel like seeing it through to completion now. That is the way of things. There is only effort without end. My new mantra will be: do not do, just be. Women will simply love me.

I plan to go into the city today with my buddy from Japan. The three sisters are arriving later, though my official plans with them do not begin until tomorrow. We will go to a museum, the SF Moma. It has been some time since I have been, since the boy was in a stroller and I was a married man, happy as a house.

I used to see exhibits in SF that had been in NYC as well, and I always preferred the curatorial arrangements in NY over SF. Gerhard Richter being one that stood out, how poorly it was curated in SF.

It is difficult to find much good writing about Richter. His work defies the easy categorization that other artists almost seem to strive towards. What glee some artists must feel when a favorable label is finally applied.

Theory has nothing to do with a work of art. Pictures which are interpretable, and contain a meaning, are bad pictures. A picture presents itself as the Unmanageable, the Illogical, the Meaningless. It demonstrates the endless multiplicity of aspects; it takes away our certainty, because it deprives a thing of its meaning and its name. It shows us the thing in all the manifold significance and infinite variety that precludes the emergence of any single meaning and view. 

- Richter

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Unpack Your Adjectives

(Team work project)

I don't know what to write. CS and I have had many petty disagreements over the years, mostly petty, but the news of his gear loss yesterday has me feeling like I've had the breath kicked out of me. I keep looking at the list of stolen bodies and lenses and my stomach sinks and feels empty. It is distressing. I like that he takes interesting pictures. It is a way of organizing the universe; a making of something smoother, that was once rough.

Last night, I showed the list to a friend who is visiting from Japan. I don't know what reaction I expected, as if somehow sharing the loss will lessen the magnitude of it. All the things I own somehow seem easily replaceable in comparison, though I would not wish to have to do so. I would not wish it on anyone.

Fucking filthy thieves.

Today, my buddy and I will visit some vineyards: St. Francis and Gundlach Bundschu. I mainly hate that shit, but he is visiting and does not know what else to do with himself. I have been brushing up on my adjectives.

Speaking of, I've been watching School House Rock with the boy. He was given a two cd set for Christmas. Not only has my memory been slaughtering the songs, but I had forgotten where I learned almost everything that I now know: the Saturday morning cartoons. I wish that I would have remembered it all a little bit more clearly, though. I've been wanting to argue with the cartoons, and I do not mean the not-so-subtle misandry of the above linked video.

But, of course, I am wrong, and the creators of School House Rock know much more than I do.

My favorite musically, when I was a kid, was always the one on the 19th Amendment.

… And, the original Classic: The Magic Number.

I am unable to make sense of any of it. Life is an absurd struggle, as are all the things in it. Then, it can be taken when you turn your back for an instant.

Life may not be fair, but at least nobody gets to skip its ending.

Time passes, love fades.

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Thieves in the marketplaces

Jesus, nothing but bad news. A crazed man was kicking in the doors of some rather nice cars (Audis and Volvos) in the parking lot where I park my car when I arrived this morning. The police arrived shortly thereafter. Two of them tackled him in the corner though they couldn't seem to get cuffs on him. Then many more arrived, surrounding him with their batons out. He ceased resisting arrest after enough damage was done. He was chanting, "Kill me, kill me, kill me…"

I was one of the few that spoke English, so I was left with filling out the police report. 

I spoke with CS briefly. He has had a series of bad luck. First, the loss of the studio, now the loss of much gear that once occupied the studio. Such a thing is always heartbreaking and defeating. Looking at the list of stolen gear is wrenching. The punishment for such a crime is much harsher in some cultures. Though, if you grew up in a place where there were many that were missing hands then perhaps such a fate would not seem so horrific. I am not in support of the hand removal method of crime deterrence. I merely cite it as an alternative practice.

Consider the wisdom of Massachusetts and New Hampshire, which allow girls to get married at 12 and 13, respectively. No word on why boys must be 14. 

So much for marriage equality.

I've been saying it for many years: that a 12 year old girl can do most everything that I like to do, so why not? Some of you might wince at this state-backed wisdom of mine, but if we're going to recoil at the cutting off of hands for thievery then let's not be squeamish about sex with a twelve year old, at least not in Massachusetts. 13 in New Hampshire. All within the beautiful institute of marriage. 

Who are we to question the delights of the law.

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we stopped making secrets

hiding behind trees,

counting to ten,

we forgot that,

and then: giggling

we stopped whispering

at bad words,

instead, we shouldered

herds, 

dashing from parents,

as we could,

grabbed their hems, purses,

they understood

we stopped telling secrets

we stopped telling lies

we stopped nearly everything

surprise.

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"… what dreams may come"

I am exhausted and have very little left to say. I am hoping to transition to a new position at work, one which will leave me with even less free time than I have now, though it will offer me greater educational opportunities. I had considered enrolling back in school to get a master's degree, but I'm not even sure that I have the energy to spare from working and being a single dad. 

Other people do it, so I know that it can be done. There is simply a sacrifice of time, and an adjustment of life's point of focus. Rachel is working towards getting her master's degree, so I feel a mild obligation to do the same. I want our son to esteem education and perhaps falsely assume that he might do so through knowing that his parents are educated. 

Well that, and through talking to him. I ordered him several new books of poems after the disappointment of Shel Silverstein. Poetry is perfect for children. Some of it is nearly the literary equivalent of childhood. Useless and priceless all at once - eager to be shed off, impossible to recovered as it was. 

Except for that John Berryman fellow. 

I have been reading again lately, that helps. I recently finished a book and started at the beginning again, reading it through twice, just to verify that I was present during the first attempt. My experiment had mixed success. At middle life the mind sleeps too easily in the daytime, even as the body remains restless through the nights, hauling the mind along with it, as if being dragged through town by a rope attached at one end to a lazy horse.

--------------------------------------------------------

What a Man I Was

I shot off his left ear
then his right,
and then tore off his belt buckle
with hot lead,
and then
I shot off everything that counts
and when he bent over
to pick up his drawers
and his marbles
(poor critter)
I fixed it so he wouldn’t have
to straighten up
no more.

Ho Hum.
I went in for a fast snort
and one guy seemed
to be looking at me sideways,
and that’s how he died-
sideways,
lookin’ at me
and clutchin’
for his marbles.

Sight o’ blood made me kinda
hungry.
Had a ham sandwich.
Played a couple of sentimental songs …
Shot out all the lights
and strolled outside.
Didn’t seem to be no one around
So I shot my horse
(poor critter).

Then I saw the Sheerf
a standin’ at the end a’ the road
and he was shakin’
like he had the Saint Vitus dance;
it was a real sorrowful sight
so I slowed him to a quiver
with the first slug
and mercifully stiffened him
with the second.

Then I laid on my back awhile
and I shot out the stars one by one
and then
I shot out the moon
and then I walked around
and shot out every light
in town,
and pretty soon it began to get dark
real dark
the way I like it;
just can’t stand to sleep
with no light shinin’
on my face.

I laid down and dreamt
I was a little boy again
a playin’ with my toy six-shooter
and winnin’ all the marble games,
and when I woke up
my guns was gone
and I was all bound hand and foot
just like somebody
was scared a me
and they was slippin’
a noose around my ugly neck
just as if they
meant to hang me,
and some guy was pinnin’
a real pretty sign
on my shirt:
there’s a law for you
and a law for me
and a law that hangs
from the foot of a tree.

Well, pretty poetry always did
make my eyes water
and can you believe it
all the women was cryin’
and though they was moanin’
other men’s names
I just know they was cryin’
for me (poor critters)
and though I’d slept with all a them,
I’d forgotten
in all the big excitement
to tell ’em my name

and all the men looked angry
but I guess it was because the kids
was all being impolite
and a throwin’ tin cans at me,
but I told ’em not to worry
because their aim was bad anyhow
not a boy there looked like he’d turn
into a man
90% homosexuals, the lot of them,
and some guy shouted
“let’s send him to hell!”

and with a jerk I was dancin’
my last dance,
but I swung out wide
and spit in the bartender’s eye
and stared down
into Nellie Adam’s breasts,
and my mouth watered again.


- Charles Bukowski

For in that sleep of death, what dreams may come,

When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,

.

Lightning Strikes

The picture from yesterday's post was not mine. I was making a bit of a joke. The guy who sent it to me had told me that he doesn't post his pictures online because he's afraid of people stealing them. So, I had no choice.... I tried to state that in the post but I was being a bit obtuse. 

So be it.

You can always tell when a writer is lying. You know, because you are reading. The concept of truth is an artifice.

Well, I would write more, but I am pressed for time today. 

I return to my favorite photographic subject, a child in the wild:

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"… for a love that I could not obey"

(Canon 5D)

My new camera is already paying off in striking dividends of light. I took a woozy midnight trip out to the coast. I climbed down from my thrown unto the shore, waded out past the rocks and then back again, set myself up on a beached raft, one that was not entirely dissimilar from Tom Hanks' sea-worthy bamboo vessel in the cinema masterpiece "Cast Away." 

Originally, I had thought this was a grand film about masturbation, this casting away stuff. Then, I went and saw it with friends and discovered that truth was one of the many components of projection that they had ignored. No true man that is left to his own devices does not furiously impose his seed upon the inches or feet or betwixt the legs before him. 

I shot as if life depended in it.

That's not what this post is about. It is about my dedication to making better use of my new camera. Many agree that my son is the most beautiful child to ever grace the face of the earth and oceans, there is a grassroots movement to rename the moon, but still, the camera was expensive and we did not after all name him Christ as we had once originally thought to, from the east side of the lost garden. 

A device does not need to justify its existence, but a creature should explain the purpose of its sacrifices, we do, unless we are to believe in the altruism of self, exposed as if. 

Expression does so much more for the expresser than the recipient.

The image above is not mine, but neither is it rightly the thief's who stole it. I asked him if I could use it. 

This lone vampire stood on shores unknown just to provide this scribed bilge with an adequate image to which attach itself; pure Lugosi.

Impure as blood, black as white as light.

. 

Dash, in flight

You have changed my mind about things. We were going to be kinder. Dedicated selves, more to the art of that. Present best virtues, functioning as reflections, understanding together the pleasures of light. Passion disrupts - afflicts with what seems to be believed as the incompatibility of needs. Futures are what we come from. All a running away, to exit statement. 

I say: much shall pass. Hasn't it, too 

It'll all; dissolving ever within it. 

At last, at last, this. Isn't it?

Love is sudden, too, in its departure if.

If only: you. 

If only you.

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The Giving Lamb

(Two years ago)

The more that I get into cooking the more my grocery bills gradually creep up into the next tax bracket. When it comes to meat, herbs, vegetables, and fruit I want to shop at one of the two fancy stores here in town. One need only look at the color of the stripped carcasses and the gross malformations of the chicken breasts at the Safeway to know that they are not things you wish to feed a child. There is something wrong with the meat there. But, at the Whole Foods and even more so the Sonoma Market the meat counter is filled with wonders and delicacies of all sorts, the remains of truly delicious and noble creatures. I wish to honor their spirit today. Specifically, a lamb or two. I'll need four hind shanks to braise, which means at least two little innocent ones will have served the UFC (upper food chain) with the ultimate sacrifice. 

I'd feel less guilty about it if lambs were all just vicious little goat-like monsters, drinking their own urine and charging children at the petting zoo, but that's not the case at all. They have the misfortune to be both sweet and delicious. I feel like a monster of the dark ages when I first hear the sound of the meat searing over an open flame. Sometimes I'll buy veal just to let it rot, to pay tribute and honor to the rancid circle of life.

No, of course I try to give homage to all of these delicious animals by subsuming their spirits and portions of their bodies, by thanking them for sustaining me until my next meal of orphaned offspring, a bogle if ever there was one, I. This newfound love of cooking has really gripped me, the science of the lambs.

Ah, that never occurred to me. There is a famous vineyard here called Bogle. I suppose it is a family name, but I wonder if any European visitors avoid it for the obvious reason of wanting to keep their children from being eaten by whatever monsters lurk and prowl deep in the cellar caves.

I've been reading Shel Silverstein's Where The Sidewalk Ends to the boy before bed and I've come to the conclusion that his poems are mostly shit, even at a children's comprehension level. I can do much better, and I say that with little arrogance, but rather as an assertion of fact. I have a notebook of sketches started. I'll have to dig it out. His poems are definitely of a slightly different time, as well. Some of the poems almost shock the contemporary sensibilities in their jejune darkness, at least when compared to similar attempts by other writers, like e e cummings.

Two little known fun facts about Shel Silverstein: one here and the other here. 

The boy told me yesterday in the car that he really likes The Giving Tree. I believe it was the result of me trying to get him to put his socks and shoes on so that we could go over to his friend's house to have dinner and he couldn't seem to focus on the task. And then it happened: I told him, I can't wait to one day see you with your own children, your own little boy, struggling to get him to listen to you or to do what you ask, and I'll just sit back and laugh and laugh and feed your son candy all day long. 

No sooner had the sentence left my mouth that I thought, Fuck, fuck, fuck… is there simply no way to avoid the perennial cliches of parenthood. They sneak up on you and you become some thing other than what you had planned. 

It is written.

Then, we got in the car a few minutes later, after I helped him get his socks and boots on, and that's when he cited his love for The Giving Tree. I told him that one day he would grow up, just like the boy in the story, and that one day he would have a son just like he is now, and that that little boy would look and be just like him, and that I was also just like him when I was a boy. He seemed pleased with this idea. And the tree was happy.

In the story, the apple tree is a female, but in truth apple trees are self-incompatible hermaphrodites, angiosperms that require cross pollination. Little know fact about the bullshit sexist nonsense that spewed from Shel Silverstein.

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Bath Salts

I've been experimenting with bath salts again; magnesium sulfate dissolved in hot tub water, which I then generously inhale the fumes of, and also let seep into my skin, starting and darting and then wincing again at the submersion of the scrotum and its contents. So far, I have not been able to achieve any of the desperately desired effects that kids seem to have no problem incarcerating themselves with and for, and have instead experienced only most of the other effects: hyperphosphatemia, cutaneous flushing, transient hypotension, etc.

Etc. meaning diarrhea.

I haven't made a dash to the gun shed to blast off any of my Belizean neighbors yet, but I'm going to double my dosage soon, check for viruses, then dear friends there may be a real promise of trouble if I don't get a nap first.

My slight reluctance to begin the metabolic process at the zenith of my rectum-bubble is very likely the prohibitive factor and what might be preventing me from finally getting that runner's high.

I just need to relax a bit, it seems. That is what my technicians tell me. They show me pictures on Instagram of what it should look like. 

I will keep everyone here updated, of course. Part of the scientific method is documenting your process and then communicating your results to your peers for the purpose of open review. 

Scene: open on a purple anus-flower (the Prince album), from there we wrestle our way through a series of edits in which screaming Germans are organized in trying to steal my bath slats. 

So far, there have only been just the effects listed above. Those, and a slight euphoric sense of floating in hot water.

I have yet to secure an adequate control group.













Earlier in this post it occurred to me that the word thems'elves could use an apostrophe.

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Utmost Unction

(Goya)

I was scolded for too much camera talk here. Take it to the camera forums! pleaded some. Others responded in silence, almost too much, and suspiciously so. This makes me surmise that they harbor a perverse curiosity about my new camera. They covet its preciousness.

I'll keep an eye on that, and them. Or, maybe an ear... as it is their silence that is most perplexing, baffling even, also that I do not yet know who they are.

This mystery expands with the senses.


My new Lodge Enamel Dutch Oven arrived yesterday, also…. With it I will make braised lamb shanks. If camera talk becomes boring then we could always trade recipes. 

Speaking of lamb:

I hope it rained on Jesus when he hung on the cross. If it did, and I have simply forgotten this part of the myth, then I hope that my readers will forgive this lapse in practice. What sort of message would the universe have been sending if it would have been sunny and mild for three days straight. All of the disciples might have been out kayaking along the river Jordan.


I have been sick for too long now. The rain is enervating, relentlessly so. Everything feels depressing and oppressive, unanointed as it is. There are some things I can not think of without falling asleep, or worse. There dance the witches in the winds. I worry too much, am paralyzed with it. Camping gear still sits on the back patio from Burning Man. I didn't re-pack it. Now it gets misty, probably moldy, all the new sleeping bags and tent. I am afraid to bring it inside. Who knows what evils lurk within now; what should have been secure from the wickedness of nature, safe from the rains of the world.

I am prepared to receive the extreme unction - ashes to ashes, gibberish to gibberish. That is the point to which the rains have reduced me, the anointment of erosion. Once a mighty desert sultan, now barely a stream of murky water whispering the promises of death.

.

Sick Again

The boy is a reservoir for germs and viruses. He has been sick and because of my recent lack of sleep I fell prey to it, became a new host for something vile, invisible, and unexpectedly populous. I have spent the last two days inside the house with the blinds drawn, eating whatever food remained in the cabinets and refrigerator, spending many hours in bed, knowing that I would have to break the cycle at some point. There was a bag of garbage just outside the kitchen that had to go out and a new bag in the garbage can. It all became too much for me after two cups of coffee this morning, motivated with the artificial ambition. 

When I opened the back sliding glass door and stepped out into the parking lot to head to the dumpster the sunlight arrived on my skin and eyes as a miracle. I could nearly feel the vitamin D being generated from it, just seconds of open exposure. It inspired me, enough. I opened all the windows and instead of working from bed I now sit at my desk. It feels better, at least until I tire.


My Nikon D810 should arrive today. I worry about the size of files that it produces, though I believe that I have found the best workaround, for now. I'll set it up to use the two cards as backup rather than overflow and have the CF slot set to primary and the SD as secondary. This should maintain my shooting speed and incur the least amount of time for the buffer to write to the cards, saving the smaller jpegs to the SD card, which has a significantly slower write speed (95 mbps as compared to 160 for the CF). I guess I'll need to experiment. These files will be tremendously large compared to the D700. Three times the size, though I suppose it does give me many more options to edit in post, something I rarely do beyond cropping.

I need to get rid of the already enormous photo library on my work computer, 340GB. It is cramping everything. If I can only import the images that I wish to work with then I should be okay. I can use the jpeg library as a reference, something I used to do when I shot with the D7000.

Okay, camera talk is very boring. I take expensive snapshots, little more.

It has been some time since I've just gone out shooting, though. It is good practice to shoot something other than humans, and at an aperture other than the fastest that the lens allows.

I wandered into what used to be my back yard and took a few shots last week. It was raining and the ground was moist, puddles of muck in some spots. I walked to the back of the yard and looked down at the muddy river, but couldn't get the shot that I wanted without climbing down the bank, which I wasn't going to do with my new shoes, nor barefoot.


Uh-oh. I am doing a Time Machine backup of my computer and it has stalled, which is never comforting. One only wishes the progress bar to advance.

I should have a better relationship with my old data.

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Droplets

I don't know what I was thinking, or if I was. I barely remember waking, because it could hardly have been considered sleep. I heard the rain outside when I arose, still I left the house without a raincoat or jacket, without my rain boots. It was as I crossed the Petaluma river, watching the bright lights of a barge move upstream from the bay in the rain, as it navigated its way through the break in the old lift bridge to the east that it struck me, the raincoat draped across the chair near the door, the rain boots dry by the bed. All of it, lost in the mist of morning.

Pre-dawn is doubly dark in the rain under the clouds which can't be seen except when lit from underneath, near pockets of people, strip malls or a clutch of houses along the roadside. The littlest of passing lights are doubled as droplets in puddles, the oncoming reflections moving, dancing and disappearing as a dangerous drug made of only water and darkness. It is not a safe place for a still sleeping mind, careening across the thin surface of the water that should be road at eighty miles an hour or more, dreaming of or sliding away from sleep.

.

… as any dream would have her be

I had the strangest, best dream. Sex. It was as fine and good and well as anything else I've felt, like flying with only the gravity of one other person. Within the liquid language of vision things change fast, sometimes too fast, and sometimes make the impossible leap from some things to some things else, things impossible. Objects morph into anything they choose, few things hold meaning or form once you've left the stream of nepenthe, the carnival of abysm. 

There was a lovingly familiar women in the dream, as an amorphous girl again. She entered effortlessly; we transformed into the elastic duo-dream apparition, our eyes were one. She was very receptive, we slid along with the unconscious flow of neurons. We made love again, her and I. It did not seem to be a dream at all. It was the love again, trickling into my memory of us.

I woke up as the sex improved. It began to tickle my morning startup parts. It was not a nocturnal emission, though my body seemed prepared if that was the true intention of my psyche, working in conjunction with my physiology to land a surprise on my recline lap. 

I was close to the moment of loss. Had I touched the thing it very well might have spat seed back. 

I've never had a wet dream. Some have suggested that if I stop jacking off so much then it might happen for me. They must think such a program is worth it: deprive yourself of your conscious will and wishes, then wait for your unconscious to try to have sex with the sleeping version of you. People are crazy, and yet their advice is always perfect.

Some friends have relayed that wet-dreams can be emotionally painful and might only occur at times of intense heartbreak. This makes sense to me. If my mind is ever going to take midnight control of my cock and balls then the invasion must rightly come under the banner of pain and darkness.

You, dear readers, would never believe what I've done with my genitals. Some, might call it art, others maybe waves of mutilation. I've permanently destroyed certain functions but have retained the perfunctory set. Trauma.

I had a chat with a woman tonight. She and I were considering sex with one another. It was the most fun I've had in a while, flirting. Perhaps that is what brought the dream on. Who knows.

I guess I do have a "type" because my dream counterpart was perfect, the lily of the field, perfect in every unreachable detail; all of the sweet endearments that can let one swim or fly through the molasses of desire. 

For me, it drifted slowly through the unexpected story, but my god did it feel good to push myself into her and hear that little feminine whisper upon initial thrust  - uh, oh uh, ugh - once you become one and assert the fact of attraction, delivering it directly to the receiving department. 

My ear seemed right next to her mouth when it happened, her whispers and gasps at us becoming an intimate. I kissed her again and again, I pushed because the pushing was wonder and intention all at once. 

I woke up suddenly with an old arch friend between my legs, a tower that needed attending to. It demanded action and ideas. I spewed as if I was still half sleeping, or could return as a result.

She, was still there, of course, floating though I could barely feel her, yet could not bridle the thoughts of her. The sheets of my bed seemed as sails to some better place.

I relieved the ache again, just to be sure. I closed my eyes and tried to beckon her body.

What a curse it is, this kind of thought, a poor substitute for feeling wanted within, the imaginary lover that has vanished back into the crevices to which one only has ritual access. She was there, but it was not the she of the dream, where I could love her again without absence, distance, or delusion.

She often worries about her weight, now she's lost every bit of it. Her body has turned into a miracle, a reverie. I can still feel the echoes of her there within me, as open, inviting, and willing as any thought would have her be.

.

Nikon D810

Well, I finally made the leap to a new camera body. I have been shooting on a hideously older model, though I have grown to love it and it is my primary camera. In fact, even when the camera shop offered to buy it back from me I politely declined. It is nice to have a backup, or one that you're willing to take to the beach, to roll around in the water with, to chuck into an active volcano when the gods require some appeasing.

A junker.

The new lens that I've been using has had me trying to frame my subjects entirely within their environment, fewer heads filling the frame with eyes ablaze in sharp focus and a bokeh background…. though in truth portrait shots are my favorite.

I will tire soon enough of the super wide angle shots that are borderline fish-eye and start using the 35mm portion of the zoom more as I go. Then, I'll wonder why I'm using my Nikon for such shots when I prefer the glass on the Fuji X100S. 

Such is the hobbyist, satiation is ever temporary.