365 Photo Project - Day 105

Taken: April 15, 2010,  5:30 p.m.

Location: Healdsburg, Ca

This image is one of my experiments. It's very typical of my modus operandi. And by that I mean it's just like me not to be able to sit still for five seconds and just do nothing. Yeah, I know. Me, the person who likes to contemplate my navel before roadside vistas of natural beauty. That me, you ask?  Well, yeah. It's true. Now you know why I need the contemplation.

My mom called it shpilkes (hell, she still does). Shpilkes (pronounced shpill-kiss) is Yiddish (or Yinglish according to some folks) for nervous energy, an inability to sit still. I'm still afflicted by it. Why I'm always fiddling with my iPhone, why I check websites obsessively sometimes,  why I often do two, three things at once.

Back to today's image. When I first moved up to Healdsburg, I started going to this automatic car wash in town. It's one of those places where you put your credit card in, drive up, let the thing do its work to your ride and off you go. Fast and easy, right? Well, yeah if you're not talking about me and my shpilkes. I just can't even sit still for that. So this one time I'm sitting in my car waiting for the damn wash to get itself over with, when I picked up my digital camera and started shooting the patterns of soap and water on my windshield. Voila: water art. 

That's what this image is - me, sitting at the car wash today bored out of my mind. Like I said a few posts ago, it doesn't take much to amuse me. 

I shot it with my K100D and edited it in photoshop. Added plus: my car is all nice and clean now.

365 Photo Project - Day 99

Taken: April 9, 2010, 1 p.m.
Location: Healdsburg, Ca

Gonna be another quickie today.  I'm so deep into my script right now that I find my mind is empty of anything but what I'm writing about. That's the thing about writing. Sometimes I find I'm so focused in the world of my creation, that I can't even hold a decent conversation. And to know me is to know that I talk. A lot. So when I'm at a loss for words, it's pretty unusual.

I have discovered in the last week that I love having an office outside the house. I've had a little one-room office in my little town for about year and although it's a mess and not very well organized, I get a lot done here. I love taking a break in the middle of the day and walking (or driving) the short distance to the main part of town. I'll get my coffee at my favorite coffee place and drop in on my friends at various establishments. I love making the little circuit, seeing the same people, gabbing about stuff -- the familiarity of it used to be shocking (I've lived in big cities most of my adult life) but I've come to really rely on it.

I happen to be writing a script that takes place in a small town so living in one has been a pretty good education. Even though the town I'm writing about will have to be more insular, more risque and volatile (it's TV after all), the lessons are the same -- both good and bad. I mean in a small town you find that knowing everybody and them knowing you (or at least know of you) is a great thing on some days and an awful thing on others. The trick is to figure out if it's a good day or a bad day. Believe me, it's not always that cut and dry.

I shot this with my K100D and I was going to tell y'all how I got this image but somehow I think it will rob it of its magic. I'll just say it was barely edited in Photoshop, just a click or two.

365 Photo Project - Day 37

Taken: February 6, 2010, approx. 3 p.m.
Location: Palisades Park, Santa Monica, CA

I have always lived on one coast or the other, never in the middle. I've found homes in big cities and small towns, in suburbs and planned communities, in urban neighborhoods and at the end of cul de sacs. East, West, North, South. Upstairs, in the basement and at the end of two-mile dirt roads. Wherever  I've called home has brought a degree of tranquility. Yet I have found that I am never more at peace than when I can be near the sea.

I didn't grow up on the water but my parents used to take us to Martha's Vineyard every summer (and often for one- or two-week trips in between) and it was there I came to love living near water. I'm not a classic seafaring type. I don't much like swimming in it and while I admire surfers, I'm not coordinated enough to do that. I love to sail but I'm no expert and I'm too impatient to be good at fishing or even sunbathing.

What I love is just being in the ocean's neighborhood. The smell of sand and seaweed, of fish and salt and that particular way a good sea breeze can clear out your sinuses and cleanse your soul. I love sitting on a creaky wooden dock, listening to the pinging of halyard on mast, the slapping of the wake against fiberglass hulls, the soft cooing of birds, the whoosh of the tide. I love getting lost in the endless layers of things that float in on the wind. If I can dip my toes in the ocean at the same time, well that's just gravy.

Our house in Santa Monica was just close enough to the beach that you could hear the waves at night. Off in the distance, it would mix with the sounds of the traffic on Pico Blvd. Perfect sleeping weather although I often found myself lying awake, staring at the ceiling, quietly listening. In the morning as the marine layer would slowly burn off, the scent of the sea was everywhere, reminders of our proximity to the Pacific. I miss that.

These days, I live close enough to the water -- 35 minutes by car -- that the longing to be near the ocean isn't piercing and there's always my regular trips to L.A. to quench my thirst. But I know without a doubt that someday I'll have to return to my sea and my sea-gazing for real.  For now, I'll take fleeting moments like today when I stood out at Palisades Park in between (and during) the rains and marveled at the way the sun sparkled through cloud patterns, how the surface of the ocean rippled gently in a cold breeze, seemingly stretching out forever, endless.  Even a passing storm's fat drops of cold rain couldn't interrupt the magic of the moment.

This image was as close as I could get to capturing it. Taken with my k100D, 55mm lens and edited in Photoshop.