365 Photo Project - Day 158

Taken: June 7, 2010, sunset
Location: Healdsburg, Ca.

I played poker last week. It's one of my many vices. I'm not much of gambler -- I've never felt lucky enough for that -- but I do love a good card game. I would say I'm just an average player, kept from getting good by a number of things not the least of which I can't seem to trust that little voice in my head when I play.

That's the same voice that guides me as a writer, the one that I count on in those moments when I'm facing a blank page on some ridiculous deadline. Let me tell you that sometimes that little voice is as amazingly prescient when it comes to poker as it is when I'm writing. Yet, I just can't seem to put any faith in it.

I suppose that might change if I played more but my jones for poker ebbs and flows a lot, mostly ebbs. I'll go months without playing before suddenly deciding it's time to head up to the local casino for an evening of hold 'em. Sometimes I'll end up going two or three times over the next week and then go back to not going for months again.

I like the people watching aspect of the game. When you're sitting around a table for a few hours, it's a great opportunity to observe people. A good player is looking for a way to read his opponent's play but I'm not very good at that. I just like to watch and listen, hear what people say and how they say it. I've played with truck drivers, prison guards, retired actors, fireman, cops, housewives, farmers, businessman, even a professional player or two. All of whom end up in my writing somewhere in the small details.

The worst part about going to my local casino is the casino part. Loud slots machines clanging under a cloud of cigarette smoke, the place filled with mostly poor people spending their last pennies trying to hit a jackpot. They bus them in from all over the Bay Area and the crowds keep on coming, even to a place where the House has all the advantages and then some. And the smoking. Ugh. The Indian Casinos don't have to adhere to federal nonsmoking laws so they get to hire dealers who must stand in the plumes of smoke for hours and hours with apparently no recourse when 0 or 30 years from now, they come down with lung cancer or emphysema or some heart problem from all that second-hand smoke. The poker rooms, ironically, are almost all nonsmoking but not the gaming areas.  There the people watching is different. Like the old guy I saw recently. He was in a wheelchair, attached to breathing apparatus and he had been wheeled up to a slot machine which he was filling with coins, no expression on his face.

I realize this makes me seem hypocritical. Believe me, I'd much rather skip the whole casino experience and play in a dedicated card room. And I know the power of wanting to believe in luck, that the next card or next coin is going to change your life. It's a lure as old as people. Hard to fight it no matter how much the odds are against you.

365 Photo Project - Day 157

Taken: June 6, 2010, approx. 1 p.m.
Location: Healdsburg, Ca.

To know me is to know how much I love to drive. Bliss is an open road, a full iPod on loud and a 5-speed.  When I dream of going places, I dream of going there in a bad-ass set of wheels. And when I dream of roads, this is the kind that make my heart beat faster. I've always been drawn to landscapes and I'm a big sucker for the way certain kinds of two-lanes wind through certain kinds of bucolic countrysides.

I don't think I'm ever so much at peace then when I'm writing at my keyboard or sitting behind the wheel driving through some place beautiful. No place where my mind is as sharp or as clear either.

I know I'm not alone -- you could fill a thousand iPods with a small percentage of songs written for the road, not to mention all the books and films -- but every time I hit a good road and a great song is playing on my stereo, I can feel the laughter in my heart, the buzz in my gut. Just pure happiness. Wish I could bottle that feeling and take it out whenever I'm stuck inside in the slow lane.

In a particularly rough time in my life, I started to drive around in the middle of the night. Sometimes I wouldn't leave my house until midnight and I'd often drive around in circles but I would stay out almost all night. I lived in LA and the goal was to see if I could stay out until dawn which is when I'd stop just to watch the sun rise over over the Valley or the Pacific or some freeway somewhere.

There's a certain kind of power behind the wheel of a car that everyone feels -- the being wrapped in a ton of steel kind -- and while it makes some people too damned aggressive, I always reveled in it. It was my layer of steel between me and the world, my way of doing and yet observing. Those all-night drives would end with me writing pages and pages of notes, trying to capture everything I was thinking about, ideas, stories, lines, characters. Sometimes I read those notes and I laugh or cry and shudder at them, but they almost always take me back to a road somewhere in the dark with music playing and the feel of my engine rumbling beneath me. And then I go looking for my keys.

365 Photo Project - Day 156

Taken: June 5, 2010, 11 p.m.
Location: Healdsburg, Ca.

I was feeling a little low the other day. Nothing special, just your late  day blues and blahs. And then my old man pug, Louie, came into the room and slowly got himself up on the bed and without a sound curled up next to where I was sitting. No snuggling or sniffing or face licking. Just a plop down on the bed being chill pug thing. I don't know why but it made me smile. Which is kind of funny if you think about how naturally sad a pug mug looks. Funny but sad.

I actually love that about them. They look at you with those big sorrowful-seeming pug eyes even when they're happy. It's a pretty good metaphor for something good. Like the mystery of life maybe. Who knows?  Like I said a post or two ago, pets can take over your life, good and bad, but having them around can change you in important and fine ways. We all need the lightness of heart they carry through the world. And something else, which I've mentioned on this blog before.  I believe they have the ability to sense things about us that most of us are too big-brained to understand. Which is why people think their pets understand them better than any person could.

Maybe Louie came in to the room because he wanted to or maybe he came in to keep me company, to give me some comfort on a bad day. It doesn't matter. I already know.

365 Photo Project - Day 155

Taken: June 4, 2010
Location: Healdsburg, Ca

Yeah, I know. Another landscape but I like this shot because it's the view I see every day off our porch. Plus you really get a sense of how quickly the weather changes here. The bright blue in the bottom left of the image is slowly taking over the sky from the dark clouds. An hour from when this was shot, the sky was mostly sun and the clouds were relegated to the background again. It was very cool and spectacular to watch unfold.

365 Photo Project - Day 154

Taken: June 3, 2010, 7:30 p.m.
Location: Healdsburg, Ca

Some days I sit at my desk in my office and almost never get up for anything but a bathroom break. Because my office is on the second floor and has no windows, I often lose track of time. When I do finally get up to leave, the sun is gone and my picture-taking window has shrunken considerably.

That happened to me today. I realized time was running out on light and while I eventually got out to shoot some stuff in outside, it was overcast and rainy and nothing good came out of it. I was catching up on some TV shows I have to watch (being a TV writer and all) and thought I'd play around with lighting in my office. This was the result. I used a white background and my camera's internal flash and lit from overhead and behind the object with some halogen desk lamps.

Can anyone guess what this is?

365 Photo Project - Day 153

Taken June 2, 2010, 1 p.m.
Location: Healdsburg, Ca.

Having pets I've discovered is hard work. They take over your house, your world, your life. You begin to change simple things about your every day habits because the little creatures silently (or not so silently) demand it of you. Little stuff like changing from white comfort covers to hide all the hair and dirt and whatever else they leave on your bed. And Speaking of beds, it's not your bed anymore. Not even close. Once you let a pet sleep with you, it's over. You've lost. There's no instant reply or do-overs, no let's go to the video tape. You're done.

They regulate feeding time and going-out time and they tether you to your house. And what do you get in return? You might get loyalty but you'll definitely get some laughs, most of which will be at your expense. You might also get a pair of shoes chewed up or your favorite pair of glasses crunched into a pile of plastic, at least one chair or rug you love will get pissed on and certain times of the day you will be forced to walk through your house with a set of teeth clamped onto the ankle of your pants. That, my friends, is fun to them.

Oh you'll get love and here's the rub: you, will without, fail fall in love too. Hard. Because they don't just take over your life, they infect your heart. This is their whole plan. Resistance is futile because they are smarter then us. Earning your love and affection is all part of a larger agenda. Because sooner or later, they know you'll love them so much that that nipping at your pants thing? You will enjoy it as much as they do. Fair warning people.

365 Photo Project - Day 152

Taken: June 1, 2010, 6:30 p.m.
Location: Healdsburg, Ca

I've been thinking a lot about faith lately. I recently watched an interview that Charlie Rose did with Neil Young in which young talks about spirituality in a way that made perfect sense for me. He basically said that he has respect for every kind of faith there is but that he personally prefers not to follow any one specifically. He talked about nature as being his religion and I'm sure creativity plays a role in that too. I often think about my writing as a certain kind of channeling of forces beyond my control.

I realize that I might sound crazy to some people and full of shit to others, but believe me when you're neck-deep in filling up pages with your own words and it's going gangbusters, you might believe in things like higher powers and magic. Especially the next day when you stare at a blank page like you've never seen one before.

People tend to wait for the big happening to declare their solidarity with faith, as if only a miracle can confirm its existence. Me, I tend to think of it in smaller, every day terms. It's all around us -- we just have to look with the right eyes and, I think, we have to be open to it.

This part of my whole theory about living life as the journey as opposed to keeping score on the outcomes. How if we pay too much attention to how we want/think/hope things will turn out for us, we miss the whole trip to get there -- which taken together adds up to a lot more than all those losses and wins we're so obsessed with tallying.

I'd like to think faith is personal to everyone, which is why I get so uncomfortable when it's sold to me as The Only Way. I know belief is hard and I know once you're feeling it, there's temptation to spread the word but to me it's everything that's wrong with the world. There's just too much pressure to prove one God's way is better than another. The problem isn't necessarily the belief itself. It's that singing the praises of one religion automatically disrespects another.

I've always thought religion should be like sex. Do it anyway you like with anyone you want (within reason) but keep it to yourself and spare me the details.

If you think about it, keeping it personal makes the world a smaller place because no one way of thinking gets precedence over another. We'll never be defined by one system of belief but by all systems of belief, even no belief at all.  Which is another way of saying that we're all believers in something which means we'll never be alone.