365 Photo Project - Day 129

Taken: May 10, 2010, sunset
Location: Healdsburg, Ca

I'm a day late putting this up but it's still my Mother's Day day of the project. I have the greatest mom. She's smart, tough and funny and she's got one of the world's best bullshit meters. No fun when you're a teenager constantly trying to get away with whatever it is teenagers want to get away with, but the older you get the more you appreciate someone who doesn't sugar coat stuff just to make you feel better.

I talk to my Mom almost every day. She loves mystery books and is a veracious patron of the local library so she keeps me up to date on what's worth digging into. And she's the person I call when I want to read a passage out loud or check to see if it's any good.

More than anyone else in my life, it's my Mom who keeps me from taking myself too seriously. And I think when I write, she's the reader I have in mind. She's never been afraid to speak her mind (something else I get from her) and she's passionate about her family and friends,  loyal to her causes, her beliefs and her sports teams and she could teach the ridiculous Tea Party a thing or two about independent thinking.

If I end up being half the person she is, that will be okay with me.

This is the railroad bridge that runs parallel to the Healdsburg Memorial Bridge. Shot with my K100D and edited in Photoshop

365 Photo Project - Day 106

Taken: April 16, 2010, 7:30 p.m.
Location: Healdsburg, Ca

Still writing.  And thinking.  For most writers, writing is one of those pursuits you do alone, where you spend hours and hours sitting in front of a computer or typewriter or notepad, often in a darkened room with no sound to speak of save for the voices in your own head. It should be no surprise then to learn that writers tend to be an odd bunch. Blame it on all that time we spend talking to those voices of ours, mining our imaginations for words and phrases, secrets and lies, love, tragedy, horrors, comedy --- a veritable cornucopia for our shrinks.

So when I tell you I've been thinking, you know I've been really thinking. My thought of the day - you're never alone. Ever.

Even when we are physically by ourselves, even when we experience the worst life throws at it, the agony, the pain, the bullshit -- even when we feel we are the only unhappy person in the world, we're not. Misery may not love company but it sure has company. Your story, no matter how wretched, how unlucky, how sad, is one of many just as a sad, even sadder. You could walk outside right now wherever you are, throw a rock and hit some guy with a sadder story then yours.

That doesn't make us lucky. It makes us part of something bigger than ourselves.

Seriously, cause that rock could just as easily brain someone a lot like you, who has walked your tough road, been down your highway of hell and lived to tell the tale. And if you're lucky, he'll even pass on whatever wisdom he learned from it, maybe ease your trip a little. Writers know this because when we tell stories, we look for universal truths in them, the shared experience of being human. That's why you can read a book or watch a movie and think "I know exactly how that feels."

I know some people can't see it, but most of us know deep down that we're joined at the hip with the rest of the human race. Being alone, I'm thinking, is just a state of mind. The truth is we're surrounded all the time, everywhere, even when you're sitting by yourself in front of a computer talking to your voices.

This image is of the old Healdsburg railroad tracks which have been out of use for years. They run behind my office building along Hudson Street and most afternoons I like to walk along them, by the boarded up depot and on into center of town. This was edited a bit in photoshop.