365 Photo Project - Day 66

Taken: March 7, 2010, approx. 5:30 p.m.
Location: Healdsburg, Ca

Tonight is Oscar night and I'm watching, which is sort of unusual for me. I've been down on the Oscars for years and tonight isn't helping. It's so awkward. Nobody seems ready to get up on that stage. Hell, I have no idea what it's like but I'll tell you this much:  I got my speech prepared. I've had it prepared since I was like 14 years old. I'll probably never get a chance to use it, but at least I got it.

I actually left the confines of my house today. I was out for at least a half hour. I went to my office and the natural food store and I got a cup of chai tea from my favorite local coffee shop (thanks Jacob) and drove around with the windows down because it was a day even more lovelier than yesterday and twice as warm.

It felt good to be out and about, but it sure wore me out. Be (hopefully) easy to sleep tonight. And tomorrow? Well, tomorrow I'm getting back at it for real. Keyboard here I come.

I shot this on my deck in the late afternoon with my K100D.  This image is very close to one I took earlier in this project but I like them both so much I'm going to try to create a series of similar images. I do have a few pairs of Converse to try it with after all. Them there's my favorite pair of Converse. It's edited in Photoshop.

365 Photo Project - Day 65

Taken: March 6, 2010, approx. 5:30 p.m.
Location: Healdsburg, Ca.


I'm still hanging around the house. Still hacking and slouching. But I wrote most of the afternoon on my laptop (yay for progress), talked on the phone with the folks and with an old, dear friend, and took a long, hot shower this evening. I'm starting to believe that my old self is somewhere in there. Maybe she'll come out soon. Maybe even tomorrow.

It was a lovely day today. I'm running out of seasonal descriptions but suffice to say the blues were true, the greens vibrant, the scents on a very fluffy little breeze came with a hint of floral. It all feels like a good omen.

When you’re fighting off something like a bad cold, there’s a real tendency to talk to yourself a lot. I mean the inner talking to yourself. There you are, sitting alone in a room that smells vaguely of menthol, sitting all alone because, well, you're contagious and your sinus headache makes reading, watching TV, surfing the internet or even talking at all impossible. You end up your own captive audience. Nothing to do but close your eyes and listen.

It’s pretty trippy stuff, least it is for me. Low-grade fevers always bring a fascinating variable to the game. Sometimes I write stuff down just to look at it later. Most of the time, it just makes me laugh. Every so often, there’s a gem in there somewhere.

The one thing that never changes is how quickly I get sick of listening to that voice. Not very Zen of me, I know. But every time I think I could be one of those live-in-the-deep-woods loners, I remember how bored I get hearing myself in my head. When I finally feel better, all I want is to get the hell out of the house and to hear somebody else talk for a change. Anybody.

I'm a writer so I'm like my pug in this photo -- I'm curious. Everybody's heard that old saw about "writing what you know" but unless you're someone like James Lee Burke and lived several lifetimes in one, you're gonna run out of things you know pretty quick. So, you gotta get out among the civilians and steal yourself some lifetimes. Which means, you can't just listen to that voice in your head I guess.

I sat on the porch during the very last moments of the day today -- that's how near-perfect it was outside. There was a big cloud hanging over the horizon and I thought it would make a nice image. But I didn't like the way the photos I took turned out. I went back out, sat down and waited for inspiration. And then Chamuco, the young black pug of ours, came padding around the corner. When he jumped up to examine what was on that chair, I had my photo of the day.

Shot this with the K100D and a 200mm lens. Edited in Photoshop.

365 Photo Project - Day 64

Taken: March 5, 2010, approx. 1:15 p.m.
Location: Healdsburg, Ca

I did get out today but only to circle around the wrap-around porch which is to say I didn't get out, not really. I blame it on not getting enough sleep last night due to the onset of a nasty case of heartburn. I swear there's nothing like bad indigestion to turn your dreams into surreal dreamscapes.

The woman who owns this property made a conscious decision to keep the landscape wild, a kind of anti-vineyard view. Instead of acres of neatly-arranged grape vines we have wild grasses, moss-covered oaks, rolling hillside, metal gates and fire roads -- cattle grazing country. My husband fell in love with the view when he found this place last year and it's easy to see why. There is a wonderful sereneness to this place that makes you feel the need to whisper in its presence.

Such a nice change of scenery from the typical wine country landscape -- not that I'm knocking that. This was shot with my K100D and a 200m lens. I played around with it in Photoshop, trying for a dreamy quality in part because that's how I felt all day, walking around in my lack-of-sleep fog. Nothing a good eight hours of shut-eye won't cure.

Tomorrow's another day.

365 Photo Project - Day 63

Taken: March 4, 2010, approx. 3:30 p.m.
Location: Healdsburg, CA

Feeling slightly better today. Tonight actually. Wrote three pages just to remind myself I could. It felt  laborious but good. Damn good. Talked on the phone a little. Voice is getting stronger, cough weaker. And hell, I've lost nearly 10 pounds. What doesn't kill you, makes you thinner? I'll go with that.

I think I might even venture out of the house tomorrow, if only to walk down to the mailbox. Don't think I can make it back up the hill without collapsing in a coughing fit but downhill seems doable. My photos were feeling as claustrophobic as I was, so I padded outside in the late afternoon to a dazzling bright partly sunny sky. Those clouds on the horizon portend more bad weather ahead but today was positively springlike.

A gift indeed.

Yes, that is the view off the front porch of the house we rent. This is why I live in wine country. Take a look at that shot (which I took iPhone and very lightly edited).  Intoxicating, isn't it? Like looking into the eyes of someone you love. Really love. You can feel the last-gasp of late winter, the almost-warm sunlight, the crackle of new coming through the softening soil. Just enough to make you think of whatever it is that means spring to you, be it baseball or just-cut grass, Saturday-night barbecues or evenings when the setting of the sun is slow and easy.  Magical, inviting and, full of promise.

Corny I knew but it's gospel to me.  Hell, I know I'm not onto anything new here (see Walden and his pond) but it's worth contemplating these days when life seems so hard for so many people. I'm not very religious but I think the Tibetan monks have it figured out -- the value of a person's life cannot be measured with stuff, on dreams of material things or in career milestones, victories or heartbreaks.

It's all too easy to worry and whine, complain and blame and so damned hard not to feel like the Center of the Universe. As if God happened to pick only you to smite today.

I'm no braver than the next guy, much less so compared to people I know who are dealt the worse of hands. That's the thing about a sad story. There's always someone else's who's a helluva lot sadder than yours. Like my roommate at the hospital where I was treated for Cancer who was in for her fourth operation on a freaking brain tumor. Two kids, no money and her husband had just left her. Talk about putting my situation into perspective.

But it's not the Woe-Is-Me Olympics. It's about your point of view. Or, really, any view.  It's about looking up. It's in the living, the breathing, the experience of being in the world as a part of the world and all that it offers us. It's in the love we share and the friendships we make and if anybody expects to walk a straight line through it, well you're just fooling yourself. It's like the Indigo Girls like to say, "You'll never fly as the crow flies so get used to a country mile."

And even if you're no good at shirking those everyday disappointments (and who is?) all you really gotta do is look up, breathe in, eyes wide, heart open. Not so you realize how small we are compared to everything but how connected everything is to us. You can find it anywhere and everywhere I think. Not just where I live. Up here, it's just easier not to forget.

365 Photo Project - Day 62

Taken: March 3, 2010, approx. 3 pm
Location: Healdsburg, CA

Since I'm posting Day 61 and 62 at practically the same time, I figured I might as well stick to a theme. In yesterday's shot, you got one view and today another. That's my bedside table as currently configured. Almost everything a girl needs to get through a hellaciously noxious sinus infection nee cold. Except for a bottle of scotch. But then again, me and scotch, we parted ways awhile back and remain but passing acquaintances.

Got me a cheap-o thermometer (made in China doncha know) and the damned antibiotics, some natural stuff that's supposed to ease my sinus headache (the jury is out on its effectiveness) and sooth one's throat. Oh, and my probiotic acai berry juice next to my mug of freshly brewed coffee (gotta keep the caffeine addiction fed). Over on the right is one of the dozens of Moleskine notebooks I own (and leave everywhere around the house, my car and office) because a writer is always writing, even if it's scribbling fever-addled notes I may or may not be able to decipher later.  The sunglasses came in handy for  that sinus headache I had that was so bad, I couldn't even stand even the light of a darkened room.  Ever eat ice cream too fast? That's how I felt for two days straight. Ouch.

The only thing not in the picture is my iPhone but that's because I used it to take the photograph, an image I edited ever so gently with Photoshop.

365 Photo Project - Day 61

Taken: March 2, 2010, approx 2 p.m.
Location: Healdsburg, CA

Still sick, still in bed. I'm suffering for sure so it's gonna be post-a-pic and run the next couple days. This is an iPhone shot of the view I've been staring at since Sunday.  And yeah, that's my faithful pug Louie standing guard. He's got a nasty cough too, so together we sound like a TB ward.

As I write this, I'm starting to feel like maybe I've turned a corner. But then again, I felt that way last night and woke up this morning with a pulled muscle in my chest from all the damned coughing.  This photo as been edited ever so slightly with Photoshop.

365 Photo Project - Day 60

Taken: March 1, 2010, approx. 4 p.m.
Location: Healdsburg, CA

Today is day 60. Wow. I should have something special but unfortunately, I'm still sick, felled by a sinus infection and who knows what else. Thus today's photo. I shot it while I was in the car waiting to go inside to see my doctor. That blue near my eye is a reflection from my glasses but the red on my lids, that's real. I wanted to try and capture the moment in all it's awfulness.

Besides, I had absolutely no energy to get out of the car and take a proper photograph. So here's me, feeling like shit.  I know it would have been braver to get the full-on looking right into the camera shot (and believe me, I took that one) but gimme credit at least for not going black and white. I sure as hell  thought about it.  Taken with my K100D. As for the editing, well a girl doesn't give away all her secrets.

Excuse me while I go back to bed.