Today was a day most grand, a day of observing great love amongst others, so much of that that it spilled outwards towards Yours Truly. Also a day of deep thinking, not too introspective, but cursory and fleeting landings on big quests, questions, and answers. Now listening to Roger Bryan & The Old Sweethearts's song Rocking Chair and still thinking this is on the digvid back burner, illustrating this as well as Sam's most favoured play.
Phoned the residence of Rio and Ron last night, armed with the mouth harp given to me by my dearly-departed grandfather who loved me best. Edgar, who would send me boxes of books and take great delight in my young intellect and humour. And homespun plays, performed in the cactus-ridden and bamboo-edged backyard of him and his Bunny, my maternal beacon, Victoria, in Smyrna outside of Atlanta back before - well before - it was Hotlanta.
I blasted out some bars and Ron said Why, HeLL-OHH, Mister Blinky. I played more. He conversed between bursts of neo-blues.
Today it was a wedding and I cannot say when in recent memory I've had a gig where I've been so overcome with praise and good vibes.
Time to gather up my post-work senses and forge onwards into this slivered moon night.

Slivers of Love.

This just in:
Moments ago received word from reliable source (i.e. parents) who attended art auction/benefit/shindig pour moi that my drawing made yesterday (deftly entitled Edges: Ohio Street, Tifft Farm Pond, Cargill Grain Elevator) (whewwww) went for a fetchingly respectable price. Love being a drawer, a dispenser of happiness.

Woe is education: first wacky low-rez MFA programs and now transponders in lieu of intra-student, inter-classroom exchanges. Had a gig this AM at Middling City U documenting a newfangled thing that is like a remote control but allows students sitting in mega-lecture halls to point them at receptors on walls and answer impromptu or lesser-promptu quizzes.
I happened to know a girl sitting in the front row, a would-be photog who would follow me around a bit at rock extravaganzas and the like and ask several questions. I always gave much time to the learning with questions, especially the girls and my wisest words were to just keep shooting pictures and to get business cards and pass them out like mad fiends. So this girl, Emilee, is sitting there and complaining bitterly about the remote answering device. She said Middling City U wants to pretend you're not just a number and then this. She showed me the back of the device (that the students had to pay for - $30 with a $20 mail-in rebate) and how the number on it was registered to her so if she or I went nuts and started pressing madly it would record that Emilee suddenly had answering anxiety or inappropriate transponder behaviour and pressed madly. The prof was a bit awkward (NB: he's the showman type of teacher, all big gestures and phrases he's got down from years of the same materials . . . basically, he's accustomed to being the genius in the room) when I asked to make some pictures of him before the lecture holding the dang thang. I did after his hemming, hawwing. There were a few areas of buzzing and tittering in the gigantic hall and I feared I'd lose his concentration and kept shooting, giving him a bit of direction. So I'm done, the lecture is underway and Professor Showman announces that he'll be showing some slides and the show begins. Some of the slides are quite old, bad, out of focus. Suddenly there's one up of a bog person. Cannot recall if I've blogged about the bog people, the people who were murdered and who were tossed into bogs and preserved quite well and are not hanging about in Pittsburgh's Hall of Oddities. So then there's another slide, one of the burbling tarpits in L.A. Suddenly my pal Emilee is waving her arms as if her transponder is shocking her and Professor Showman finally sees her in the darkness. Not knowing her name amongst the print-out list of perhaps hundreds of names, he offers up a very friendly Yes. . . and Emilee blurts out a tale.
I was just there, at the tarpits last week and I can report that they are still active and I watched two pigeons die an untimely death.
I can see the face of Professor Showman change a bit and then he blurts out a generic Well, thanks for sharing and moves along to the other side of the lecture hall, not wishing to share his stage with such spunk.
I thought about saying bye to Emilee but thought You know she just might, being so jaded with this scene, use this as an op to blurt out who in hell knows. So I planned my exit strategy and drifted away, drifted into the abstract embrace of deadlines and such.

Such love.

Referent for You to glean what I have about blood bags. That they are not only disgusting and undoubtedly warm and squidgy but magnetic in their eye draw. This is image du semaine par Yours Truly in The Reporter. Wonder how many fries were abandoned as hapless readers looked at the blood bag whilst lunching, supping, noshing. Oh, right, I am no pussy. Note the amazing composition. This like so rocks. Don on.

Soaking up the wi-fi at the tea joint once again, Yours Truly their sole squatter.
This just in: heard from a photo pal moments ago that someone I know lost his leg a month ago due to a bad motorcycle twist and turn of fate.
Assessment: motorcycles = unfreakinnecessary.
Did a gig for an ad agency in Rochester about an hour ago, another hurricane-related photo op, this time with trucks . . . and cheese. Asked one of the drivers very diplomatically if the evacuees relocated to Atlanta knew to expect 38K pounds of cheese. Where were the crackers. The wine. Wished him a safe drive and noted that there were no silver naked ladies (cue Westerberg) on his mudflaps. Not a one.
The tea house girls are playing The Sundays and what a reeling and dragging back to the past this is right now.
Time to edit, to slice, dice, crop, invoice, muse.

Love's directive.

Yesterday, amongst other Middling City U gigs and affairs was sent to shoot a blood drive for those less sanguine post-catastrophe down there in the Gulfish areas, to discover that the drive for bloodletting was not happening. A quick scout-out of vicinity revealed no blood, no where. Quick call to editrix revealed it was a ruse, there was no blood, yet. Today was the blood drive, manned by a bunch of femmes from American Red Cross, a bunch of humourless ladies but, I suppose, when brandishing large needles and colorful bandages (gone are the days of buff-coloured plastic strips and HELLO to ribbony and gauzey multi-coloured choices . . . I was like so jealous) it is white coat appropriate.
I have shot other blood drives in my full-throttled and illustrious career and have always made it a real rule to not look at the bags, the plastic tubing draining the blood away from the bodies. In a fit of perversity I looked at one student's filling bag of A+ (I asked if he knew his type and he did) and felt my knees get all loose and carefree about staying afloat if You will. I said OOOO, I feel woozy. One of the humourless said I should sail over to the snack and juice station. I snapped out of it, those were mainstream snacks. And I recovered, self-realizing Hey, Perfect Nance, you are tough, deal with this, you are no pussy. And so I carried on, making more images of dramatic slices of reality - the grimaces, the plastic bags, the bandages, the good wishes, the concern, the editorializing of the slice of reality, the crafty angles to show face and not too much crotch or chest and personality more than prone donor.
Wow, Prone Donor - yet ANOTHER great band name.
Time to continue along this strange work day of portraits, blood, more images and paperwork.
But, always, there is time to give You a piece of this Perfect World, these odd and even days.

Odd, even Love.

Happy Labour Day to You, the day when all Americans tip minimum wage-earning countrymen and present them with small tokens of appreciation: items such as running socks, boxes of candies, a homecooked snack, a gift certificate to Starbucks (lest one is paying tribute to a barista there already).
Just off a multi-day labour-intensive bout of gigs and now to organizing and shipping and the like.
Amongst other intra-happenings was the apparent journalistic binge of a wedding guest yesterday who sidled alongside me and pounded me for about half an hour with probing and work-related questions. There's usually one of this manly type repped at each gathering - their attempt at engulfment fuelled by the sight of a woman carrying ooo-eee complicated electronics worth more than their cars, dressed well, at their social mercy (they believe). I suss out if they are a smart man or not and then enjoy watching their demeanours change as they realize that they are not talking to, sidling alongside, a complete nincompoop that they might flirt with a while.
So. Yesterday the wedding guest pre-toast decides to approach and I'm waiting for the usual banter to begin and it does. Are you . . . YES, I AM the official photographer. But then the banter plunges deeper as he is a smarter-than-most sharpshooter.
Do you feel like a voyeur at these things.
*Perfect thought bubble, edited, of course, tells this stranger how much I do enjoy a good round of voyeuristic watching.*
But the answer is: In a way, yes. I continue. But don't you feel like a voyeur, as well. I assume you don't know all these people in the room and even if you did don't you enjoy watching them, the interplay.
Yes, he answers, but do you feel like you're intruding.
*Thought bubble answer = I am being paid to be here, to intrude for pay.*
Answer: No, I think we are all in the same situation, all watching and I bet some people here are not that close to the bride and groom, that happens at all weddings, so they might feel as distant or watchful or voyeuristic, in a way, as I.
He's on a roll with the line of questions.
Do you feel like it's cookie cutter, that it's only a job, that it's formulaic.
*Thought bubble = Where's the little lady, go away, go away, where the F are the b&g to get this toast action started p.r.o.n.t.o.*
Answer: All gatherings have a similarity, there's a typology of people. Like, there are the men who are obviously uncomfortable in their ties, who never wear suits.
You can tell all that.
*Though bubble = what are you, fuckin' kidding me. This is the most obvious thing to mention.*
Answer: Yes, I nod to a man in that category. And then there are the people who obviously never go out with their partners/spouses, you can see how little they usually interact socially . . . at something like this they are awkwardly standing near each other.
And on this goes until he thanks Yours Truly for enduring his Larry Kinging.
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Had an interesting conversation with the d.j. at the same wedding last night. He had a rather personal harrowing tale of the heart and we bandied about tales, anecdotes, advice until we ran off into separate directions, to our respective duties.
&
There were a few 10ish boys there with not a thought regarding what to do so Yours Truly, in camp counselor mode, directed them towards some good, hearty and healthy mischief such as: sliding down wide wooden banister, dipping fingers into the wedding cake's frosting (I provided a demo), and searching for the venue's secret passageways. And more. Somehow these kids had missed out on the possibilites for discreet good kid times, those heady adrenalized and unbelievably unfettered intra-happenings, not unlike those previously reported by Yours Truly.
Take this with You:
When life gives you happenings, grab onto your own mischief-laden intra-happenings.

Intra-Love.