Walkabout

Last night I dreamed that I was dreaming of you
And from a window across the lawn I watched you undress
Wearing your sunset of purple tightly woven around your hair
That rose in strangled ebony curls
Moving in a yellow bedroom light
The air is wet with sound
The faraway yelping of a wounded dog
And the ground is drinking a slow faucet leak
Your house is so soft and fading as it soaks the black summer heat
A light goes on and the door opens
And a yellow cat runs out on the stream of hall light and into the yard

A wooden cherry scent is faintly breathing the air
I hear your champagne laugh
You wear two lavender orchids
One in your hair and one on your hip
A string of yellow carnival lights comes on with the dusk
Circling the lake with a slowly dipping halo
And I hear a banjo tango

And you dance into the shadow of a black poplar tree
And I watched you as you disappeared

Stickbugman on my front door.

 You are my sunshine...

Wall of tabasco at store on Decatur St., New Orleans.

Fire spinner at Viva Variety, 6/10/10.

Oy

Damn! It has been a busy month. I moved, I adopted a stray dog, I went on an impromptu road trip, my best friend came into town, I turned 21 and I have been drunk all week and my internet has not been working! Things are slowing down a bit now. I've spent the last four or five days swimming at Barton Springs and it has been so beautiful and relaxing. Currently I'm at a coffee shop catching up with emails and willing for the cloudburst to pass so I can head home. I haven't had a chance to update recently nor have I been able to upload any photos for a while but I will try and get some stuff up in the next few days - I've no idea how many people actually read this but I suppose it's more for me than anyone else anyway :) And I have so many damn pictures of fancy things to edit and be excited about and share with everyone or someone or no one. I love Austin more and more every day.

2005

I recently came across a picture of me from 2005 via an old friend's Facebook and thought, "damn, I'm so glad I don't have short black and pink hair anymore." Then, today, the same person posted this picture of me, also from 2005, and I thought, "Jesus, no wonder I had body image issues for so long..."

I weighed like 92 pounds! I barely even existed! For so many years after my drug phase I struggled with the notion that I would never be as skinny as I was on speed, and I really did not want to accept that. I kept thinking that if I just ate as little as possible and worked out all the time I could get back down to 100 pounds. I think I came close at 107 when I was about 17, but I have since given up on that "dream." Every now and again, though, I do look back at myself as I was and wonder how I really feel about my body these days. I can't say that I love every aspect of my body, but I have grown much more accepting of the parts of it that I don't really like, and I have become more comfortable about things that I used to be super self-conscious of. Sometimes I consider that it might be nice to be that thin again, but then I wonder why it would even matter, or how it would make my life better...the years that I was extremely thin (even when I was off drugs) were definitely the most miserable ones of my life. Even now I find it hard to suppress the thought that being thinner would make me happier. Maybe it would, on some level, being a model, but often times I look at my photos and think that I look much thinner than I feel, and other times I feel much thinner than I look, so I think it's entirely subjective. I've never weighed more than 120 pounds in my whole life and unless I get knocked up or go back to eating meat I highly doubt that figure will alter drastically in the next 5-10 years.

The past week has seen several instances of me being forced to relive or remember my past and I find I have a lot more demons lurking than I thought I did. I suppose, in a way, moving here was a big part of me trying to escape all of that, and while I've physically removed myself from the people and the situations that were less than favorable, the memories still remain in some remote corner of my mind and they appear to be accessible at the worst possible times. I'm not really sure how to go about dealing with those things but I'm kind of hoping that if I just keep living my life and being happy and positive that they will fade away. In the mean time I have a whole slew of new confusion to deal with.

Writings

From some time ago...

Once again it lies in wait
A strange Beast with sultry voice,
it reaches for my hands and feet
and sets its lips upon them
It claws its way into my brain and there settles
under false pretense of love
It seeps lust into my dreams,
drenched in wine and smoke;
it leaves me curious and terrible and draws the air from my lungs
The Beast it leaves me longing for parched sand and foreign eyes,
for monoliths, flashes of colored light
And I, too, lie in wait
Supine in a grassy field,
naked,
a city of clouds swirling round me

As it stands, you are only a collection of letters,
a photograph, a future memory,
an absurd imagining
Further still
And the Beast rests its sparrow feet upon my shoulder
And kisses my neck
Ghastly handsome, it sings me to sleep
And coaxes sweet notes from a violet violin -
I dread the warm hour of your approach.

Canto, per chi non ha fortuna

My head's all tangled up tonight. Here are some pictures.

Unedited. Photo by Dan Leffel.

Unedited. Photo by Dan Leffel.

Photos to follow are by me...

The Inheritance - Michelle.

The Inheritance - Amanda.

Amy Annelle.

Not much to say presently...I'm moving into a new house in June and it's starting to stress me out just as much as moving from California did. Moving sucks. I am completely torn between wanting to have a place to be settled into and stay put and being totally restless and travelling all over the place. What now to do...

Trade

I'm not sure if many people from the photographic world are reading this, but if you are, take heed (and perhaps pass the word along as well):

Inspired by the great people of Austin, who love a good trade, I have determined that, in order to get myself a fancy-ass camera, I should engage in a trade myself. Naturally, my mad modelling skillz came to mind first, so I would like to offer my services to anyone who should be interested:

In exchange for a dSLR of my choice (in the $800-$1000 range) I will be offering my modeling services to any photographer who needs a consistent model for an ongoing project or any number of projects. I will do 10 (ten) two- or three-hour shoots with him/her, at no charge, with the agreement that at the end of these sessions, I will either a) be paid the lump sum of my hours accumulated at that point or b) be bought/given the dSLR of my choice. Check it out, folks - my going rate is $60 an hour, so for a two-hour shoot you'd pay $120. For 10 two-hour shoots you'd be paying $1200, and for 10 three-hour shoots you'd be paying $1800. Whatta deal!

Anywho, if you're interested, or if anyone you know may be interested, get in touch. (Anyone who accepts will, naturally, be contractually obliged.) This will be posted on other relevant sites as well...

Layte-lee

Oops, slacked on getting this thing updated again. Hectic couple of weeks; lots of shoots, house-sitting with Adam for two dogs, two cats, and six chickens...my computer is on the fritz right now too so I'm unable to post any pictures. Can't believe I have to get my hard drive replaced AGAIN. The computer is brand-fuckin-new!

Still no employment to speak of, but a couple of interviews coming up in the next week. Did an all-day outdoor shoot yesterday and came back with some bug bites on my ass, cactus thorns in my hand, and $300 in my pocket, plus a handful of rocks and some railroad spikes...so all in all a good day. My accordion is finally fixed too! Granted I have been in and out of the house so much I haven't had a lot of time to sit down and play, but all in good time...

What else...I have been on a huge coconut kick lately...as soon as I figured out how to open them it was love at first sight (sip?). The travel bug bit me again too, which is definitely the last thing I need considering my lack of funds. Driving through hill country yesterday just gave me this awful heartachey desire to be driving through the California desert again. Austin is absolutely beautiful and green and lush but there will always be something about the desert that I crave immensely that cannot be satiated by any other landscape. I need to go back in November and have a crazy Death Valley adventure with my beloved David Winge. Doing everything in my power to ensure that happens.

My head has been very much in the clouds the last couple of weeks...often I find myself walking around feeling like I'm dreaming. For that matter, the dreams I actually have had have been extremely strange and very vivid, but I suppose I go through stages like that where my dreams are really intense for a few months, and then for a while I never remember them at all. Funny.

 I just made the mistake of washing my hair before I go bike around, I thought I was gonna take the bus but now I have absolutely no patience for it. Grrr. Tonight is a candle-lit banjo sesh at Flipnotics where my sweetie is playing, gonna be fun! That's it for now I suppose.