this is not my beautiful wife

2011-10-26T00:49:00.001-07:00

remember to breathe in. and then to breathe out.

missing

2011-10-22T23:37:00.000-07:00

i miss everyone and everything

the now thoughts

2011-10-13T00:47:00.000-07:00

i think i'm gonna tutor kids

be a teacher

and then maybe get my masters in multimedia journalism

and make multimedia pieces using audio, stills, and video

i think that is my jam

and also become an amateur kick boxer

or do none of those things and all of those things

and have a good time of it

everyday awakenings

2011-10-02T23:50:00.000-07:00

sometimes i paint a grim picture when the picture is not so grim. yes i am suffering from chronic headaches, migraines, and pressure in my brain. yes i get an aura that takes over the entire left side of my vision when i do push-ups. but i will see the dr. tomorrow. the things you don't hear about is how i sparred naked with my man until 1.30 in the morning until i knocked the bulb out of his light and the room fell fully dark aside from the blue glow of the mac screen. what you do not hear about is manning the telephones at the radio station or getting stoned in the parking lot with the most exquisite human being i know. you don't hear about the late-night banter about life, the backyard bonfires, kick-boxing, and biking everywhere. yes sometimes the world closes in on me. i never made it to the river this summer, it was a tragedy. i never audited arabic. i never got the job at Berkeley or MECA or Global Exchange. i lost my waitressing job, the farmers market turned me over twice, and the heavy lifting job hasn't come through. but i'm reading the autobiography of Malcolm X and dreaming of the day when my head stops hurting so I can pick up and go back to Africa. So I can take that temp job in Sudan photographing for the UN. So I can go back to that invincible person I once was before I gave my heart away. To men.

We are all responsible for our own happiness, don't get me wrong. I take full responsibility for the last couple weeks of panic and depression. I will run now everytime the fear hits me. The fear of life. The fear of shooting that wedding next year or shooting the guys at the kick-boxing gym. The fear of the fact that I've been on unemployment for a year, that I don't own a car, and I haven't fully come into my own.

Yes I crave the life-partner, the stability, the home, the job, the car. But moreso more than anything I crave self-contentedness, self-assurity. Confidence. Pride. Self-respect.

Hear me out all friends who have known great desperation and most difficult times. WE ARE ALL IN THE GUTTER at moments. Sometimes we cannot always see the stars. But they are burning up there to remind us that the impossible is only possible when you can convince yourself thus. That is, we can have it all, all we need to do is hold onto hope. Pretend the world is a nicer place than it is. Put all our chips down on the optimists, on the people who take the time to say thank you and please and ask you how you are doing and call to check in on you. There is so much to learn from those people.

let the good times roll

2011-09-22T00:29:00.001-07:00

happy 1 year anniversary

start over

2011-09-18T22:43:00.001-07:00

i would like to start all over again
from this hardest year of my life
with all of its heartbreak and alienation
illness and pain
i am ready to bury this person i am calling myself
this person who is calling friends and friends are
finding excuses not to visit or see or call
this person no one wants to know

the hard truth

2011-06-30T13:52:00.000-07:00

so you can go ahead and tell your sons and daughters that the hardest thing that they will ever know in life is this: you will love one person fully. you will pour all of your love into that one person. they will be the secret behind your smile, your laughter, your confident stride, the whistled tune you carry with you as you walk the streets. it will not be the center of your attention all the time, but it will be the raison d'etre, albeit quietly.

and this person that you pour your love into will someday throw it all away at a moment's notice. it will take you aback. months and sometimes years of love. it will be hard to swallow at first. impossible to accept. why? what for? but they will throw it all away and close the door on you. they will not want your words, they will not want to know the details of how they have hurt you. they will simply walk away in silence.

then you will have to find some way to continue being in the world without your smile, your laughter and your confident stride. you will feel ugly. tired. you will have to perform meaningless tasks like going to the grocery store and looking for jobs. this pain in you will not go away for many months. your appetite will sometimes be shifty, sleep will be mediocre. days will get longer. the sun will shine and the world will continue to be beautiful but you will only participate it with great hesitation, sometimes it will be dreadful.

loss is, by far, the hardest thing to accept. mike said it right - relationships are like dreams; when you are in them you cannot see out of them, and then once you are out of them, much later, you cannot believe the state you were once in. well, right now i'm kicking around on the edge of one, but he's pushing me out. trying to hang onto a dream that he says is dead. fumbling.

people always mediate these situations by saying there are many fish in the sea. but when you are hanging onto the one you loved, you cannot have eyes for anyone else. there is no medicine to help ease the pain. there is no 12-step program. no 5 year plan. loss is loss. i have lost someone i love. he says he cannot bring himself to love me. i have about a million words to tell him but somewhere i feel like i'm not supposed to share them. that i'm supposed to keep them to myself. i will probably write a letter, with paper and ink, the old fashioned way.

how this week or this month will transgress, i don't know. i think it will be many months of this feeling of being lost in the world. 2010-2011 has been a strange transition for me. from archeological photographer to unpaid intern. jobless american collecting unemployment. a lady full of love for a man who cannot love her. things can only get better i hope.

DJ Lafleur

2011-06-27T23:54:00.000-07:00

On the death of Bin Laden

2011-05-02T10:41:00.000-07:00

And how it signifies that we have a long way to go before we come to grips with who we are as a nation.

This mass patriotism always makes me extremely uneasy and deeply worries me. Especially this, now. these events make America even more blind, make regular citizens once again overlook all the horrible acts that we are responsible for in the name of finding one man in a far and distant land that we somehow feel will bring resolution to what happened on 9/11. Anyone who knows anything about world conflict or any kind of conflict at all knows that the cat and mouse chase will just go back and forth. We have declared some kind of victory for killing Osama bin Laden and have taken this opportunity to act like a bunch of rednecks. Soon, I'm sure, some horrible act of "revenge" for the death of Osama will fall on us, and the cat and mouse game will pick up again where it left off. As my friend Dan Denvir rightly pointed out in his piece

Bin Laden Killing Does Not Vindicate Afghanistan and Iraq Wars

we need to take responsibility for the deaths that have taken place in Iraq, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. we need to collectively as a country realize that we are all guilty of these unforgivable crimes, and we all need to put down our weapons, and find peace in a way that doesn't involve murders. Islamaphobia will go on, probably fueled more by this event. Our military will continue to kill innocent bystanders. Middle Eastern people who have nothing to do with the conflict will die by "drones".

We need to step back and look at ourselves, and this so-called cause for celebration and rejoice of "justice" just takes people even further away. A great deal of Americans are sadly immature, and have equivocated this to some kind of sport, or cowboys and Indians-type game. It is deadly, complicated, tragic, and the longest foreign war in our nation's history has resulted from this "war on terrorism". As one bumper sticker in my Berkeley neighborhood joked "Iraq is Arabic for Vietnam". Often times, it just feels like we have no understanding, as a country, of what we are doing. In any case, Dan, thanks for your honest, home-hitting words. We need more journalists like you. In this day of journalism being called dead, we need you more than ever.

you can find it

2011-04-27T01:48:00.000-07:00

remember what is important and sacred to you

and you can find it here

because you can find it anywhere

there are so many places

full moon

2011-04-06T12:01:00.000-07:00

i made a video with old friends. they wanted to make it for 6 years.

Full Moon from gabby miller on Vimeo.

the longest silence

2011-03-25T00:47:00.001-07:00

the month we stopped speaking
the birds stopped chirping
their beaks scrape sadness into the
trees in my backyard
the month of march on the wall calendar
is a parade of empty squares
and meaningless appointments
our kisses could have cured
a hundred vacant hours
do you remember how effortlessly
my body curled into yours
and kisses came like exhales
or do you remember it all
as a poorly-rehearsed play
with bad actors and sets

Quiet

2011-03-12T21:41:00.001-08:00

Now we will count to twelve
and we will all keep still
for once on the face of the earth,
let's not speak in any language;
let's stop for a second,
and not move our arms so much.

It would be an exotic moment
without rush, without engines;
we would all be together
in a sudden strangeness.

Fishermen in the cold sea
would not harm whales
and the man gathering salt
would not look at his hurt hands.

Those who prepare green wars,
wars with gas, wars with fire,
victories with no survivors,
would put on clean clothes
and walk about with their brothers
in the shade, doing nothing.

What I want should not be confused
with total inactivity.

Life is what it is about...

If we were not so single-minded
about keeping our lives moving,
and for once could do nothing,
perhaps a huge silence
might interrupt this sadness
of never understanding ourselves
and of threatening ourselves with
death.

Now I'll count up to twelve
and you keep quiet and I will go.

- pablo neruda

away

2011-02-01T23:27:00.000-08:00

A lot of people have been writing to me saying they haven't really been following the protests in Egypt all the way through and are overwhelmed by the amount of coverage now and want an insider's view on what's going down over there - just trying to get a grasp of what this all means.

I've been busy writing and re-writing a short radio commentary that I find myself having to constantly update each day, being unsatisfied when it isn't fully present. I will publish the piece to this blog when it is finished, or maybe a longer version of it. I recorded it tonight at KPFA, but it still needs to be edited. It does not include anything from my interviews with Owen - that will probably turn into something different.

But getting off the phone with Owen in Luxor for the 3rd time now I do miss it. California is sunny and easy for the most part. I know I'm ready for this year or two in America, but I suppose I realized today that I will always be drawn out of my shell during such dynamic times, I will always want to be over there, where the world is still very much in an embryonic, mercural state. America will never keep me here for the long run, I suppose. I suppose I'll always be running off and coming back. Settling, and re-settling. For now I am happy where I am, I love the chicken coop we are building in the backyard, the garden beds ready with soil and compost to be planted with flowers, I love this bike that takes me to the radio station where I am learning to be a radio producer. I love my friends, as we beat on empty buckets and strum guitars and make up songs in my kitchen as the night comes to an end. But I know it will not hold me forever. That I will crave the foreign worlds again.

Today I worked out in the park and told my friend about how slow I've been this week. Usually I get up in the morning with nervous energy - I go for a run just to sit still. These days I am crawling to the park, I am moving slowly about the house. It is a kind of reverse PTSD, I was telling her - a post-quotidian bored disorder. In any case, it will not last forever, but this week, as I watch the events unfold in Egypt, I can't help but feel like my time in America is not permanent. That I will make it my home for a few years, but find myself abroad again in the near future.

Good days bad days

2011-01-26T22:38:00.000-08:00

Good days and bad days. Today was both. Bladder infection I thought was gone came back; unsure about what is going to happen to my unemployment when I tell them I forgot to file for a week of work in November, and then there's this waitressing gig that I seem to have landed that I'm not sure if I want or whether it will mess things up for me more than better them. So it is with life - forever a challenge on many levels. I'm too tired now from the bike journey I took and the antibiotics to get into it. I've just spent the last two hours trying to recount the story of Luxor being destroyed to make way for tourists. An exercise in radio - finally an assignment from KPFA, to get the wheels moving and my mind off of my own life.

I biked out there to his folks house today with the same motive - to put the unemployment, the restaurant, and my problems behind me - out of the desire to have my legs be the things to take me there. wanting the sun on my back and him within reach. I learned that I barely take pictures anymore and he barely paints. But things are moving around in us. I learned it will be okay. I learned things will only get better.

looking up

2011-01-20T13:52:00.000-08:00

After a mild freakout things are feeling better. Woke early today, 7am, and went to the cafe where Matt is finishing a plumbing job. I've taken notes and watched the process step-by-step and have a pretty good idea of how to fix a leaking ceiling, that is one that is caused by a leaking upstairs shower pipe. After reading for a few hours at the cafe and watching Matt finish up, I volunteered for the first time at a local garden run by a nonprofit called the People's Grocery, that supplies CSAs. Feels good to get back outside and my hands in the dirt, has a very cathartic effect on me, just chatting and asking questions and taking notes for my own garden which is soon to come to life in the backyard. Weeded a bed, airated the soil, and put down a cover crop to put Nitrogen back into the soil and prepare it for veggies in the spring. Today we'll be picking up some rich soil/compost mix for our own garden, and the chicken coop production should begin this weekend so things are finally beginning to take flight.

Feeling a lot more comfortable with unemployment as I have this opportunity to gain gardening, youth leading, wilderness, radio and video skills. Before the time was terrifying, the free time seemed to choke me everyday when I woke up without a defined task. Now I have a better idea of how I can make this time work for me and organize a schedule where I get my photography up in galleries in SF, learn to shoot and edit video, learn gardening skills, start writing radio shows for KPFA, and read. I have an interview next week for a waitressing job at a local cafe, which I wanted way back in September when I had no income and was desperate for any and all work. Since then I've interned at San Francisco Magazine, worked weekends at the farmer's market, gotten a DJ gig, a computer coding gig, and an Apprenticeship at KPFA radio, so you can't say I'm not keeping busy. Given this, I no longer feel so uncomfortable with being on unemployment. I admit, it's taken some time for me to get comfortable with it and come to terms with it, I would prefer a full-time job that pays my salary and is fullfilling but I haven't gotten there yet. I've applied to dozens of positions, but I don't always have the precise skill-set.

In other news, the photo editor at the Wall Street Journal responded to my email within minutes saying: "Hey sara - your work is really dope.. Thanks for reaching out.. We'll be in touch for sure. What's your favorite thing to shoot? What are you interested in shooting in SF? I see you're on bryan's site. They broke the mold when he popped out - love that dude. Talk soon." So I'm pretty happy about that. I hope they give me an assignment soon, although there are a lot of great shooters in the Bay Area right now, I'm sure they'll get to me eventually. It's just nice to have someone at a major publication be so human and warm, I've never really even gotten any kind of response from an editor at a major publication, the standard response is dead silence. So I'm very grateful for that.

every ten years

2011-01-12T00:48:00.001-08:00

a celebration of life

i've got dreams

2010-12-23T16:10:00.000-08:00

dreams. dreams to remember.

2011 is just around the corner and i'm still not a river guide. that dream slipped away in the tide of living abroad i guess. in any case - i think i have a new years resolution. then again, this might take a couple years. eventually i'd like to get my ass to Grand Canyon every summer and get on that Colorado - the dream that was sparked for me in high school over a decade ago. baby steps.

which way

2010-12-08T22:05:00.000-08:00

and the days drag on at the magazine. the hum of computer screens, the sickly flourescent lights annoint me with a feeling of scum. i must get out. the sadness penetrates today. the only cure: to go running in the rain.

all day it was my mind going back and forth between which path to take next. to abandon the officespace altogether and take to the outdoors. urban farming? working with youth in the creative arts? river run? or should i start shipping flyers to every publication in the city and keep trying my hand at picture-taking.
an eternal doublethink. it appears at nearly 28 i don't entirely know what i want, or whether i can hack doing what i want, but i suppose i'm edging closer.

my best friend tells me that whenever i come home to philly i'm always ready to jump on the next social situation that lies ahead. that she's been waiting years to point it out - that sometimes she worries that if there's a lull in the conversation, i'll grab my phone and start texting other people to make other plans. and that sometimes she takes it personally. it hurt to hear it but i am also so grateful that she shared it with me, so that i can be more mindful of this. so that we can be closer for it. so i can learn to be still and mindful and present.

i do hate this trait in me - forever interrupting other people, sometimes an inability to focus, to listen. i look at other people at the magazine - i admire the way they sit so comfortable in their own skin. their stillness, their sureness. focus. they know what they want i suppose, and they are rooted in this knowing.

but she says i should not wish that upon myself. that i should just attempt to harness what i take from my shiftiness. she says: "a lot can be gained even from inattention."

on a positive note, I got the apprenticeship at KPFA. I was very surprised. Last night was our first meeting and it feels good, the group of us, from all paths of life, all backgrounds, to sit together and share our thoughts. I have a lot to learn. A lot of work to do. But I think it will be a great opportunity to grow and gain practical skills and learn to put a story together. and to listen to theirs.

breath of my breath

2010-11-29T01:12:00.000-08:00

nearer:breath of my breath:take not they tingling
limbs from me:make my pain their crazy meal
letting thy tigers of smooth sweetness steal
slowly in dumb blossoms of new mingling:
deeper:blood of my blood:with upwardcringing
swiftness plunge these leopards of white ream
this pith of darkness:carve an evilfringing
flower of madness on gritted lips
and on sprawled eyes squirming with light insane
chisel the killing flame that dizzily grips.

Querying greys between mouthed houses curl

thirstily.  Dead stars stink.  dawn.  Inane,

the poetic carcass of a girl

other half

2010-11-18T10:10:00.000-08:00

"And oh god, to tell him of an amazing dream I'd had and to feel the weight of his arm around me felt like I was touching sacred land and drinking holy water."

it happens all at once

2010-11-02T14:09:00.001-07:00

it happens all at once; Halloween (first in 4 years), the Giants won the World Series for the first time in half a century, the election, critical mass, and Day of the Dead. All of these things I do not participate in. For all of these things I was negligent, absent, tardy. I am sick again; some nebulous ailment which fills my head with fog, my body with fatigue, and separates me from the world. I make the hour plus commute on foot and train to San Francisco to arrive at work in North Beach, sweaty, pale. I announce "I feel like shit" and they tell me to go home. I go home. This being sick makes me a fully selfish person, unable to see out from my mind's eye, I am a citizen of my cave-mind, throbbing muscles and inflamed lymph nodes. It is a country of one and the borders are closed.

Last weekend I managed to DJ my first DJ set at a dive bar in Oakland (without headphones, forgot to bring an adaptor), interview for a radio apprenticeship, and work at the farmers market, after which I started to feel really ill. The radio apprenticeship was for KPFA, a public radio station that came into being as a venue to "promote cultural diversity and pluralistic community expression" and "contribute to a lasting understanding between individuals of all nations, races, creeds and colors." Coming into this interview I should have considered that more seriously and prepared myself better, but I learned from this mistake. I learned my lesson.

"What do you think about the statement that white women have benefited more from affirmative action than African Americans?" I sit before a panel of African American radio workers, at least one of which who lived through the civil rights movement and I am frozen. I repeat the question out loud, slowly, completely unaware as to how I will answer it. "Or how do you feel about affirmative action in general?" Now, sitting here, I know how I'd answer those questions. Then, I didn't. I could say - look at the criminal justice system in America - look at the disproportionate number of African Americans in prison, facing the death penalty, wrongly accused of crimes they did not commit, or look at the number of African Americans who have fallen victim - at the number who have died by police brutality. You do not have to look very far. Oscar Grant's rally was just last weekend. Certainly we have come a long way, but this country is far from perfect. Another question they threw out was "How can you be an ally to an African American?" Of course these are all the kinds of questions I should be able to answer if I'm going to work at a radio station like KPFA. I would have liked to answer honestly: "As a white person I can safely say that I will never understand what it feels like to be in your shoes. That's first and foremost. I will never know what it means to be black in America - that's how I approach it. I try to be an ally by getting as close as I can to understanding what that means, by keeping my eyes and ears open, by listening." And even that sounds trite. I hope that over the next year I can develop a good answer for both of those questions. Not just in words, but in my life. So that if I'm still in the Bay Area and I go back to interview for that apprenticeship I can answer them with confidence. I'm embarrassed at how I wasn't able to provide thorough answers. I never want to be stumped like that again.

For now, though. I have only one battle. This sickness. I will kill it with sleep, tea, honey. I will not go to work this week. I will try to find a free clinic - there's one in the Mission I will call tomorrow. I will see if I can get signed onto Medicare. If I have to I will pay the big bucks and see an expensive dr. I will get this taken care of. Then I will go back to those big questions. And the other big questions - like - why am I here? What do I really want to be doing with myself? Because I think maybe the answers have shifted into working with an NGO or doing something to help people - provide for the homeless or people that have no health insurance, or kids in the foster system, or farmers providing organic food. I want to do something meaningful, and if I can't pull that off with my camera, then I want to do it in some other way.

i love you, ma

2010-10-01T11:52:00.001-07:00

Meditations of the Unemployed

2010-09-14T01:06:00.000-07:00

these are my darker thoughts all thrown into one. these are not all of my thoughts.

9/10/10

Go to café and shoot shit and eat food until my landlord Razh B. Gosh gets me a copy of my key. $6 My keys are missing as of last night.. Get key from Razh. Bring bike wheel into shop for new tube – go to wrong entirely wrong side of town in effort to get a lock so that I can ride my bike to the grocery store and drop off a resume. Key for bike lock is lost with keys. Two hours wasted. Finally find bike store – don’t like the selection. They say – try the locksmith, maybe they can make you a new key. Go to locksmith – locksmith cannot make a key for the old lock. Leave. Go back – you forgot – go back and make two copies of your house key so you never have to repeat this. $4. Go to 2nd locksmith – they send you to a 3rd locksmith. 3rd locksmith says no dice. But you can buy a brand new lock. I have one left. Fine. $40. Walk to Trader Joe’s across the street. Finally I can do what I intended to do when I left my house today – finally I can apply for a job. Trader Joe’s floor clerk points me to the “office” area. Not hiring, says the man behind the desk. In fact, when they were hiring they got over a thousand applicants and hired 55. About the other Trader Joe stores, the man at the office says “we’re all in the same boat”. And so it is on America. A thousand people apply to work at a grocery store. 945 go away empty handed. I am one of them.

I remember the nice lady at the Sweet Adeline café “Ahhh….” She said smiling at my resume. “A graduate of Reed – a highly educated barista!” It’s true. My mama used Boeing money and her business savings to put me through a college that cost somewhere around 35 grand a year and now I can’t get hired at a grocery store.

But right when my blood sugar & hopes had plunged to record lows – there’s Chris Edley on the phone – "my folks want to meet you tomorrow." A glimmer of hope. There was also the extremely nice Mexican girl at Common Grounds who immediately pounced on me. Might be able to set up a blog for them. Shoot some pictures of the space – offer to manage it – maybe make a little cash. She also wanted me to hang work – just unsure if I can drop the funds. I guess it would just be a couple hundred bucks and then I could hang them again in another space. Do some actual PR. Get my name out there.

Sitting on the rush hour train – everyone around me has that light airy, bubbly employed color – everyone knows where their rent and mortgage payment is coming from, where tonight’s supper is coming from. They talk on their cell phones and complain about how their internet service is down or what swimming club they go to. Round trip Bart ride $7. I write with a pen I stole from a cell phone company in a book I made with my mother and wonder with all the sincerity in the world how I’m going to make it in America and what path I should be pursuing.

9/13/10

Everyday. Everyday is the same. Everyday is begun with a feverish, hopeful beginning. I made a good breakfast with the lines running through my head: “Today I’m going to make it happen. Today is the day my bad luck ends.“ All the faith in the world. I get on my bike and ride to the café, order a latte, and immediately start applying to jobs, filling out the same forms, answering the same questions a hundred times over. Please list your employers for the last 5 years, 3 references, your skills. I must have filled this out a thousand times. A thousand and one. All the blank fields stare back at me, mocking me with their blankness.

Whole Foods - Apply online. Trader Joe’s - apply online even though you went to the store and the man behind the desk said they received 1,000 applications and hired 50 people and were no longer hiring. Chat with your previous boss from Russia on Skype about resuming translation work from the US. Inquire about training program at the local radio station; email the contact you met at dinner the other night, trying to get a job babysitting your friend’s younger siblings. Find out all the addresses of all the restaurants and cafes that are hiring according to Craig’s list and jot down all the addresses to ride to later and drop off an application. Jupiter, new cafe you never heard about, movie theater, book store x2, record store, art supply store. (When you finally get there hours later they will tell you they are not hiring or tell you that you don’t want to work there). Make ads on Craig’s list for babysitter, housecleaner, photographer, search for openings, apprenticeships, internships. Everyday on my bike I ride to approximately 15 different institutions all of which give me the same response: we are not hiring at the moment but we always accept resumes. They take my piece of paper, the man or woman behind the counter, and the piece of paper is tucked away into a dark void and I understand as they slip the paper into that void that my opportunity of employment is again lost forever. At the last bar, while standing there, waiting for the tank-top adorned bartender to catch my attention, I realize that no one is going to hire me. A storm cloud has now gathered over my head. I see the world in black and white, a world made up of one word “NO”. “NO.” The sound of the word “NO” echoes throughout my brain. My eyes are dark and shining. I realize I must leave the bar and come back at another time when I don't feel like this. Indeed, come six pm I don’t think I can take it anymore. I go home and I prepare a huge delicious dinner to make up for my lackluster day of rejection, my lackluster month of rejection. I made a huge delicious dinner to which no one comes home to. I want to cry into my dinner.

America. America you pose quite a challenge. I will be rounding up to 30 years of age soon. A perfectly capable human being, America, and you deny me the right to bag groceries. I have the drive and determination of a thousand college-bound Asian students. I have the guile and the concentration of a hundred Russian gymnasts. One woman told me I should work for the CIA. The other asked me if I aspire to work at Trader Joe’s – if that is my career goal. America – I am confident I will break in. But you do make me wonder – what about all the others, how the hell are they making it, America, you cut me no breaks.

But the Iraqi man at the corner store. He understands. “I don’t know what’s happening,” he says. “Everyone is losing their jobs.”

finders keepers

2010-08-29T19:38:00.000-07:00

List of things we rescued from the studio next door where the artist woman passed away

Two fake palm trees
A fire pit
A barbecue grill
Several fancy ass plants in huge pots
Enormous ancient shells
A strange bird-like sculpture made of various materials
A bull skull with horns
Several silver pitchers/pouring devices
A kerosene lamp
Several bird houses
Etc

SF

2010-08-27T02:14:00.000-07:00

san francisco, you are good to me.
i don't care if i'm homeless, jobless,
burning through my savings. it doesn't matter.
you are fine in my book.

happy birthday

2010-08-19T01:44:00.000-07:00

it's been years

the middle chapters

2010-08-16T22:48:00.000-07:00

mexicans at the laundromat in tall hats
holding guitars
hipsters man the coffee shops and the
sweet scent of weed sticks to the dewy air
a thick white fog crawls over the hill
and i would love the chance to be where you are

how many years can the flesh ache
a dull rapping on the heartbox
i keep waiting for someone to throw a blanket
over the whole room
to put out the light and scoop my heart off
the stained carpet
but my future is all bareboned empty rooms
an occasional visitor helps me forget that
there is nothing to hang on the walls

these are the middle chapters
every night it gets harder to give up

The City That Knows How

2010-08-11T17:44:00.000-07:00

I arrived in San Francisco. one week ago.

One of the great things about living here is I can call a friend up on the phone and say "hey I can't figure out this guitar tab, why don't you come over, we'll drink some whiskey and play some music." 10 minutes later my friend is here, drinks in hand. I haven't really been able to do that for four years. I cannot emphasize enough what a privilege that is.

I've gone for my first run. I found myself kind of running in weird zig-zag patterns around the Mission due to the prominence of 45 degree angled hills in every direction.

By the 3rd day of running my legs are lead-heavy. I can barely make it through 3 miles. A slow heavy pony gallop. Jesse takes me down to the water where the boats sit like candy soldiers. I am so grateful for this new-found friendship. These old friendships that are now rekindled in the city where the air is crisp with wintery fog and the old heart-pangs have vanished. Re-born into this bi-lingual playground of a city. I think I will make it a home for a while. I've already met some characters and laughed some laughs.

Pushkin hangover

2010-08-11T11:04:00.001-07:00

ЭЛЕГИЯ

Безумных лет угасшее веселье
Мне тяжело, как смутное похмелье.
Но, как вино - печаль минувших дней
В моей душе чем старе, тем сильней.
Мой путь уныл. Сулит мне труд и горе
Грядущего волнуемое море.

Но не хочу, о други, умирать;
Я жить хочу, чтоб мыслить и страдать;
И ведаю, мне будут наслажденья
Меж горестей, забот и треволненья:
Порой опять гармонией упьюсь,
Над вымыслом слезами обольюсь,
И может быть - на мой закат печальный
Блеснёт любовь улыбкою прощальной.

this is it

2010-08-11T00:33:00.000-07:00

the door to your soul is off the hinges again

Yo Mama

2010-08-02T19:42:00.000-07:00

Introduction back to America. Day 3. [draft]

2010-07-13T20:27:00.000-07:00

Jaime picked me up from the airport. We then proceeded to the liquor store. He bought nine bottles of fine wine for Dana and guests. One half liter of Absolute Vodka and a case of Sierra Nevada Pale Ale and a Summerpack. $200. Then we went to the beer store where we bought three wine-size bottles of beer. One of them was $30. Lunch at the Frisco Grill. Steak Fajita Sandwich with goat cheese and fries for Jaime. Two chicken tacos for me. Four original beers. Northcoast Prankster. Evolution Lot #3 on firkin. Sierra Nevada 30th Anniversay Fritz and Ken. And one white marsh blueberry on cask. $40. Everyone at the bar knows Jaime’s name. He keeps a book. Every time he goes to the bar he drinks three original beers and writes them down in his book. That means he never has the same beer twice. These last four beers puts him at 680 unique beers at that particular bar, which he frequents twice a week – Wednesday and Friday 2-4. Happy hour. Next stop – the beer brewer store. Maryland homebrew. It smells like malt in here. Kind of makes me feel ill, but he gets a high off of it. We buy 3 pounds of malted wheat, a pound of crystal 40 and a pound of crystal 60 and an ounce of hallertau hops. A bucket of sanitizer. $30. Someone is grinding malt and the air fills with little malt sugar dust particles. BJ’s. I am in a daze. The stacks of everything pile high to the ceilings of this warehouse. They have perfectly good black stretchy jeans for $15. Huge quart-size bottles of Listerine – 2 for $10. You could buy this thing and not run out of Listerine for two years. T-shirts for 8 bucks. I want to buy clothes. Jaime buys a 28 pack of 20oz waters. 3 bottles of lemonade. A bag of pinenuts and pistachios. An economy size pack of Bratwersts. One variety case of Izzy sparkling fruit juice. 3 different flavors. 72 rolls of toilet paper. “Gotta whipe my butt!” exclaims Jaime in the car on the way home. “Couldn’t find the whipey things,” he reminds me. Spending the day with my brother in suburban America: priceless.

I lay in bed at my brother’s house and there are no arms wrapped around me. No hands to hold. No one to scratch my back. No one to tell me what to do next or comfort me and remind me that I will figure this thing out. I take my first nap alone. It is 5pm. I don’t wake up until 1am. I decide to go back to sleep. I sleep until 7am.

no taxation without representation

2010-07-04T14:43:00.000-07:00

(an email from my friend Jon 7/4/10)

life is truly weird and very airborne. kind of like a virus. kind of like juggled chainsaws. i don't know how to feel about it and it gets me so lost in thought i started to feel at home there, in thought. i built a house there and wasn't lost anymore, and i don't get up but to use the thoughtouthouse and pour thoughts all over folks like yourself. life is up in the air. even if the jugglers drop the ball, and even if it shatters, atleast the clean up effort will have a strange humpty dumpty beauty to it. up in the air is the best way to be. easier to find out if you can fly or not up there. not as dirty as down in the ground, nor as claustrophobic.

good times to you! fuck the british! independence!
jawndice

Introduction to America. Day 2

2010-07-02T20:14:00.000-07:00

Within 48 hours of arriving back in America I have managed to spend nearly $400. It is baffling to me the rate at which it disappears - taxis, phone expenses (t-mobile gave my phone number to someone else!), food, drink, metro, luggage charges. Already suffering the effects of this abrupt awakening - yesterday I awake at 4.30am, today 5.45am. Hungover. Head throbbing. I'd like to get better at this - follow my costs as I see Bryan doing - keep a log, make monthly/weekly limits & goals. Save. Grow. It's probably a good time to stop hoarding things too - little scraps of paper from all over the world. I do not journal anymore like I used to. It's only really something you can do when you have a stable home. All around me I see women slightly older than me - with children. Motherly American women with motherly hair and motherly shirts. It will always be a strange sensation returning to the US without a job, a home, and many old friends now so distant. Was hit with that age-old alienation yesterday after dropping off Owen, wandering about Williamsburg friend-less, hoping to find someone to eat dinner with & spend the evening with. Alone. Alone is such a strange phenomenon. America seems so strange again - like a David Lynch film. Characters ingenuine - something is always slightly off; dreamlike. I crave intimacy but it's not something I can expect 48 hrs off the boat. It will take time but I will make sense of this life.

my security blanket

2010-06-16T15:16:00.001-07:00

for the past four years i've had boyfriends and lived in far-away places. it is my security blanket against the world. it is my way of being sheltered.

find myself crying my eyes out as i count down the days. clinging to this beautiful person next to me. i know its for the better, but what else can you do when someone is taking your security blanket away from you?

these past two years i've been particularly well off. my boyfriend is the kind any woman in her right mind would marry in a second. sensitive, thoughtful, the best listener in the world, engaged, can carry on a conversation with anyone, poly-lingual, handsome, smart, compassionate, self-less, generous, traveled, confident, it goes on and on. hell, he's even a photographer and artist. ??? too good to be true, right? perhaps it will hit me when he leaves me in new york in two weeks. not right away. but a couple weeks later.

when i sit across from him at a table over dinner and he's chatting away with our co-worker next to him - having an engaged, adult conversation. i know this is what he needs - a sophisticated woman. someone who's comfortable in their own skin. sincere about their work. an adult. i sit at the table feeling like their teenage kid, interjecting their serious conversation with questions that have nothing to do with what anyone is talking about. "where'd you get that shirt? did you buy it at the same place? in cairo?" i hear myself and cringe. what's wrong with me?

he will find that person. the person who is on the same page as him - who is comfortable with life. who never panics or can't sleep from anxiety. they will have children together. i can't be that person right now. not until i fling off the security blanket and go do what i have to do. give me four years. then, i'll be ready. i swear.

please call me baby

2010-05-28T13:08:00.000-07:00

2nd day of sad. just finished my Eddie Adams Workshop application earlier today. went completely mental on it. I had been kind of working on it for weeks now and today i got so mental i had to just throw in the towel and turn it in. next time i gotta just chill out, lock myself in a room, and trust my gutt. not ask everyone and their mom to double, triple check my edit. i'm tired of this forever second guessing myself.

the truth is i'm just hard up for a friend. this is year four of isolation. can't tell you how hard it is sometimes. not being able to pick up a phone and say hey - let's go get a drink, let's go get a sandwich - this one's on me. goddamn.

i'm stocking up on savings. I shouldn't be depressed. should be proud as all hell. i've got all these little jobs on the side too, outside of finishing up at ARCE. Writing for a fodors travel book and a photo shoot for the african bank of development. But it all means nothing if you got no one to share it with.

A tattoo upon my arm: Happiness only real when shared.

resilient

2010-05-22T07:22:00.001-07:00

There's a little girl that comes to my door almost every day
now, shouting my name. I give her fruit or water or steal
meat and rice from the research center across the street.
we can barely communicate, but at least i can help her out.
she's forever on the streets going for tourist's money.
her parents live in aswan, probably drug addicts. she has
no shoes. one time she came around with a head wound
and owen washed it out and shaved the hair around it
disinfected it. She was running from the cops and banged
her head running under a car to hide. Later she went to the
hospital and they gave her stitches. She's always happy though,
always smiling. Resilient, really.

lighting out

2010-05-19T13:32:00.000-07:00

The word "safari", in Shahili, means "journey"; it has nothing to do with animals. Someone "on safari" is just away and unobtainable and out of touch.

Out of touch in Africa was where I wanted to be. The wish to disappear sends many travelers away. If you are thoroughly sick of being kept waiting at home or at work, travel is perfect: let other people wait for a change. Travel is a sort of revenge for having to leave messages on answering machines, not knowing your party's extension, being kept waiting all your working life -- the homebound writer's irritants. Being kept waiting is the human condition.

I thought, Let other people explain whree I am. I imagined the dialogue:
"When will Paul be back?"
"We don't know."
"Where is he?"
"We're not sure."
"Can we get in touch with him?"
"No."

Travel in the African bush can also be a sort of revenge on cellular phone and fax machines, on telephones and the daily paper, on the creepier aspects of globalization that allow anyone who chooses to get his insinuating hands on you. I desired to be unobtainable...

I was going to Africa for the best reason - in a spirit of discovery; and for the pettiest -- simply to disappear, to light out, with a suggestion of I dare you to try and find me.

Home had become a routine, and routines make time pass quickly. I was a sitting duck in my predictable routine: people knew when to call me; they knew when I would be at my desk. I was in such regular touch it was like having a job, a mode of life I hated. I was sick of being called up and importuned, asked for favors, hit up for money. You stick around too long and people begin to impose their own deadlines on you. "I need this by the twenty-fifth" or "Please read this by Friday" or "Try to finish this over the weekend" or "Let's have a conference call on Wednesday." Call me, fax me, e-mail me. You can get me anytime on my cell phone, here's the number.

Being available at any time in the totally accessible world seemed to me pure horror. It made me want to find a place that was not accessible at all: no phones, no fax machines, not even mail delivery, the wonderful old world of being out of touch. In other words, gone away.

All I had to do was remove myself. I loved not having to ask permission, and in fact in my domestic life things had begun to get a little predictable, too -- Mr. Paul at home every evening when Mrs. Paul came home from work. "I made spaghetti sauce... I seared some tuna... I'm scrubbing some potatoes..." The writer in his apron, perspiring over his bechamel sauce, always within earshot of the telephone. You have to pick it up because it's ringing in your ear.

I wanted to drop out. People said, "Get a cell phone, use FedEx, sign up for Hotmail, stop in at Internet cafes, visit my Web site..."

I said no thanks. The whole point of my leaving was to escape this stuff, to be out of touch. The greatest justification for travel is not self-improvement but rather performing a vanishing act, disappearing without a trace. As Huck put it, lighting out for the territory.

Africa is one of the last great places on earth a person can vanish into. I wanted that. Let them wait. I have been waiting far too many times for far too long.

- Paul Theroux, Dark Star Safari

When comes my moment to untether?

2010-05-19T08:27:00.000-07:00

Russia has been in my thoughts again. Here's a well-known passage from Pushkin's Evgenii Onegin that I memorized for the class back at Reed College. It spoke to me, for obvious reasons. Of course it's lost in translation, and I ditched trying to translate it myself because trying to communicate the meaning but keep the rhyming scheme at the same time would take some time, so I've included two different translations here that do the trick. It's mostly the restless feeling of wanting to get out of a place, of hungering heavily to set out. To set out again. I've been trapped inside for what seems like weeks - the heat is here 100 to 115 degrees everyday and up until my date of departure. I've been feeding some fantasies of briefly visiting Russia before returning home to the US, even after I told myself I wouldn't! We'll see. White nights are very much in effect there. As I'm told, it's that time of year again when couples wander the streets into all hours of the night, making out in public and bearing all kind of flesh, where the streets are decorated with broken glass and the scent of urine. i know it doesn't sound like much to you, but I will always be nostalgic for the place.

Придет ли час моей свободы?
Пора, пора! - взываю к ней;
Брожу над морем, жду погоды,
Маню ветрила кораблей.
Под ризой бурь, с волнами споря,
По вольному распутью моря
Когда ж начну я вольный бег?
Пора покинуть скучный брег
Мне неприязненной стихии
И средь полуденных зыбей,
Под небом Африки моей,
Вздыхать о сумрачной России,
Где я страдал, где я любил,
Где сердце я похоронил.

Will ever come my freedom, treasured?
It’s time, It’s time! – I call for this!
Roam by sea; wait for some weather,
And lure sails of the distant ships.
Under the storms, with fast waves vying,
Along the waters, freely lying,
When will I start my blessed race?
It’s time to leave the boring place
Of nature that appears so alien,
And midst my African wide lands,
Between blue skies and flaming sands,
To sigh about Russia, sullen,
Where I had suffered and loved,
Where I had buried my heart.

When comes my moment to untether?
it's time! and freedom hears my hail.
I walk the shore, I watch the weather,
I signal to each passing sail.
Beneath storm's vestment, on the seaway,
battling along that watery freeway,
when shall I start on my escape?
It's time to drop astern the shape
of the dull shores of my disfavour,
and there, beneath your noonday sky,
my Africa, where waves break high,
to mourn for Russia's gloomy savour,
land where I learned to love and weep,
land where my heart is buried deep.

letter to mom on her 61st

2010-04-05T06:04:00.000-07:00

Happy birthday dearest mama!

I picked this book for you because I've become engrossed in everything Scott Carrier has to say. He is the author. He does regular radio shows for NPR's this American Life, which I listen to almost every day and I've listened to hundreds of programs, but his voice always stands out to me. Running After Antelope was even one of the stories he did on NPR. I fell in love with this it. There's something very raw about all of them. Always the common thread of getting back to nature, of wanting to live close to the land the way primitives did and blocking out the modern world. I think you and Scott have that in common, ma. I'm really glad I was raised by someone so captivated by the natural world - all the camping, the hiking; it has rubbed off on me. I've yet to do the same amount of camping as you, but it is what I want to do. It's what I'm always fantasizing about. Somewhere in the background a future in river-guiding may be waiting for me.

Here is the link so you can listen to the radio story: http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/80/Running-After-Antelope

This is just one of many of his shows. Here is a list of all his This American Life contributions: http://www.thisamericanlife.org/contributors/scott-carrier
If you have time, you should give them a listen. You can totally download the shows, burn it to a CD and listen to it in the car on a long car ride. Like if you are driving to visit Nicole or Jaime for example. It makes the time fly. I listen to them everyday while I'm doing my talatat blocks. Only 800 something left...

It looks like you had a really nice birthday weekend with the whole family. So great to see the whole family together. I miss you guys a lot. Nicole is so pretty these days. Jaime is so good with the kids. You look youthful and pretty and happy.

I think everything will work out with me being a photographer. I just need some time to feel my way through it. It's like this - until I know how something is done, how it works, I feel dumb-founded about how to approach it. I can't quite visualize it. It's not like in school when you were given a paper topic or a math problem and there was a step by step logical way of going about it, this seems different somehow. This real world. But I'm going to figure it out. Have faith in me and I will have faith in me too.

You have my electronic "i owe you" for an afternoon in the garden, and a hiking/camping trip. It will be fun. We can drink hottie tottie's and talk about everything.

I love you,

Sara

travel

2010-03-13T11:30:00.001-08:00

"You think of travelers as bold, but our guilty secret is that
travel is one of the laziest ways on earth of passing the time.
Travel is not merely the business of being bone-idle, but also an
elaborate bumming evasion, allowing us to call attention to ourselves
with our conspicuous absence while we intrude upon other people’s privacy
— being actively offensive as fugitive freeloaders. The traveler is the
greediest kind of romantic voyeur, and in some well-hidden part of the
traveler’s personality is an unpickable knot of vanity, presumption, and
mythomania bordering on the pathological. This is why a traveler’s
worst nightmare is not the secret police or the witch doctors or malaria,
but rather the prospect of meeting another traveler.
Most writing about travel takes the form of jumping to conclusions,
and so most travel books are superfluous, the thinnest, most transparent
monologuing. Little better than a license to bore, travel writing is the
lowest form of literary self-indulgence: dishonest complaining, creative
mendacity, pointless heroics, and chronic posturing, much of it distorted
with Munchausen syndrome."

- Paul Theroux
Ghost Train to the Eastern Star: On the Tracks of the Great Railway Bazaar

build

2010-03-03T12:01:00.000-08:00

I very much want to learn how to build houses. From the ground up to the roof and then through all the small details. After years of sitting in front of the computer editing photos, nothing gives me more satisfaction than to do some work with my hands where you can take a before and after picture and see the real life result of your work. Something someone can live in. Where to begin is the only question...

letter to jessica

2010-03-01T11:06:00.000-08:00

I have been a little anxious lately - wondering about what the next step is as the end of my time in Egypt draws nearer. The project I am working on will probably be finished by May but my contract extends to July. I don't feel ready to go back to America, I'd rather make crazy plans elsewhere.

I'm really excited to hear about the projects you are working on and always impressed. I hear you about getting bored! I know it probably sounds funny to people working 9-5s but they don't see the other side of things, and I know that feeling all to well. I feel the same way about my life in Egypt. Ready for a change of scenery. I'm starting to brainstorm things I could do photo projects on so I think we absolutely must do something together.

I don't have anything spectacular brewing, but some spectacular dreams, and it all started with two people - Jesse Hadden and Manfred. Let me explain. Jesse mentioned a bike trip him and his gf took from portland to his hometown in Montana on bike. Having never done a big bike trip I thought this was the coolest thing ever, and we agreed to do a big bike trip this summer around August. We'll see. Then while living in Egypt I met this dude Manfred, a traveler from Vienna, Austria. He has basically been driving all over Africa for the last 6 years. He drove from Vienna. The man is great. His blog is here: http://www.thisfabtrek.com/home/tfthome.php It is a never ending journey. You can really get lost on this page. Currently I believe he is in Jerusalem. Ok, so after meeting him it became clear to me. I must to a cross-continental africa trip. Then I asked my mother to bring this book to Egypt with her "Dark Star Safari: Overland from Cairo to Cape Town" by Paul Theroux. I figured the more I can read about such a trip the more all be inspired/informed. So there's that trip looming in my mind Cairo to Capetown. But now lately I've been thinking, it doesn't necessarily have to be a road trip. There's company's like this: http://www.tourdafrique.com/epictours/tourdafrique/in-depth that do the whole trip on a bike! Mind you they are averaging 77 miles a day (GASP) and charging an arm and a leg ( they cook for you and protect you against catastrophy) but one could take on a similar trip on one's own... it would just be terribly difficult. These guys also do a trip from St. PEtersburg through Europe by the Baltic Coast to the Adriatic Sea! Basically I have a whole lot of fuzzy ideas about cross continental travel. I even listened to a pod cast about some dudes who rode their horses across America. Amazing.

Now, in terms of stories? Let me see here.

• 20somethings not making it in the American economy and looking elsewhere (us. . .)
• Burnesh of the Balkans: Women who lead their lives as men (from CBC Dispatches podcast)
• The Roma Gypsies in Rome
• Locals being fucked by the tourist industry everywhere (i.e. people'se houses being bulldozed now in Luxor for some phoney archeology)
• an in-depth look at a Native American community ( i.e. the one living on the outskirts of the G. Canyon)
• Inuit Indians being screwed by the white man in northern Canada (have a buddy who is working to defend their rights in canada)
• New Orleans. . . now
• The Amish – the gap year where they go out into the world and fuck shit up
• Trash island http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pacific_Garbage_Patch
• Nauru: the world’s smallest island nation (8square miles) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naur

Bringing video, photo, and good writing (you) together we could make one of these happen. Some of them have been done as radio stories, some as TV stories. But the fact is there are stories everywhere. Anywhere we want to go we can make it happen.

There must be a way to combine an amazing bike/road trip with a photo/story. We just have to figure it out and attack it.

What is floating around in your head? Do you have a timeline for India? Have you been to goa? sounds like such a weird place.. i taught english to a russian lady who ran a club there. it sounds like maybe it would be really annoying compared to the rest of india. are there stories to cover there? problem is i've got friends in all different places - New Zealand, Africa, India, gotta pick a place. . . So let me think

Best,

Sara

mantra

2010-02-05T02:26:00.001-08:00

we have everything we need.

that's the mantra running through my head as the kitten runs laps around the apartment, the speaker blares the best beats, tummy full of last nights curry from my favorite genesis pub, and I sit down with a computer full of images to process and post. i even found someone to swear in russian and drink vodka with, waxing nostalgic all the way home.

New Year's Resolutions.

2010-01-21T12:08:00.000-08:00

Stay the fuck away from the internet. Read books. Study the crap out of Arabic (everyone in the Middle East can understand Egyptian Arabic) Learn to play the guitar again. Learn all the Ray Lamontagne, Bon Iver, and Leonard Cohen you need to sing your heart out. Cross-continental african road trip. Cross-country American bike trip. Get yer wilderness first response training - get over your fear of the river. Get comfortable living alone (work your ass off). Cook. Don't spend money on things - make things. Write snail mails. Keep books.

The world works in mysterious ways.

2010-01-15T05:00:00.000-08:00

As Owen says, "when it rains it pours." Damn straight. This week has been a showering of unexpected, impossible events. Let me make a list.

1. Our photos of Cairo appear in this months edition of CNN Traveller Magazine.
2. I met an amazing Austrian traveler who has been traveling through Africa for 5 years and we got to kick it and exchange music collections. I think he is my new hero.
3. My Egyptian/American friend Mona was busting ass to get into the Gaza Freedom March but like everyone else, couldn't hack it, so ended up coming for a splendid weekend Luxor visit.
4. My friend Mark also just so happens to be in Luxor visiting.
5. I somehow ended up in a National Geographic television show about the ancient Syrian city of Cutna which they filmed here in Luxor on the 13th and the 14th.
6. The German film crew working on the show were positively hilarious and we had ourselves a glorious time singing karaoke and dancing till 2 in the morning at Genesis. Twas one of those days that goes down in the book as almost unreal.

Details to follow.

i still exist

2010-01-01T11:44:00.000-08:00

its day one. January first 2010. a new decade. probably the finest to come. this is the decade where i fall in love, where i finally pick a career, where i settle down (?), have kids, where i get around to all those important things. probably.

(NOTES FROM YESTERdAY, 12;31,09 1st day back in Egypt after vacation in Uganda)

being back in Cairo is depressing. would much rather be anywhere else - America, St. Pete's, Kampala. ANywhere. Things with Owen are completely stagnant. feel suffocated. we spend the day walking in silence. ready for different company. ready for a change of scene. uganda was so green & fertile. a paradise. And the white water rafting was unlike anything I've ever experienced. Truly unbelievable. Leaving the Kampala airport I felt like Africa has so much more to offer - that I really need to find a way to get back there.

(Today, 1/1/10)

triumvirate of Denis, Jesse, and the New Zealander boatman from the Uganda white water trip - Kamo - in my dreams - i'm getting back to the people I miss & love. This memory of Kato instills the same feelings all over that I had leaving the Grand Canyon - wanting to throw myself in my boatman's lap & declare my love, to live on his boat forever. Back then is was nearly pre-pubescent. Now i'm technically an adult, rounding 27 years & I'm filled with the same emotion after just one day on the water. Fast-talking, quick witt, non P-C, hilarious, rugged, fuck-it attitude - it gets me everytime. hard to find time to write or be alone even for a moment. owen showers & I scribble this down.

"Concentrate upon Uganda" was the quote from Winston Churchill painted on the bathroom wall at Adrift. The source of the Nile is indeed a big prize. Pretty sure I'm not man enough to work white water in AFrica. At least I'd have to build up my balls somewhere else - perhaps in the Canyon. The idea of photojournalism as a career is still foggy - still haven't arrived at it & can't evaluate if it's what I want. Of course, I would love to drag J. to the canyon or Africa but these are petty dreams.

Things to do when I get back: write Kyle about this summer. Research other long rafting trips:Nepal? Tibet? New Zealand? Write back to Jimmy about rafting in Uganda/Africa. Write to J's friend who rafted n the US. Research UGandan music. Stop wasting money on expensive gifts/records. Summer plans - summer plans are what I don't have - if I could get in the Canyon for 2 weeks that would be ideal. Otherwise I should look for some stories - head down to New Orleans - meet up with Serene. Call & contact everyone I've got up my sleeve. Can work on adding archeology & wedding section to my website. Do some things on my own - get back to being self-sufficient. Maybe rent a room somewhere - in San Fran, Nola, or elsewhere.

when i get back to luxor later today I will try to write more about the nile white water. gotta jump a plane in a couple hours. miss you all terrible.

ps - those pictures at the top, not mine. but the same company/boatman that i went down the nile with. ADRIFT. check them out: http://adrift.ug/

california, oh me.

2009-08-04T12:36:00.001-07:00

homemade vietnamese, homemade fruit tarts, best friends, bonfires, capture the flag, lesbo bars, panoramic views.

purge thyself of negative thoughts

2009-07-11T19:37:00.000-07:00

(from a couple days ago)

I feel very discombobulated living out of a bag, with a new phone number where no one can reach me. no vehicle. computer in another state. same dirty pair of underwear & dirty jeans. i wonder how long it will be before i get my energy back. i hate the thought of going back to egypt still in this permanent state of fatigue. i'm also embarrassed that people I haven't seen in so long will have to see me like this - a vegetable. i haven't accomplished much of anything - and that's fine - it's only been a week - but it feels like forever. each day that passes without some kind of accomplishment is a little slap in the face. there are people out there - friends of mine - who are like that, workaholics, always on the ball - always in the game.

i should be a little more careful about coming home and try to take things slower. send less mass emails announcing my arrival and just let time be. disappoint less.

I am trying to learn how to enjoy the small things: sitting on the porch with a book, taking care of myself, learning how to communicate better. Most of all, to learn how to be where I am. Right now the best thing I can do for myself is to not make too many plans - to sleep when I'm tired, to take vitamins, and sleep some more. I have to recognize that I've got all the time in the world. I will get around to being a photojournalist and being on the ball when I'm good and ready. I just have to understand that and all that anxiety about "the clock is ticking" will fall away.

(from today)

Health-wise, I've come full-circle. It's been two months since I came down with tonsillitis. In Egypt I took antibiotics and penicillin. Back here, I'm already on my 2nd course of antibiotics, the same course they started me on two months ago. It's clearly viral and resistant to the antibiotics. that's a no-brainer.

Even though I tested negative for Celiacs disease my mom is convinced if I cut out Gluten from my diet for a month, my immune system will have a chance to recover and I will have my old self back again - energy and all. It seems almost too simple. But it worked for her several years ago. Turned her life around. Now you can't hardly find anything with wheat or gluten in it in the whole house, except for Tom's cereal. So on top of the antiobiotics, the 3,000 mgs of Vitamin C a day, and the probiotics, I'll try to cut out Gluten, which means no beer and whiskey. ??? Good luck right?!

But if i can log on here in a months time and say that my tonsils aren't swollen and I'm not feeling tired all the time, what a blessing that would be. It's almost worth it. All i want, more than anything else in the world, is to have my old healthy self back again. Amen.

i should be sleeping

2009-05-16T11:33:00.001-07:00

but im going to take this opportunity to write. because whenever i'm supposed to be sleeping i don't, and whenever i'm not supposed to be sleeping, i sleep. so fuck it, i guess that's just how i am.

every once in a while, i totally break down. it's part of being me. it usually involves a mixture of sleep deprivation, or just generally always feeling tired, sadness in a depression kind of way, and then all of this almost always leads to some kind of serious sickness. it's my body's way of saying - "here, go take a friggin vacation already, you're hardly doing anything as it is". so here i am with tonsillitis and this is going to sound fucked up but i was actually really grateful when i finally pointed the hot lamp down my throat to find pussy white lumps. because i've been feeling gradually more horrible for a long time. and it went beyond the feeling like i had a pill stuck in my throat, or some sick that wanted to come up. and seeing those little white lumps verified for me that, yes, something is in fact wrong with you, you haven't imagined all of this. it's not all in your head.

because the thing is, i usually start thinking about things - about my life, and then at some point i become convinced that i'm taking the easy road out. that i'm side-stepping my real goals. that in some small way i'm giving up without ever owning up to the fact that i'm giving up.

i mean, ever since i was about 15 or so i knew photography was it for me. i went to one of those summer programs where you do a bunch of artsy stuff and i took a little photo course and i met a photographer and i saw his work and he did a little slideshow of other important photography and i was sold. so for 10 years now i've played with this thing i call my camera and i guess you could say i've done pretty well for myself but sometimes i get convinced that you know i'm always going to be just scraping by and that i don't have the balls to step up to the plate and actually become a real photojournalist. I originally envisioned myself as some Nachtway type, some Shutterbabe character, some Dan Eldon type chick running around post-Soviet Russian republics, the Middle East and Africa, falling in love with photography and people over and over again. Part of me has lived this life, but most of the time I fall victim to the other part of me which insists that I have given up and then I only take the path of least resistance - in this case, a job that requires me to do nothing more than photograph a 16,000 set of homogenous ancient stones over the course of two years simply because it provides a steady income and a home away from America. That part of me will say the same thing for the relationship that I am in - saying that I merely followed the path of least resistance, that something fell in to my lap - something so good, something that makes my life so comfortable, that I took it up without asking myself if it was actually something I could dedicate my heart to.

at some point, my self-esteem just started doing a full on spiraling-down thing following this line of thinking. collapsing in itself exponentially like some dead star farting itself out of existence. i stopped being able to talk, i stopped being able to enjoy myself, and started dragging through each day wondering what was to become of me if this were to go on for another year.

i guess at some point you just make a decision to trust yourself. you decide that you are going to make shit happen and you act on that decision, because really, what else is there? it's so easy for me to fester away in the notion that i am going nowhere with this and that i've made amuck of a glorious opportunity. everyday i see things on the street that if photographed properly, would make for amazing photographs.

in any case, i have at least one more day to sleep and eat antibiotics before going back to work and i'm going to soak it up. my shit is tired.

here comes the sun

2009-05-02T04:23:00.000-07:00

Yeah, I live right off this "Avenue of the Sphinxes". I never really get used to it. I mean its several miles of Sphinxes just sitting out there, crumbling, being climbed on, shat on. I'm going to try and upload more video so people can really get a sense of what this place is like. Owen has a little Canon point and shoot, so this comes in handy.

As you can see, it's getting hotter, but things are really going much better. We really only had one week of total hot spell that was unbearable when I wrote that last entry and then it cooled off and I even got to take a 3 day weekend at a resort in Safaga on the Red Sea, where we did a great deal of snorkeling (amazing coral reef), played random word and hand-slapping games with our Parisian friends, including Asshole, and even a lifesize game of chess. I even got to play the new and improved version of Super Mario Brothers on the car trip back. It was dope. Now we are working 6 day weeks but we work 6.30 - 12 on site so while we do have to get up at like 5.30am we can come home as soon as the heat starts to get to us instead of boiling in it and feeling like we might just faint before making it back to the van. So things are good. Only 2 months to go before the project is over and we can come back to swine-flu infested America.

I can't wait. I have some buddies on the West Cost I'm really looking forward to catching up with and a whole lot of family on the East Coast to catch up with, including the newest member of the family - miss Evelyn Karr, born while I was here. My priority beyond visiting friends is to run a river - either in Canada or the States. Originally I heard about the McKenzie River - which takes a whole month to run, and I said - "that's it - let's go". But apparently the pre-planning is just too extensive to make it happen in our appreviated summer. But there are other good river trips to choose from. And if all goes as planned me and Owen will get back to Egypt early so we can do another feluca boat trip with our Nubian friend Khalid. 4 days just wasn't enough. A 2-week trip would be just right. Only problem is that approaching Luxor and anywhere north of it, you can't get in the water without getting skin disease and what not, so the plan to just skip buying a connecting flight and sail from Cairo to Luxor on the way back isn't so appealing to me. Seems a bit like torture to be on a boat for two weeks getting all warmed up by the desert sun but be forbidden to get in the water. So we'll see. There's still time to work it out.

Do you have specific summer plans I should know about ? I wanna know.

Fleur

after you left

2009-05-01T12:55:00.000-07:00

i lay awake for whole hours
dead eyes & a faint kidney ache
when you kissed me & left i was
dreaming i had been sent back to college
surrounded by 17 and 18 year olds
terrifying
i could not fall back asleep so i
ate cereal & read the news
there is a bartender from north carolina
who spent a year in darfur
and now he raises money to install
clean water systems in Sudan, Cambodia,
Uganda, & other places.
I would like to help.
there is a 90-year old man who does
not think he will make it to 91 and
he has no problem with that.
he says there is no soul & that after he
dies he will be dead. enough is enough.
he says he will live on only in his children,
in his books, in his reputation.
i think he is correct.

Sunstroke

2009-04-14T11:34:00.000-07:00

Before I finish the bit about sailing around for 4 days on a feluca, I just want to say that its finally reached that temperature that makes daily life uncomfortable. We all knew it was coming, I looked it up as soon as I got the job and shuddered to think that I'd be working in the desert, where there is a 0% chance of precipitation and the temperature rarely dips below 100. Today it was around 110 I think. I wouldn't know. I didn't make it past 11am, before I had to go home. I made the mistake of taking a shower last night and then sleeping with wet hair in the AC. We've started sleeping in the guest room because the AC in the bedroom doesn't work. We pushed the two twin beds together and I wear earplugs to block out the noise of children, weddings, cars, and dogs from the street.

It feels kind of like the way it did when I first moved to NYC and I was living in Astoria, broke, in debt, and without an air conditioner. I had to take a shower 3 times a day just to function in that apartment. Thankfully we have air conditioners here, but its funny, if you just stop to turn it off for a moment, you instantly feel hot again.

And so I have gradually become that person that enters the room looking pissed off, looks pissed of or miserable all the while everyone is eating and chatting, and I usually leave looking the same way, unless conversation is capable of lifting me out of this dumpy condition I find myself in. People say each time "are you feeling any better?" to which I reply something along the lines of "I feel hot" because that is all I can think of.

I hate myself like this obviously. It will be interesting to see if I make it to July. It's true, I've never felt to persistently unwell, heavy-limbed and dead-headed in my life. If I do make it to July, it would be a miracle of sorts. I feel bad for the people who have to be in my company like this. At least they know what I was like before it got hot.

We have no water tank at our flat, like we had at ARCE so water bottles must be toted to the flat every couple days. This is wasteful unfortunately and tedious, since we have to drink about 6 liters at work just to stay hydrated. Soon we will have to start getting up earlier to arrive at site by 6.40 or so that we can leave earlier. The sun is already making it impossible to stay until 2pm. Even with a fan blowing on you, the air is warm, and you have the uneasy sensation that you are a cookie baking in an oven. I bring lemons to site everyday because they truly are a life-saver when your electrolytes are gone and you swear you can't drink any more water. Emergen-C will save my life several times over over the next 2 1/2 months. I will ask my friends to bring some back.

Several ARCE employees are leaving this week for 2 weeks in America and I am a little jealous. A break from the heat would do me well and of course some much needed time with family and friends. Chicago House, the other large conglomerate of archeologists and artists have packed up and shipped out, leaving a dozen ARCE employees to waddle around in the heat of the temple uneasily. It would be much more civilized of course, if we could pack up and leave come May, but that's not how things run around here. At least I will have some good stories to tell for when I'm old and gray and my grandkids complain. "You think this is hot? Have I ever told you about the time I worked in Egypt and my face melted off my skull??" and so on. Wait for it.

feluca forever

2009-04-05T05:10:00.000-07:00

I want to live on a feluca boat with a bunch of Nubian dudes and listen to a lot of Arabic, African, and reggae casette tapes.

There's something about boat trips, river trips - it's always really hard to come off them. You leave the boat hesitantly, not really sure if this is the best thing for you. Painstakingly you come to understand that the trip is over and yes, you must return to regular life, to civilization.

after 3 nights and four days on the river, we got off the Nile, with two passengers not feeling quite right. just as we were about to pick up our gear, owen starting barfing over the side of the boat. he barfed some more until he felt normal again and we proceeded to leave and he paid Khalid and we signed the feluca's guest book, thanked our friends, shook hands, and pushed through the hungry Kollesh drivers and got a cab to the station.

TO BE CONTINUED

back on top

2009-03-26T14:12:00.000-07:00

things are good again.

nose to grindstone; grindstone to the ground

2009-03-20T20:30:00.000-07:00

I've gotten a couple letters recently - most of them of the "so what's going on?" variety. It seems I've managed to write a lot on this blog but I've missed conveying what's actually going on with me and what it's like to live here.

2009 thus far has been a year of sickness and exhaustion. I haven't conveyed that because I myself was trying to drive through it and didn't want to admit it. But the truth is I've been sick more often then healthy, with bouts that last for several weeks.

I'm rather fed up with it. Throat raw. Limbs heavy. No energy. Little desire to mingle with my co-workers. Barely enough energy to make it through the day. One day weeks ago, I thought it was on the way out today and then I slept for 12 hours, got up, showered, got dressed, ate lunch and went back to bed. Not feeling it.

I guess I've avoided writing about it because I don't want to meditate on it and I don't like myself in this state. Everyday is the same - up at 6.45, to work at 7.15, back at 2. Shower, eat lunch, try to fall asleep and take something for head. sleep until evening. get up. work on talatat (process photographs and upload to server for the Egyptologists), eat dinner. work on talatat. sleep. repeat.

The hardest part about this is that there is so much going on here. If I were coming into this place with the sole purpose of shooting - I would have endless resources - life on the Nile, the orphanage that I discovered not so long ago, the Copts vs. the Christians, gender issues (big time), the whole gamut of important and interesting social documentary projects. Having to shoot blocks every day for 6 hours and then edit them on a computer for 3 more kind of destroys me in a sense - slowly I've come to run purely on auto-pilot; I'm getting through the days, I guess you could say, but the "I" isn't all there - isn't the same. I also noticed that up until yesterday I haven't written a damn thing for myself - more evidence of the fact that I've locked up inside. I make lists of things I intend to do in my spare time but the weekends are typically filled with sleeping, catching up, and trying to break out of this stuckness with some activity out of the house.

So - I want to apologize - I need to do something to come back down to earth, to get healthy, to feel like a person again and once I do that I can be a good friend again. I'm really fortunate to have people that care about me and ask and genuinely want to know how it's going and what it's like and I want to be able to do a better job of conveying that. Sometimes it requires waking up and putting the pen down onto the paper - there are some things computers can't capture first hand. (This was originally written in my book for the sole purpose of getting it out onto the paper and copied into this blog).

So what is it like? Right now it's not so good because I'm on autopilot, feet dragging, there is no time or energy for exercise, for Arabic, for photography, for writing, for love, for bike riding. But I will get out of this.

Owen is good, he is trying to figure out a way to bring me back. Obviously I'm the only one who can do this. His uncle and cousin are going and a 3-day feluca trip in Aswan is in route. Not sure what this will be like - I don't want to put on a face. I can only be myself now. I hope the water and the fresh air cure me and I can be a pleasant person to be around again.

I'll try to write about what it's like to live in Luxor, Egypt in my next post. Give me some time.

can't find the time to find the time

2009-03-14T06:20:00.000-07:00

SO much has happened.

Let me chronicle them one by one.

1. We went to Dahab and Aswan in December (I wrote about that a little before).
2. Owen put the moves on during the overnight train to Cairo.
3. I got super sick during Thanksgiving and barfed up my dinner multiple times.
4. My sister gave birth to her second daughter: Evelyn Ruth Karr.
5. The ARCE compound started to feel like a police state.
6. Work got insane.
7. Me and Owen moved into a new flat together.
8. My boss got fired and his wife, my other boss, resigned.
9. A bomb went off in Cairo.
10. Me and Owen got hired for another year.
11. I paid off all my grad school debt.
12. I turned 26 and Owen and 7 others here in Luxor took an epic early morning cruise over the Nile in a hot air balloon.
12. I thought I was pregnant and almost lost my mind.
13. I got THREE pieces of mail, one of which was a package (THANK YOU GABBY, LAURA, AND CLAIRE!).
14. I have had no time to do anything except work.

Phew. Ok. Let's start with numbers 4 and 5. Remember that bit about "the doubling" - when I had to start shooting twice as many blocks as I had been shooting? Well after that shit got even crazier. After increasing our production at the talatat magazine by 400% going from 20 blocks a day to upwards of 80-100, our "project director" came to us telling us that we should really be doing about 300 blocks a day. This was a little jarring, considering we only have about six hours to actually work at the magazine once you take out our breakfast break and the time it takes to set up and put everything away - and at that rate we'd have to take a block out of the magazine, clean it off, conserve it, number it, document it, photograph it and put it back in approximately 70 seconds. The fucked part of this is that we actually were forced to kind of go along with this and make preparations as if we could actually accomplish this.

Let me explain, the said project director was a little bit off. This is someone who isn't an Egyptologyst and had no degree in anything relating to antiquities. In fact, he previously worked as a manager in big oil. And he pretty much took the same approach with us, as long as you are out there producing the right numbers you are doing your job. Basically, all concern for the real job at hand: conserving, documenting, photographing, "researching" was kind of not his concern. I was pretty flustered by all of this. I kind of had a really bad month. I got sick at some point during all the madness of it all and couldn't get better. One day it got to the point where I could barely walk so I left the magazine and caught a cab home and only came back halfway through the workday the following day. The sickness stuck around for 3 weeks.

So how do you go from 70 blocks to 300? Number one - you get Owen in on it, take him away from his three other projects and make him come to the talatat magazine at least two days a week. Number two, instead of shooting blocks one at a time on one table, you get three more tables made and shoot on four at once. But since you can't buy [read: don't want to spend your money on] 3 more sets of fancy Swiss Elinchrome studio lights you just get your photographers to use house lamps. That's right. Owen took it upon himself to make several trips to Luxor's one and only "hardware store" or something that resembles a hardware store to inspect what kind of lights and bulbs were available so he could rig up something strong enough to light the blocks with. I kind of scoffed at all of this.

From a photographer's point of view, it is totally ridiculous to be asked to shoot with household lamps when you've thus far photographed over 2,000 blocks very carefully and systematically using top-of-the-line studio lamps to pick up the blocks every detail and fine relief. I mean, we're talking hieroglyphs and relief carvings that are around 3,000 years old. This isn't a job for Ikea and they don't even have that here.

In any case, this went on for some time, we ordered two more tables to be made, Owen screwed around with the lamps from our apartment and a bunch of tin foil to no end and I cursed under my breath.

The strange thing about the PD (Project Director) is that no one really recognized him as such. There was a plaque on the door that said that was his job, but the archeologists and Egyptologysts certainly didn't consider him to be their superior in so far as he knew little to nothing about their projects or their historical significance.

We had one meeting with said director where he basically had pulled us in to say, "you know, I've been fired from a couple jobs because of lack of communication with the director... so I'm just going to let you in on a little secret here - check in with me from time to time. You know, come in once a day, or even once and week and tell me how it's going, what is working, what isn't. If there's one thing I've learned over the years it's that communication is really important."

Now if this were coming from anyone else, I would have thought to myself "of course! my mother would have told me the same thing! how silly of me.." but coming from him it felt a little hypocritical because it was really part of his job to "manage" and in order to "manage" you have to be there from the beginning, you have to have an idea of what's going on with your projects from day one, you can't just jump in half way into the deal and say "hey, what's going on? you need to be shooting 5 times as fast as you are now! why aren't you checking in with me? if you don't pick it up now we're going to scrap your project and they're going to throw your precious blocks in the back of a pickup truck and drive them to another city [finger pointing and beat-faced here]. Of course, when several weeks later, he was fired, this whole conversation became even more ironic.

Anyway, during this period of stress and administrative difficulties, the whole ARCE compound became like a ship out in the sea. Like a ship in the sense that a small isolated community became ridiculous, everyone had gossip to spread, everyday we heard another update on the absurd situation we were in and once you told one person everyone else immediately knew. The problems were daily: once we were reprimanded for cooking eggs and told that we weren't allowed to buy our own eggs because we were a risk to ourselves. This quickly became a favorite joke amongst all.

Once we got a strangely worded memo about photographic guidelines and were lectured about the dangers of photographing any Egyptians in non-standard lighting. I should really upload this memo. We were told we could be put in jail and that we should remove any pictures from the internet immediately. We politely asked what picture had caused the problem but the PD replied that he could not tell us and that they were all a risk. After this meeting, Owen and I both frantically went through all of our pictures trying to figure out what picture was the problem. We found nothing. We had our flatmates look through them. They found nothing. We later found out the real reasons for this memo/meeting - a complaint from the PD's secretary about a picture that she found and didn't approve of that we had in fact taken with and at the PD's encouragement on the roof during our first week of work. This rendered the whole thing totally ridiculous and un-called for.

Once we got a memo in our email accounts entitled: "A reminder about the purpose of the ARCE residence" which told us again that we couldn't cook our own eggs, that we shouldn't take too much food from dinner, that we couldn't use the laundry room after 8pm, and that we shouldn't become overly familiar or friendly with the staff and that we were listening to our music too loudly. Here are some of my favorite quotes from this memo:

"Although ARCE intends that its residence may be as comfortable as home . . . ARCE employees are reminded that the residence is not their personal space, but is in fact a hotel facility. Complacency and excessive familiarity with the residence and its staff can be an unfortunate psychological result of living in a hotel environment for an extended period of time"

That last bit is my favorite.

This too:

"In order to control hygiene standards, food prepared in this facility will be prepared by our kitchen staff. Residents are welcome to provide suggestions to the facility manager for supplemental menu items. Residents are also welcomed to vary their diet at any one of Luxor’s fine restaurants."

The bit about suggestions to the menu was particularly comical to everyone at ARCE. The menu had become kind of unbearable. See the thing is Egyptian food is fantastic. Everyone loves it. Everyone except the PD. He was convinced that having the Egyptian cook prepare Egyptian food will physically make ARCE's residents sick. As a result, he made the cook prepare Western food, but since the cook is Egyptian, it's kind of a strange version of what you usually encounter. Hence the grilled cheese consisted of a thick piece of bread with American cheese on it. No grilling involved. Just like that. Fajita consisted of a piece of pita bread with fried peppers and feta cheese. Pasta consisted of a full plate of the same white curly pasta with a teaspoon or two of sauce. Needless to say, day in and day out, this got a little frustrating.

Now I'm not complaining. The ARCE facility is amazing. Almost breath-taking. When I found out I was going to be working in Luxor, Egypt, I imagined a plain barren room with a simple cot and maybe a lamp for reading in the middle of the desert. When you arrive at ARCE you are taken away by the downright luxury of it all - the huge mahogany dresser, the Japanese styled window, the Queen size bed, the European bathroom equipped with a bidet (that no one uses). The point is that it became clear that ARCE funds were happily poured into the building itself where we were living but with great hesitation when it came to actually supplying ARCE projects with necessary amenities such as wood trays for damaged talatat blocks, new mastabas, and shelving. And in terms of the meals, the PD just basically decided that his sensitive stomach or whatever scared him about Egyptian food gave him the right to make things miserable for everyone else in a way that they really didn't need to be. From day one, Owen and I and others suggested maybe just letting the Egyptian cooks just cook what they know how to cook (fabulous chicken, fish, and other meat dishes which are tastier than god). But he basically knocked our suggestions unanimously, explaining that Egyptian food was liable to make residents ill. Huff.

One of the funniest things about this memo and other memos is the way in which it makes us look like a big company. We are about a dozen people. The tone of these memos and emails just never seemed appropriate to me. There were half a dozen other things - like locking the door and changing the lock on the door that connected our office/Owen's bedroom to the exit which forced us to bring our photo gear through the cafe at the end of each day into the offices and caused a fire hazard as well. I don't know. It's not so interesting any more because said PD is gone and I can forget about all this now. But I remember when every single incident felt just like icing on the cake of a totally ridiculous situation. Indeed, there are somethings I just dare not bring up.

Here's a new one from today: The PD came by the labratory one day where Sayeed - the Egyptian who translates lectures all day works. He asked Sayeed if the lab needed anything - Sayeed responded that they really needed a copy machine so the students could have copies of the worksheets. "A coffee machine!" the PD thought, "a great idea!" The next week a top-notch coffee maker was installed in the lab. It was until much later the much-needed copy machine materialized.

Anyway, stay with me for more news.

letter to an old studio photography prof at SVA

2009-03-11T11:13:00.000-07:00

De Lessio!

Hey is this still your address? Try real hard to remember me, this
is Sara Lafleur-Vetter I took your studio class at SVA 2005-2006,
tall, skinny, rough around the edges. We have to talk. I've since
been hired to work for the American Research Center in Egypt.

I've been living in Luxor, Egypt since October and I'm on contract
till about July 2010 it looks like. Guess what my job is? After not paying
any damn attention to studio photography I got the job of photographing
16,000+ ancient Egyptian blocks with fine relief hieroglyphs and
imagery. That's irony for ya, screw Alanis Morisette.

Anywho, please write back and tell me you are still at this email address
and we can have some correspondence. That would be swell.

I'm currently at about 4,000 blocks. So, I've got a ways to go.

Best,

lafleur

I can receive mail

2009-02-09T07:09:00.001-08:00

Sara Lafleur-Vetter
ARCE
2 Midan Simon Bolivar
Garden City, Cairo
Egypt 11461

After not receiving a drawing my friend Dominic sent me in my first week, I assumed, along with other stories that I'd heard that I could not receive mail. Then a couple weeks ago Owen got this nice package with chocolate, food, and a cd and some photos and so I think it's safe to give it a shot. In any case it would be rad to get anything at all. Even if its just a piece of mail art to put on my wall.

A Day in the Life

2009-01-10T12:50:00.000-08:00

Christian: How the job going? How much of the language have you picked
up? How's the food? Is there a night life? Let me know.

Sorry for not responding sooner. I got overwhelmed all of a sudden, stressed out, exhausted, ill. My to-do list forever teeming with things I said I'd do.

The job is going well. But a big change has happened in the past couple weeks. I work at a "talatat magazine" - a dusty storage facility for ancient Egyptian blocks attached to Khonsu Temple at Karnak. I'm not going to get into the history and significance of the temple here, but I will say that these blocks were re-used in different periods under different Egyptian kings such that many of them have inscriptions or hieroglyphs on more than one side, and such that one side can be right side up and then you rotate the block and the next side is upside down. Hmm. Up until a couple weeks ago we were working at a leisurely pace, I would photograph the blocks as they came to me. Before they get to me they must be removed from high stacks from inside the magazine, rolled out to our conservators where they dust them off and apply various chemical agents, epoxy on the parts that are falling off and then when they are satisfied they send the block off to our Egyptologists, who take notes on all the things they can: color, what kind of hieroglyphs or imagery or relief is present, what kind of state the block is in, etc etc. When they are all done they paint on some more chemicals "a patch" which must dry and then paint on a 6 digit number. After some minutes, the paint would dry, I would photograph it and then it would get sent back into the magazine. I was shooting 20-something blocks a day like this. With time in between to sit down with my workers and learn some Arabic with a child-size chalkboard and some chalk.

And then. And then word got around that we were working altogether too slow. 16,000 blocks at the rate we were working at would have taken about 4 years. We have 5 months left before my contract expires and they fly me back to America. So Ed, our Egyptologist friend stepped in and we began to brainstorm ways to speed up the process. I remembered in high school those nifty paint markers kids used for graffiti and had a photographer from John Hopkins bring over a dozen. Ed took the conservation paperwork and cut it in half, and lectured the conservators on how each block should take only a few minutes - especially blocks of no apparent significance - plain surfaces with nothing on them. And yes, there are quite a bit of these. Jay - said photographer from John Hopkins also dropped by the magazine to see what my process was and how he could speed up the photography element. So after all this - I'm now shooting 50-60 blocks a day - up to 70 sides. I know maybe this doesn't sound like a lot, but let me explain.

The blocks are heavy. Although they were constructed with the intention of one Egyptian man being able to carry it 3,000 years ago, nowadays most require two people to carry over to my table. Unless you want a hernia. Then the talatat face must be leveled. My table consists of a sandbox on top of a big screw so I can spin the block around to face it to the camera or face the 2nd side. The sandbox makes leveling the rock easier, as I can simply shift the level by shuving sand under one side of the rock, or propping it up with a wooden wedge. Sometimes this whole process takes all of 10 seconds. Sometimes it can take 10 minutes. Since some of the rocks are fragments, you have to find some indicator on the inscription of the rock as to what should be horizontal or vertical - some hieroglyphs, a seemingly horizontal line, etc etc. Sometimes you have to call on the Egyptologists to make this call, sometimes you don't, sometimes you make mistakes and you have to fix it in the computer, or, if the mistake is really bad, you might have to reshoot the block.

In any case, after the block is leveled, we use a mirror to make sure the face of the block is flesh with the camera lens. This involves having one of my workers (I'll talk about them below) hold up the mirror against the rock and looking through the lens and telling them to swivel the table to the left or the right until I see myself in the very center of the frame. It looks kind of like this:

Once this is set up, then we hang a board on the table (we glued a big fat magnet to the back of it) with the 6 digit number of the rock, a color patch, and a small scale to show the size of the block. Then we dust the black fabric off with a paintbrush and a blower brush. Then I shoot the rock. I've got the pavement spraypainted at various places to dictate where the camera should be depending on which way the rock is facing and the same for the Elinchrome lamps I'm using. Until recently I would do a lot of shuffling around, changing the power on the lamps or changing their position until I got the talatat lit exactly the way I want it. But since Jay came by, I've ditched this for the most part. Now I stick with the two to three lighting scenarios, sticking with the spraypaint marks on the ground and only varying this if the rock is exceptionally unusual (sometimes it truly is necessary, or the block is upside down because of fragile areas and has to be lit backwards and flipped in Photoshop). Right.

If there is more than one decorated surface, I do this all over again to the second surface, careful to label the various sides of the rock as A or B or C. I jot the rock number down in my Moleskin, the boys chalk a check onto the top of it, and it goes back onto a table until there are a whole lot of them to be carted back into the magazine and stacked in precariously tall stacks.

Like I said, it used to be twenty-something and now the numbers are more than double that, with the administration telling us that we have to double it again. For those that care, here is the number-crunch from my email to Jay:

"Shooting with Owen on Thursday we got production up to 59 blocks and 106 sides - our best track record thus far. Owen is going to try his best to shoot 2 days a week if possible and this will help to keep the numbers up... This week we shot 242 blocks/319 sides - if Owen could come twice a week and work out the patch issue, I would expect production to be up to 280 blocks a week - 1400 a month. If we have 5 months remaining that puts us in at 7000 blocks - add that to the 1700 or so we've done thus far and we're up to 8700." That's half.

I wish I could convey the manner in which we are running around like maniacs. I bust my ass so hard at work everyday that my butt cheeks chafe. That's a first. I actually have to apply baby powder to my butt after work. All of this doubling has definitely changed the nature of the job. Shooting twice as many blocks means I have to process twice as many - which made for a week of working on the computer until 8, 9, and 10pm. When you start work at 7.30 and finish that late it can really put a dent in you. Hence the sickness. The soar throat that never goes away. Irritability.

Before the doubling happened, I used to do a lot of other things like exercise, yoga, post photos, blog, take Arabic lessons, and ride bikes on the weekend and watch films and such. Since then, this has all been cut and my mood, noticeably, has done a bit of a 180. So the trick will be to find a way to keep the numbers up for shooting and processing but still have a life and get healthy.

Before all this I started writing about the job in more general terms. Read this as A Day in the Life before the "doubling" epidemic happened, when things were still pretty easy-going and life was pretty grand:

"There is a certain monotony to it I suppose, but you would be absolutely crazy to say my job is 'boring'. Yarko (dubbed "the Obi wan Konobi of photography in Luxor - quite possibly all of Egypt")

- a photographer who has been working for here forever took me aside one day to remind me that I have the best job in the world. He's right. I will try to explain to you why this is with little success but aside the point, I really hope my contract is extended so I can have another year here. I'm not ready for America and like many of my fellow-expats, I'm not really sure what the hell I'd do there. I have no interest in Graduate School at this point, or interning for some famous photographer, spending all day Photoshopping or keywording his nice pictures from Afghanistan (almost happened in PA with McCurry), in fact the only thing I can actually see myself doing/pursuing in the States is being a white-water river guide in the Canyon or somewhere else. The more likely route for my future is in another country, with my camera, or with some organization aimed to make shit better. But anyway, back to my job:

I get up at quarter to seven every morning, run downstairs for a glass of juice and a muffin, Ed makes some comment about the economy still being crap and what is your man Obama going to do about it, I scoff at him and grab my gear and jump in the company van, we (used to) swing by a nearby hotel where we pick up a group of Italian conservators, at least one of them having worked on conservation at the Vatican of all places. They all come wearing crisp white jumpers and I hear that at their site in Karnak they have nice little mats set up with nice lighting and tables with coffee and tea. Our space on the other hand is less neat I suppose, a tented area attached to the talatat magazine, where I shoot up to 30 blocks on a good day. This is the "monotonous" part, whereas every other aspect of it is not.

We jump out at Karnak where there's usually two dozen tour buses lined up and the morning light is pouring through the temple.

Tour guides buzz around us speaking everything from French, English, Arabic, Japanese, Italian, Chinese, Russian, and other languages I can't make out. We push through the metal detectors and the crowds with gear in hand taking in the same scene every morning.

I work with two Egyptian guys who are very dear to me. One is a 19 (now 20) year old boy by the name of Mohammed - a name which you can call out on any street corner and get at least 5 people to turn around.

I don't have time to do a full character analysis of Mohammed or even do him any justice here, but let's just say he is very smart, a rebel of sorts, and hyper-active. I have stories to tell about him that I will save for other posts - stories involving weddings, motorcycles, etc. The difficult part for Mohammed is not getting bored. He is forever telling stories, a mile a minute, to Dowop, then at some point during the day, when the last hour or two comes up, he gets bored out of his mind, sometimes sitting down with his head in his hands, clipping his fingernails, doing anything other than working. Which is fine, because at that point, Dowop can take over for the most part.

Dowop is a 30-something year old husband and father. His third daughter was born yesterday at 5am and he showed up for work. That is the kind of person he is. His wife was in the hospital. He stuck around for a couple hours until we told him to go be with his wife and new daughter.

Dowop is obsessed with the word "wahad" which means "one". It's wahad miraya (one mirror), wahad forsha (one brush), wahad mezan (one level), wahad Owen, wahad Sara, etnein Dowop (two Dowops, because sometimes he holds up the mirror and there are two of him - philosophical right?). Sometimes the wahad game gets a little old and unravels into absurdity - wahad wahad (one one), wahad kewayis (one good), and he will start talking to himself about various things with wahad in front of it.

Each time we saw Dowop last week we would ask him if the third baby is here yet, and he would say la lesa - no not yet. We jokingly told him that if it turns out to be twins he can give us one baby since he only wants one (wahad bes - just one).

Dowop is hilarious. He has definitive facial expressions and a way of talking and smacking his lips together and a definitive tone of voice that I wish I could convey to you. Sometime I'm going to have Owen video tape our breakfast so that I have a record of this.

Everyday around 10am whoever went out to fetch breakfast arrives back with a couple plastic bags heavy with goodness. For two Egyptian pounds (40 cents), we get a meal of kings consisting of a falafel-type sandwich called "tamia" - super fried bean balls

inside the most amazing pita I've ever tasted with tomato, lettuce, green onion, sometimes some white feta-like cheese, and always some fruit jam. All of this is plopped down on a plastic tarp on the temple grounds that we sit on and happily munch away. this is followed by tea with milk and sugar as we sit among ancient blocks telling stories and trying to communicate in broken Arabic and cherades.

The best is when tourists are wandering around and they see a bunch of Egyptian dudes plopped down on the ground, dipping pita into plastic bags of beans and jam and then see the lone white girl there, munching away. It all looks pretty funny.

How much of the language have you picked up? How's the food? Is there a night life? Let me know. Sorry, but this will have to wait till next time. 11pm is here and my throat is collapsing in on itself and my head is throbbing so I've got to call it a night. Sis - I hope this suffuses for never writing you enough or posting enough. Good news is me and Owen are going to get our own flat soon, which is going to improve our situation immensely. More on that later. Thanks to everyone for being patient and not getting too pissed when I don't respond to emails or write about "what it's really like". I intend to post to this religiously. Thanks for reading. Love, Fleur.

forever young

2009-01-10T12:46:00.000-08:00

I have just finished watching the entire catologue of Gabby Miller's YouTube videos - everything from Pandas fighting in the gym, pandas in the library and at the lesbo club, to Gabby's grandmother wishing everyone a Happy New Year, reciting the Ballad of Yukon Jake or the player piano playing music recorded in 1922 from Millerama. For those of you don't know, Gabby Miller was someone I went to school with at Reed College. We met my Junior year when I returned from Russia in the spring, and then we lived together in a house called The Stables my senior year. She was and remains one of my favorite people on the face of the earth. Sitting here watching the videos, I have come to the realization, and maybe I've known it all along, that the people I met at Reed are people that will remain my favorites forever. There is something about the people I met there that make them most valuable. Aside from a particular best friend in Philly and my family members, they constitute that one circle of friends that I will always come back to. And now that we have all graduated and entered the real world, it's kind of funny to see where we all ended up:

Gabby goes back and forth between California and Vietnam, Serene opened up an art gallery in post-Katrine New Orleans, Sunny Daly is studying in Cairo, Egypt, Jesse is organizing lunch-ladies in Oregon and playing music, Layla is baking vegan goods in San Fran (as far as I know), Keith spent two years in Prague studying film, Babbits is living the dream in Portland at the Fridge soon to take a roadtrip with me across the states in summer 2009, Dan Denvir is living in Quito, Ecuador playing journalist/community organizer protesting all things evil and leading Caterwaul Quarterly (which I'm proud to help out with) while his girlfriend Thea holds down the fort in Philly studying for her PHd, let's see... Wilkes is somewhere on the West Coast getting his photography on magazine covers and being too busy to communicate, Julia Bean works for a neon light co. in NYC making rad signs for companies like Adidas, Jacob and Hana, who've got the most amazing track record of all: traveling from New Zealand, Indonesia, across America, and back again to Indonesia, etc etc.

But then there is also the extended network of non-Reed friends that I have kept in touch with: among them Laura - my friend in Germany, Bryan who has recently re-located to Columbia/Venezuela, Sean in NYC, Simona my friend in Morocco, and all my friends in Russia: Denis, Alexey, Albina, Rushina, etc. I feel well-rounded because of this.

I suppose living here amongst archeologists/adult peoples has done me some good in that I can pretend to be more like them, to begin to understand their mannerisms and speech patterns, to begin to take on responsibility and have a real job, but there is also the recognition - in a positive sense - that I know who my people are. My biggest fear, I know now, is being normal. I started to tell myself that I was "becoming adult" and slowly liking the idea of "adulthood" and accepting it as not so bad. Now I'm not being nostalgic in the slightest, I just want to state for the record that being away from friends for three years or so has led me to understand how much I love and respect them - for all their weird behavior, for the way in which you can't really guess what they are going to do or say next, and I will always understand this as the only way to be. It's ingrained in me and it was rather foolish to think I could take it out or tell myself that taking it out was the right thing to do.

What made me realize this? It was many things. It was the reunion with Sunny Daly in Cairo, it was watching all of Gabby's YouTube videos from way back then, it was sharing the stories of the good old days with a new friend, it was playing strip poker for the hell of it last night for the first time since that spring break weekend we took up to Canon beach back in 2005 with Gabbers, Layla, Gene, Jesse, and Isabelle. I do believe that I will remain a child at heart forever and I accept this with great joy.

80 birds with one stone

2008-12-22T12:16:00.000-08:00

i started writing this a couple weeks ago and didn't finish it. that's what happens with most everything that isn't my regular work here at the American Research Center - or "arsee" as we refer to it in our daily laments and litanies.

i've gotten a lot of emails and been generally overwhelmed with my inability to respond. As I told my friend Bryan:

"Everytime I try to write an email I get derailed because I can't send it until its a complete thought and I never get around to making a complete thought. So now i'm like half a dozen thoughts backed up. I don't know if i can finish this thought because its late and i never get enough sleep. But i have a blog that I never have time to post to and only my mom reads apparently and at some point i'm going to just have to give up on responding to emails and respond to them in my blog. Then I can kill like 80 birds with one stone." So here goes. I will try to make this blog a place where I answer questions and capture what it’s really like.

4am my dreams are intermingled with the sound of Arabic prayers droning out of a loudspeaker. it's Friday morning before the Eid holiday, I've gone to bed just hours ago, and my dreams are drowned now in this muffled shouting. I am jolted from the mostly sensical world of my dreams into the sometimes nonsensical always magical place that is Egypt, this place that I live in and love. Allah Akhbar.

The prayers today are especially aggressive. It's "Friday's sermon" or "Friday's rant" as my housemate says. It sounds kind of like the 3rd Reich, a political rant, or a Pink Floyd song from The Wall. The megaphone definitely takes prayer to a different place. Pam, my housemate, is convinced he's screaming at the top of the lungs about how to slaughter goats. They are lined up now at the butcher's in the market, I saw 50 of them or so, driving by in our balidy bus last night, penned up and necks soon to be slit.

"Eid al-Adha" or just Eid for short celebrates Ibrahim's (or Abraham depending on which side of the fence you stand) near sacrifice of his son to Allah (or God). According to the Koran and not far off from the Biblical version, "the devil tempted Ibrahim by saying he should disobey Allah and spare his son. As Ibrahim was about to sacrifice his son, Allah intervened and instead provided a ram as the sacrifice. This is why today all over the world Muslims who have the means to, sacrifice an animal (usually a goat or a sheep), as a reminder of Ibrahim's obedience to Allah. The meat is then shared out with family, friends (Muslims or non-Muslims), as well as the poor members of the community. (Islam names Ishmael as the son who was to be sacrificed, whereas the Judeo-Christian name Isaac)." Thank you wikipedia.

Nicholas: On a scale of 1 to 10 you ask - how do you rate it in terms of magic?

At least a 9 or a 10. There is magic everywhere. Today it was giant hot air balloons being lit in great numbers outside of Karnak Temple where we work. Leaving the temple complex in the company van, I was so overcome by the spontaneity and the flame and color of it all that I had to get out of the van and tell my co-workers I'd walk home because I couldn't not take pictures. Owen, my friend in photographic jaunts, jumped out to join me. Children swarmed around to watch the torches inflate the mammoth rainbow billows as a dozen men struggled to brace the basket down to the earth, children circling in pairs and threes on bicycles and tugging on my arm to have their picture taken. If you have time to do things other than work, then you can participate in such magic everyday and that is more than enough.

Anxiety?

Maybe a 7 or 8 but it diminishes quickly, after a week or two its not so bad, and after two months its all but gone. I should point out that this is specifically Luxorian anxiety, as Cairo has its own version. Being home to some of the world's most amazing Egyptian antiquities, you can't escape the tourist culture here. The collective inertia of thousands of years of tourism has left a permanent stain on this town, and the initial weeks in Luxor can be crushing. You cannot leave the flat without being haggled by at least a dozen people.

The techniques of approaching foreigners, over thousands of years have evolved becoming increasingly more abrupt, short, and aggressive. The questions employed to hook a tourist into your service no longer require full sentences or even a verb, but instead consist of one word - they are more like demands then questions, from "BUKSHISH" with the gesture of an open hand (give me money) to "KALESH?" (want a ride in my carriage) and they are always repeated half a dozen times despite your negative or non-response. They come from children or from carriage riders, taxi drivers, shop owners, shoe shiners, in short, from everyone. At first, such behavior can be maddening. You have no way of waving off these hagglers, no way to communicate that you have been through this routine every day for the past two months and no you don't want to ride in their carriage/taxi/shoeshine chair, no way of regaining your invisible nature – something you took for granted back home.

Last week, determined to get out of Luxor for the Eid holiday, Owen and I planned a trip out to the Red Sea. We chose the more remote of the Red Sea venues, setting our sights on Dahab - which sells itself as the ideal backpacker/diving locale. Cairo confirmed my belief despite it's movie theaters & bowling allies on ships, i still prefer Luxor. One does however quickly tire of the haggling culture that seems to dart at you from every alley, cornerstore, horse carriage, cafe, and felucca dock in Luxor and so its really necessary to get away periodically. Once a month, I’d say, to keep it together.

Outside of its Starbucks and ex-pat McDonalds complete with kiddie slides, Cairo offers the rare opportunity to disappear into the crowd. It’s a strange sensation getting off the train from Luxor - you are no longer a walking neon wallet, fair game for any Egyptian in their favorite sport – which is intricate and employs jokes, lies, and the use of “brother” “friend” and other such things to suggest friendliness.
Each nationality triggers different lines, puns. Traveling with Owen, as soon as people find out he’s from Canada, they always use the “Canada Dry” line – they don’t seem to have much material here. America is a little more of a watershed – they almost ubiquitously mention Obama or Bush, and this is a fun game.

The opportunity to disappear into the crowd in Cairo is an immense relief – getting of the train it’s as if your humanity has been restored. But the smog, the game of frogger required to cross the street & the lack of nature will drive you out quickly.
Our company helped us organize a private microbus to Dahab. Although it ended up costing twice as much as we expected and broke my bank completely, I’d say it was still a good call – the public bus from Cairo to Dahab is known to make excessive stops along the way, turning a 7-8 hour drive into a 17 hour drive. Sounds kind of horrific to me.

So it was a bourgeoisie commute to a backpacker mecca I suppose – somewhat of a contradiction – we dropped over $200 to get from Cairo to the Red Sea – where our room ran us only $20 a night. The ride was bumpy enough to send you leaping out of your sleep every couple miles when the back of the bus jolted over a bump. We started with the AC blasting in our sterile luxurious micro-bus, a strange contrast to regular Egyptian life which is infiltrated with dust – the strong aroma of cologne wafting from our 3 escorts – hair slicked back with gel, forever sporting sunglasses and the same balady cassette tape playing over and over for the first four hours. All of this didn’t faze me in the slightest. The highlight was when we stopped for the restroom and I came out into the convenient store looking for TP and one of our guys was trying to ask me what I wanted, and seemed to communicate that no, they didn’t sell any TP. So I bought some cologne-scented wet wipes & left with a wonderful smelling rear. Then when I stepped outside to get back into the micro-bus the guy came up to me holding a rolling paper, assuming I had asked to buy papers to smoke hash in; I smiled & said no thanks, explaining that I had only wanted papers for the toilet. They then purchased another balady cassette tape, some mango juice, and cookies and we were on our way.

As the sun was setting the mountains moved in – everything dappled in red light and cyan shadows. By the time we got to Sharma Al Sheik – the huge resort town 100km from Dahab – a real life Las Vegas times Disney World plopped right down in the middle of the Egptian desert – it was pitch black. Egyptian drivers, by the way, turn off their headlights while driving at night, a practice which baffles foreigners, the running explanation being that they see it as a way of conserving battery power – and rely on laying on the horns and/or flashing their lights whenever approaching an oncoming vehicle/person/obstacle.

We fly along with the speedometer beeping – the sound only going away when we dropped below 120km up against the balady music it sounded like a hospital heart monitor, communicating that indeed we were alive, but at any moment a family on a motorcycle could appear on the road at the same time as an oncoming truck and the whole thing would just go down ugly.

Bryan: What are things like out there? Still enjoying it? Can you find beer? Are there any stories or series you're working on in addition to the blocks?
I am ecstatic to be here. Honest. The magic hasn’t worn out yet. My previous blog entry spoke of itches yet to be scratched, but I must admit, that at present, I think they are scratched. I really wouldn’t want to be anywhere else right now. It’s been a while since I’ve felt that way, so I’m just kind of waiting for the curtain to fall and wake up from the dream. I know that these things don’t last forever, but I’ve really got all my chips in on getting hired for a second year. Some of my co-workers say its wishful thinking to suppose they’ll extend the project and our contracts another year, but this is my deep and sincere hope.

Beer. Yes, Luxor is infamous for two beers: Luxor and Sakara. Both are mediocre but do-able. I’ve discovered a third beer called Nuba which really takes the cake. It’s a smooth dark beer that tastes strikingly like Newcastle. We’ve been trying to get our hands on the case of the stuff so that we have it back at the flat. Right now we’re finishing up the whiskey that we purchased at the airport on the way in. After that, it might get a little desperate. But you should know that there are bars here. Ex-pat bars.

Genesis – for example - this bar is the thing of legends – it’s run by a Ukrainian woman with typical Slavic temperament and a deadpan expression. Her two kids run about the bar – McKenzie is a two year old girl with curly locks who makes meowing sounds and tugs at her mothers skirt and the boy, a 6 or 7 year old, frequently beats everyone at pool, almost beating me the last time I was there. and she has a huge great dame which takes the couch beside the pool table as its bed. There is also a set of furniture upside down glued to the ceiling, sometimes birds can be seen flying around inside. also the tables are aquariums and they actually have a pool inside the bar which should soon be made available to the public. On top of all this they have karaoke, when the Ukrainian woman isn’t in a PMS mood, you can sing anything from Aretha to Amy Winehouse to Justin Timberlake. All in all, I am a big fan, but I still haven’t worked up the nerve to speak to her in Russian.

Alright. That’s it for now. I have a million more things to talk about, adventures in Dahab, adventures in work and in play, but I’m averaging 4 hours a sleep a night this week, so things gotta change.

PS - some dude that works in the kitchen who is our buddy gave me this gallabeya as a present which is bright orange and has a hoodie and says 7 ELEVEN across it with a buttload of sequence. America, just you wait.

un-scratched

2008-12-16T14:01:00.000-08:00

but beneath it all there's an itch that never gets scratched. sometimes it feels useless to even start something that you know you won't finish. it's in every aspect of my life at this moment - living on the fly. not being able to properly respond to letters, to follow up with different projects/plans, not actually having human relations with anyone except a handful of egyptologists and one particular human being who is like a dream to me, moving in and out of what is real/ sometimes very dear to me, sometimes a total stranger. i am grateful for that. it's nice - this drifting, you just have to accept that it always comes with that feeling of something missing underneath it all. and don't fall victim to drink. once you've had one or two it will make the missing part swell until you can't keep it down anymore and it will start to seem like the only thing. i am not missing anyone in particular or any one place. i have been adrift it seems, for the last several years. a real live tumble-weed. there is also the knowledge that it will get scratched later down the line - that itch. that for now, vacations on the red sea with my unexpected interlocutor is enough to get me through the month. that bike rides through the town are enough to get me through the week. that an evening on the roof is enough to just push me through into the next day.

but reading this, dear reader, i realize that i have given you all the wrong impression. don't get me wrong, as far as my life is concerned, i've got 95% of the itches covered over here. life has always been for me a battle with the notion of "the grass is always greener" but never have i been so satisfied with where i am. i don't want to be anywhere else at this moment. i merely wanted to express the underlying sublime feeling that comes with this life. i like it very much. me myself and i.

it's time

2008-12-04T08:07:00.000-08:00

to take a vacation. i will catch up with posting/emailing and all that from here:

thanks and giving

2008-11-27T16:10:00.000-08:00

2.12am. forever exhausted. tonight was "thanksgiving" i remember a small piece of turkey within chicago house, i remember stellar mashed potatoes, squash, beets, and something resembling coleslaw. too many cigarettes. too many whiskey cokes. sakara. finally i discovered GENESIS bar and it lived up to all of its expectations: the cold-faced Ukranian woman running Kareoke and her amazing child, brown curls and puppy sounds, a gargantuan Great Dame dog passed out on the couch, my voice became shrill from shouting - there was Respect, I will Survive, Justin Timberlake, Oasis, BeeGees and many horrible songs, billiards, drinks i had no money to pay for, after the French mission, being tossed upon someone's shoulder multiple times. pressure points. twisted wrists. more beer. much love. french things i didnt understand. wigs. fake chest hair. these are the moments that seem like a dream to me.

the desert has miles and miles. i have to pinch myself to remember i'm alive. we will get to the red sea. we will swim in the salted waters. pinch ourselves again. beach.

i got paid

2008-11-13T09:07:00.000-08:00

Not really. Just a small cash advance to get me through the month. My salary hasn't come through yet because of complications wiring to American bank accounts. At present I have $110 in my bank account. I had to pay a $200 termination fee to T-MOBILE (evil) for a phone that I had in the states for 5 months and that pretty much emptied it out. I am paying minimal loans, but come January most to all of my salary for a couple months will go into eliminating my grad school loans once and for all. Funny, I only went for one year, got no degree, but managed to accrue 30 grand in loans. This is unique to America really, and a real issue for the next 4-8 years of Obama's administration in my opinion. I believe they recognize how ridiculous the cost of American education has become.

I suppose I was somewhat foolish for attending Grad school for a year, but I like to believe that maybe it had something to do with where I am now. Let me remind myself that I am in Egypt. I am not paying rent. I am working my butt off as always, but what a place for adventures and photographs.

I don't want to meditate too long on the difficulties of making it as a photographer in the here and now, because I find myself in a beautiful situation at present, but I worry about the future. There will have to be some major thought put into it - whether its buddying up with a Travel Magazine or an Airline Magazine and freelance articles or really marketing oneself via Photoshelter or other such micro-stock sites or doing a lot of Weddings - but there is a way. In Russia, I enjoyed juggling working at a magazine, shooting corporate parties, teaching English, and DJing. And I barely scraped by - which is how I anticipate to live my life - barely scraping by. For now I have no problem with that. I imagine down the line I'll have to find a way to have a more stable income, but for my young life, this is fine.

My friend and mentor Sean McDevitt is a master of all trades: teaches at Pratt and Snow Farm (an arts summer camp in Massachusetts), works at a studio in Manhattan, DJ's weddings, bar mitzfahs, parties, and works as a Mac technician. All at once. And somehow manages to make art and have a great life and an awesome wife. I really admire that. He was the one who turned me onto photography and it is in that spirit that I'd like to follow. Some kind of Renaissance woman existence that combines white water, photography, travel and DJing. Mmm. Delicious.

goals

2008-11-08T14:46:00.000-08:00

i kind of feel like i haven't taken a good picture since i've been here. now i know that's not true, but that's what this place does. there's an amazing picture around every corner, alley way, in every face, and on every doorstep. its everywhere. i've never been so visually overwhelmed before. today we took a ferry to the west bank - the other side of the nile, and then rented bikes for a couple bucks and rode them through sugar cane fields and down dirt roads, passing huge ancient egyptian statues as we went, boys on bicycles riding up next to us and having conversation, motorcycles whizzing by every other second, cats, dogs, women in burkas. this is where i live and i want to keep it forever. as always i have that horrible sensation (that i've had my whole life) like i'm letting everything pass me by. like i'm not stopping to get that (at least) one amazing shot per day. for me the photographer, this is a good emotion, it makes me stop. but for me as a person, maybe this is a detrimental emotion, as i quickly become overwhelmed by my inability to capture this place within a frame. that is my goal. i want my photos to be more visually complex, to be layered, to have puns, and give you immediate gut reactions.

thankfully, i think i can do this. i met with my boss this weekend, she came down from cairo for a couple days and she caught me at the computer attempting to remove every last spec of dust from a talatat block photo. we had been arranging to meet for days now and she just happened to graze by my computer. i barely got the words "Shari, I...." out of my mouth before she said "No. Sara, you don't need to do that." and that was that. the last two weeks or so I had been killing myself painfully editing each talatat block in Photoshop, removing dust, straightening the letter board, blah blah blah. And now it comes - freedom. I am no longer an appendage of the imac or the chair. I can be me again.

so i think my stomach is recovering and i will have time to go out into the market every day and that will be my goal. it doesnt matter how crap i feel - i will go out with my camera and my flash (because i need to learn how to properly use it in a crazy crowded situation) and i will get at least one ridiculous photograph a day. right?

Horizontal is the new vertical

2008-11-05T08:48:00.001-08:00

It's 4.44pm on a Thursday - November 6th to be precise. It's about 80 degrees outside and extremely sunny. I'm sitting in the darkness of my hostel room with the lights out and the shade drawn where I make my permanent residence for the next 8 and half months, in the beautiful city of Luxor, Egypt. It is the place of dreams: smash India, the Middle East, and Africa together and imagine the possibilities.

I am stuffed, exhausted, dehydrated, intestinally destroyed, and elated. I'm drinking a re-hydration beverage that tastes like the ocean with sugar added and it will launch me into my daily one hour comatose sleep that happens after lunch and before dinner where I have epic dreams and wake up with a slow thundering heartbeat. Often its just a walk upstairs to get a towel to clean the photo equipment that leads to me falling asleep with all my clothes on and my industrial air conditioner blasting as donkeys hee haw and the collective prayers of a thousand men droan from outside my window.

Thus far I have had no time. And I mean it. Up at 6.30am each morning and out to the temple by 7.30am where I photograph talatat blocks until 2pm, these are "stone blocks of standardized size (ca. 27 by 27 by 54 cm, corresponding to ½ by ½ by 1 ancient Egyptian cubits) used during the reign of Akhenaton in the building of the Aton temples at Karnak and Akhetaten." Thank you wikipedia. The blocks can be dated around 1350-1330 BC (as I like to say "older than God") and feature a wide range of images, including everything from standard hyroglyphics to images of horses, cows, sacrifice, offerings, kings, and queens. The people I work with are versed enough in Egyptology that they can literally read the blocks as if they were a book - it's quite impressive. Indeed, I have been hired by the American Research Center to photograph 16,000 such blocks. I think everyone has recognized this to be impossible and I feel a little better about my inability to realize that goal. To do that within 9 months, I'd have to shoot about 100 a day, or one every 10 minutes. But each rock must be carefully wrestled from a staggering stack inside a cave-like magazine so that it can be documented, treated with various resins and chemicals, given a unique number, and cleaned before it gets to me, where it must be properly leveled, dusted off, and lit with the studio lighting to highlight all of its relief/detail before I can move on to the next rock. All of this under a tent in the desert of Karnak Temple.

The most amazing thing about working in this place is the way you are surrounded by mind-blowing artifacts and its not like they are always set aside as tourists attractions, much of the time they are just an inherent part of the landscape. Just outside the ARCE hostel for example is a huge trench that resembles a huge moat or a miles-long empty swimming pool with a dust floor featuring beheaded Sphynxes for as far as the eye can see. They are not set apart from the city, but instead intermingling with sleeping dogs, horses, children playing soccer and stick fighting, even karate lessons.

While I am completely overwhelmed and underslept I feel very blessed to be here. I love my day job. This is by far the best I've ever had it. Sure I don't have a long line of amazing work to brag about, I've scooped ice cream for famous people in New York City, served up delicious Jerk Chicken Sandwiches and Lattes at a cafe in Brooklyn, worked on an English Magazine in St. Petersburg and freelanced for the St. Petersburg Times and taught English to hip elite business men and women there. So this basically blows everything out of the water.

The challenge for me will be to make my time here work for me. I came into this job thinking I'd have too much time on my hands, that I'd take up some stoic monastic life studying Arabic and teaching myself to play the guitar in my room. The reality is I have zero time and I have to find a way to change my workflow around so that I can put aside time for myself - for exploring this place, photographing it, and other activities. I cannot get too wrapped up in my work to let the opportunity pass me by. Thus far it's been staying up until 11pm dusting talatat in Photoshop and straightening images and fixing backgrounds and black levels. I will meet with my boss tomorrow to figure out how I can do my job without investing 12 hours a day into it.

There is always a running list of extra-curicular activies to be had - beyond the little favors: printing some photos of the guys from work, helping the guy at Karnac with his Russian in exchange for Arabic, taking the birthday girl out for dinner, going to the market for necessary fabrics and accessories - beyond that there are bicycles to be had, to take a ferry out the West Bank (the other side of the Nile) and ride through the sugar cane and photograph, get some motorcycles and drive over the bridge miles down the road, rent a hot air balloon and sail a mile high above the city, which is caked in satellite dishes and epic sunsets. A trip to Morocco here. A jaunt to Uganda there. A New Years visit to St. Petersburg?

There is too much. Too much. And free cappucinos from the kitchen. Tuesday, actually, was the first day I actually resented not being in America. I stayed up until 2am to catch the first polls of the Presidential Election come in and then I was up at 6.30am watching Obama give his acceptance speech, almost in tears, before I had to run out to work. I would have liked to experience that in America, the excitement, but I'm getting it from all the over here, where Obama is championed by the Egyptians and they are still congratulating me on his victory. They, like the rest of the world, recognize what this means. Things are going to change.

I will be back in July. By that time, America will have gotten a taste of Obama-style government. It will be interesting to see if the same spark that is lit in the hearts of Americans and foreigners is still lit then, because as he said, the road ahead is long and hard, but I have every faith in Obama, his administration and the country's ability to bounce back. I, like Michelle Obama, would be one to say things like its not until recently that I've felt truly proud of my country. I know she's gotten a great deal of flack for that statement but the last 8 years have been rough and ideal-shattering. I want America to be regarded with respect and admiration again. I don't want to be associated with my country's abominable actions in Iraq and Guantanamo. Now, for the first time in years, I am proud to say that I'm an American, because I know that this image of us has changed. The enormous strength and convictions of one man and all the excitement, hope and positive energy he evokes has transformed the game.

I am excited about returning to America someday. I probably won't make it my permanent residence until my old age, but I love what's happening there. For now though, I like this life. I have always been interested almost solely in two things: photography and travel. If this is the way to do it then I'm sold. This place is amazing.

hi mom

2008-10-29T14:00:00.001-07:00

for more photos of me on the roof of the hostel and other activities in Luxor, go here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ommphoto/

Day 1 & 2

2008-10-22T09:54:00.000-07:00

(yesterday)

I have been running on adrenaline for what seems like days now although today was just day one. Really though, today was an eternity -- everything, literally everything blowing my mind. There is little time to write about it because there is so much to do. And this is how I like it. Non-stop. Jimmy-puff sent me a quote:

"There's been time this whole time. You can't kill time with your heart. Everything takes time. Bees have to move very fast to stay still."

(today)

Well the sadness is gone. It disappeared immediately after the first night. I haven't had a sad thought since. Not one. Every thought is an exclamation point. A lack of vocabulary. A feeling of being humble. I feel like this will be the best year.

There are a billion plans: plans to trek out to the red sea and go diving in the world's best diving waters. Plans to rent a motorcycle and drive it to more world-class Egyptian ruins, plans plans plans. Everynight we all find ourselves on the roof of the Hostel where the sunsets are so epic and the stories are endless. Archeologists have crazy stories. Arabic comes about half a dozen words a day. I've got my basic greetings and numbers 1-10 down. In general, Egyptian people amaze me. They are incredibly kind and compassionate. Considering our government's actions in the Middle East I didn't expect such a warm welcome. And my job. I love my job. I'm working in one of the most amazing places in the world. I can't really describe it. There's just ancient Egyptian temples and blocks and hieroglyphics everywhere you turn, lying everywhere. It feels like I'm on some Hollywood set for Indiana Jones and its all there for you to touch. Climb on. Read. Interpret. It's one of those things you have experience in the flesh.

Time to go clean the gear of dust - to insure that it lasts this will be necessary to do almost everyday. Dust is everywhere and it is so fine - like powder. when you step in it, it bubbles up and covers your leg in a layer of soot.

I came into this thinking - I will have to learn to be with myself for a year, I will have to find ways to keep my mind and heart healthy - play the guitar, study Arabic, live the Stoic life. I was so intent on being careful to keep the lonely at bay. But I see that that will not be an issue. My days are full, and I don't need to look for any activities to busy me.

Day 1, Luxor Egypt

2008-10-20T23:27:00.000-07:00

After commuting for something like 36 hours I finally arrived in Luxor, Egypt last night around 9.30pm. It is now 8.30am and I've been up since 6am. I was instructed to sleep - no working allowed on this first day, but the adrenaline of being here, the red light pouring in through my window and the time zone confusion woke me up at 6. I have to say it - I am thrilled to be here. Last night, my heart was heavy with travel and a bit of anxiety, I went to bed with a racing heart and my stomach raw. I wanted arms around me to take me into sleep someone to comfort me and beyond a few chat messaging sessions with my dear friends there was only me myself and I in my big new bed. I put on the ring my mother gave me, she had said, "so your father can be with you now" with his birthstone in it. When she had given it to me in the States I could not imagine wearing it, but now it has taken on new meaning. It is my protector in a sense, but also a way of not being alone. I have told myself that this year is for me, that it will be a meditation on getting my life together, on developing a career, on becoming more grounded and adult. This means, obviously, not fretting about men and boys and relationships and not meditating on lonliness. So wearing this ring, I almost feel like I've been married off, like I don't have to muck around in all of that anymore, that my goals are real and in front of me, guiding me through this place. Maybe it will also prevent some haggling out of respect for the sanctity of marriage. That would be an added bonus.

For now, I will try to get some sleep in before we go off to the temples where I'll be spending the next 9 months. Once Owen, the other photographer who travelled with me yesterday from New York awakes and eats breakfast, we'll be on our way. He was able to sleep in it seems.

More soon. Very soon. There is much to be said for this place.

sand falling

2008-10-16T22:40:00.000-07:00

I am in need of sleep. Soon it will be take the train to the other train to take the cab to the house where the equipment arrives. then take a cab to the airport the next day to inspect the equipment with the other photographer. get it ready to cross borders. go back into town drink drinks. kiss a boys lips many times. as many as possible in one night. and oh my brothers. somehow fall asleep. to rise again the next day and return to the airport and fly many many hours and then sit at another airport many many hours to fly another hour to arrive and by cab to go to the place. the place which is the temple. and brothers. put your bags down, take a shower, and crawl under the covers. to awake alone in the room with the sun pouring in. this is the desert friends.

And in between all that - vote for Obama. Pick up business cards. Mail
cell phone to girl. Buy vitamins.

But for now. A poem.

To The Hand

What the eye sees is a dream of sight
What it wakes to
is a dream of sight

and in the dream
for every real lock
there is only one real key
and it's in some other dream
now invisible

it's the key to the one real door
it opens the water and the sky both at once
it's already in the downward river
with my hand on it
my real hand

and i am saying to the hand
turn

open the river

- W.S. Merwin

Airplane log: NYC to Istanbul June 2002

2008-09-26T01:42:00.000-07:00

People can’t fly anymore without recalling that image of a 747 flying into the world trade. It’s an image perpetually fresh in our minds, a permanent picture-file catalogued in our collective database. When I look at the blank monitors on the plane, and everyone around me tucked away in sleep, wrapped up in identical blankets, knocked out by the lowered levels of oxygen, I see the image pop up on the screen again like it did for a week, playing on loop like a trendy new music video. DeLillo was right, we all get some kind of deep kick from watching human catastrophes on a large scale. The power of the present moment rarely reveals itself to America on any kind of intimate basis. People in China die. US embassies in Africa get blown up. The Palestinians send in suicide bombers. But New York is ours, they said, our king, with every rook, pawn, knight, and castle standing firm. New York goes down in the permanent archives.

I hate when they lower the oxygen. Everyone else falls into a coma but I just get a migraine. My head starts rolling like it does after days without sleep. Ideas spontaneously emerge in the strange space of a silent sleeping city, crawling through the thin air between the stratosphere and space itself. All of a sudden all your ideas seem urgently important. But it’s only because you are writing them under this oxygen-deprived cave-man condition. There is something almost ancient and holy about all of it. Back in the day nomads and Native Americans huddled around fires in tee-pee villages. Up here in the sky, purses and money pouches is our fuel. We jingle our jewelry and sleep; hibernate together, our ghostly breaths and nose-hummings mesh together into a celestial amen. We are the elite, we have gathered here to pray. We just don’t know it.

07.03.05

2008-09-22T20:57:00.000-07:00

it is my task to not think of
you a hundred times a day;
to occupy myself with the quotidian,
the spiritual even,
but not you.
and if it comes up in conversation
by association or conjecture, "you",
it is to be a kind of mourning
a kind of letting go.
i wish there were a contract
that i could sign, telling me
in small or large font that
if my love were true enough,
that i could trust that my
number would come up one of
these dayz. that somehow by
default the sun would rise 700
days from now, & you would
return & i, i'd be figured out,
everything finally okay like a
bath filled with water warm
& ready for displacement.

january 2004

2008-09-22T20:30:00.000-07:00

the sound of thunder can only
make me think that the
whole world is inside of
a huge paper bag.
the sky stretched overhead
like a plush electric-
blanket, quiverring with
the collective charge of
24 million energizer bunnies.
we all march around like
that, trying to look well-
acquainted to the earth.

march 2003

2008-09-22T19:58:00.000-07:00

Angled & snipped
like paper snowflake
remake my heart
every day
origami heart
origami eyes
i shall not suffer the
same demons
i shall walk straight lines
the language of small talk is
leaving my lips
Jack Kerouac has moved in
again, colonized my ears
like honeycombs. dripping the
saliva of golden hornet-soldiers
Bukowski has moved in again.
Ginsberg. do not bite your tongue
at me sir. i'm repainting the
town brown. turning over the
soil & putting down new
bulbs.

shortcomings of mankind (may 2004)

2008-09-22T19:47:00.000-07:00

1. airports
2. tv guides
3. elections
4. telephones
5. academia
6. suicide
7. crushes
8. college tuition
9. time crunch
10. stomach acid

saturday oct. 9th 2004

2008-09-22T19:37:00.001-07:00

but every once in a while there comes
this most amazing day that unravels
out before you like a neverending red
carpet. you recall the memories like
they was last year and by the time your
head hits the pillow your cheeks
are flushed. heart embers still hot.
you sink into the other world
as easy as you sunk into
this one. there are good days.

wednesday, early August 2004

2008-09-22T19:06:00.000-07:00

3 strikes. strikes
across the heart
and you're out.

three strikes
why did i even
attempt

i come home. come
home. you break my
heart everytime. you
make me cry. i had to
get drunk before i could
see you each time. bar
tender knew it was
bad news. i saw it in
his eyes.

maybe she is better. i can
accept that. the dark
eyes. the strapless shirts.
she's got it - i see it -
but it still doesn't give you the
right to sit there silent
& make me feel like i
don't exist - i guess this is
where people move on. they
say - i've got mine, &
you've got yours. so long.

i found you, in a city of millions. sitting at
the bar where jimmy said you would be sitting.
sitting with your lady love drinking the same
whiskey you always drank, discussing matters of
business. worried they'll make your life hell
for stealing half a bottle of olive oil. you
see me - greet me, but again there's nothing
to say. i just got back from russia
again & i'm doing the rounds.

yes, you're part of the rounds, believe it or
not - i don't know why now. there'll
be no more crawling back now, boy.
i see it now clearly as day - we can't
be friends in this world that's getting
more & more scatterred. my heart
thunders these days but i feel more
human walking the earth alone anyway
i don't remember how to walk with
someone else.

i wrapped my feet so they
wouldn't blister. i drank plenty
before i let my best friend call
you on the phone, but it's the
same shit everytime. the same
disappointment. do you remember
what it's like to be alone? i've
always been like this, since i
can remember. i can't afford you
making it all hurtful again.
so, yes. goodbye. i know you've
already said it years ago, in her
arms & eyes. but i say it now with
confidence. i'm broken. you have
jumped ship. it's tragic, but
the ocean is infinite.

so this is it, right? what day is
today? it's wednesday. early august. and
i don't think my heart breaks anymore
i'm at a loss for words, though. i don't
really feel like it's a sensation that's
even worth writing about either, because
life is so manic. schitzophrenic like the
weather, it's probably kind of like the
feeling you get from fasting for a
long time or being oxygen-deprived
from climbing at high altitude. it's
the spit in the back of your throat &
then suddenly your tongue is numb & you
are no longer the mind looking out
through your eyes. all of a sudden
your visual perception, you notice, is
now in a separate place from your
mental processes. as if someone
started projecting a movie in your
head from behind your eyes.
you never walked
into the theater, though. you never
even bought a ticket.

welcome to the desert

2008-09-22T09:10:00.000-07:00

"Your a traveler at heart. There will be many journeys."

2008-09-17T08:26:00.000-07:00

the grammar was off, but the fortune
cookie was right
as was Rushina when she told
me back in Petersburg
once you know what you want
clearly one thing above all
other things
write it down on a piece of
paper
it will come true
she wrote down: a man
i wrote down: Egypt

that feeling

2008-09-16T20:57:00.000-07:00

do you get that feeling
once you've had a drink
and there's a couple in front of you
and they are all touchy feely
the guy is kissing her on the cheek
and rubbing her arm or holding her hand
i am getting to that place where i
really need arms around me
do you get that feeling?
like you are going to fall into the arms
of the first person that is acceptable.

sept 7

2008-09-14T08:08:00.000-07:00

emptied out and alone like
every sunday morning. i
greet the world pale and
underslept from some
couple's couch or friend's bed
i carry a sense of lostness
that no one seems to
be able to relate to.
a visitor?
a future resident - regular?
how long can it last? a year?

plans

2008-08-29T15:38:00.000-07:00

currently im thinking this:

take temporary residency in philly at my
friends apartment for 100 bucks a week
find stupid coffee shop/book store job
until i can land something decent

possibly fly to new orleans at some
point, end of october or other time
when serene is there
get introduced, decide if i can hack
it in a post-apocolyptic swamp

get back north. make plans. make more art
get a better camera, some lights
shoot some weddings do some
freelance
get a career
choose life
choose obama

fleur

what did i get myself into

2008-08-04T19:39:00.000-07:00

first day of work and i already wanna quit.
ahh, so much for me and corporate america,
i was just trying to make a buck, but i
forgot i'd have to sell my soul

my day started at 6.30am, roll outta bed
and eyes are red. couldn't sleep of course.
make yourself pretty, put cover-up on the
poisen ivy leg scars. put on a nice
outfit. do your hair. grab the cold
coffee and pasta outta the fridge.
grab the directions. and go.
one hour drive on some treachorous
highway in american chas peak
-that's rush hour in russian.

i get there 45 minutes early,
drive around in my car for a nice
place to sit down and eat
something. there's nothing but
fastfood so i pass and go
to work. wait in the lobby for a half
hour or so reading a book. lady comes
down to meet me, brings me upstairs
to my cubicle. no one is around yet,
too early i guess. she has nothing
for me to do, except read an old
machine manual that some italians
made. i read that until the man
shows up. he gives me a little
tour of the G14 machine - the
one that makes the packaging for your
nice italian coffee with the valve
on it to keep it fresh

then i get about a 200 page manual
print out that i'm just supposed to
sit and read. it's straight up
just like machine parts - i can't
tell you how f-ing sleepy this is making
me. i've downed a whole canteen of
coffee and i have to go back for more
and they've got the air conditioning
up so high i've got goosebumps and i'm
tugging at my sleeves to keep me warm.

i watch the hours drag on. at five ocklock
i inquire about my hours, i can leave, i
am informed. i leave. i get outside and
realize that the car i borrowed from
my ugandan pal won't start. i left the
headlights on. i go back into the plant
asking random people for jumper cables.
nobody seems to be able to help and
the people who usually take care of it
aren't around. i almost start crying.
the idea of asking my mom to drive an hour
in traffic to come jump start this car
isn't appealing. somehow this ukrainian
guy pops up - igor. he's mutters something
about having some personal cables around
and we go for a walk. im like - "igor where
are you from?" he says "ukraine". "oh nice,
i speak russian." "me too" he says.
he's got a 29 year old kid it turns out
we walk out to the parking lot and he shuttles
me over to my dead car. "ok gde tvoya mashina?"
"where is your car?" we drive around to the
other side and after some fidgeting we get it
working and i thank the man in Russian, he says
"no thang" in Russian and i'm on my way.

an hour and a half later, after missing the
turnpike exit and screaming at all the drivers
passing me, i get home. exhausted. dehydrated.
depressed. my mom of course wants to know
how it went. i tell her it was horrible. i
start to cook a burger and i'm so hungry
i don't let it cook all the way. i dress it
with mustard, ketchup, gluten free bread,
tomatoes and i go out onto the porch where
i am alone and i start to tear into the
burger but it's totally raw inside but
i'm so frusterated i continue to eat it out of
rage and i'm simultaneously crying into my
burger and it's just getting messy and
then i get so angry i yell and spit it out
and get mustard everywhere. i lay my head
down on the picnic table and cry into the
wood.

i don't know if i can get up tomorrow
and do this all over again. when i got home
i wanted to call someone, but i realized i
really don't have anyone to call anymore.
my friendships have dried up. my relationships
have scattered to the wind. maybe i will
scatter to the wind. maybe soon.

visit to my sister's

2008-07-17T21:08:00.000-07:00

Make a Smilebox slideshow

a logical impossibility

2008-06-18T10:52:00.000-07:00

"You know, this happens a lot to Russians. The Soviet Union is gone, and the borders are as free and passable as they've ever been. And yet, when a Russian moves between the two universes, this feeling of finality persists, the logical impossibility of a place like Russia existing alongside the civilized world, of Ann Arbor, Michigan, sharing the same atmosphere with, say, Vladivostok. It was like those mathematical concepts I could never understand in high school: if, then. If Russia exists, then the West is a mirage; conversely, if Russia does not exist, then and only then is the West real and tangible. No wonder young people talk about "going beyond the cordon" when they talk of emigrating, as if Russia were ringed by a vast cordon sanitaire. Either you stay in the leper colony or you get out into the wider world and maybe try to spread your disease to others."

Absurdistan Gary Schneider , 2006

poem from high school

2008-06-09T13:25:00.000-07:00

how dissappointing is
the end of my day
with what
tether of imagination
do i recall your
image
this is my illness,
charmer,
my time feels,
unimportant,
trivial
how easily do I
become distempered
by the good fortune
of my satellites
the elements
cutting down and nearing
that blood organ
the domain
of affections
tenderly snipped
you are a test.

Sun June 1st

2008-06-01T17:49:00.000-07:00

Gotta write Denis a letter - apologize. I'm so out of it right now, trying to steer my head clear of depression. Keeping busy definitely is the key for me. I should explain how I've been unable to be productive without a computer. I should explain all the film from the Grand Canyon and Portland, just sitting around. About how Sobaka magazine requested a picture from me and I couldn't even send it because I couldn't hook up my hard drive to my mother's computer, and then when I finally got to a computer in Philadelphia, I brought the wrong harddrive. Many tasks don't get done like this.

I should explain the empty hours wandering around the city with Anastasia, with Wilkes, and with Tim. I was telling Wilkes - I guess life makes a lot more sense when you know that you'll go home and every night eventually that other person will be there - it makes life make a lot more sense. What is that that the kid in Into the Wild wrote? Something like "true emotion is shared emotion" I'll have to look it up.

Everyday I consider the possibilities - the next step. Someday it will be great to have a home, to have someone to come home to. Today I felt so unexperienced at life. I helped Tim move into a new apartment - a row home on a block where he's the only white guy, him and his brother and his brother's girlfriend. I helped these folks move, packed up the Uhaul, drove over the new place and unpacked it. And Tim's brother is 22 i think and he feels so adult. He's lived in Bolivia and his girlfriend is fearless - the way she drives the U-haul and seems to have already lived a whole life - you know, its like she's done all this before and this is her 2nd life. I don't know where all that confidence and i-know-what-I'm-doing feeling comes from, but I sure don't have it.
America is strange though. What I expected. I don't really know where to insert myself into it - I don't know if I"ll ever feel at home here - and I'm not saying that I'll feel at home in some other country - doubt it, I suppose it's just a general feeling of not belonging anywhere.

But what about this girl - this girl that was locked up in a basement for 8 years in Austria ( not the one who was locked up for 20 ). She comes out and she starts her own talk show. A 20 year old - she was down there from the ages of 10 to 18. She never even finished high school. I mean she was right about the being gutsy thing - about how you'll never grow if you don't present yourself with challenges. So I have much respect and I hope I can learn to live with dignity.

I should get back to the San Fran kids just in case - tell them I'll be available in July. I should do the job search on Craigs list and the other journalism search engines rigorously.

I should explain the feeling of being a renegade of sorts - running from one person's house to the next - from one city to another. I'll use writing and reading to heal I guess. and NPR. Folks behind me on the train speaking Russian - comforting - I will apply for the interpreter's job - I would enjoy that.

I would have talked to you now. on the train. but you are asleep. it will often be like that. calls will happen at the wrong time. i could not talk then with the noise of the hipsters on mushrooms in their utopian freak show, with the muffled mobile phone connection, with Wilkes sitting next to me, and the sun beating down on me. I'm sorry. I do miss you now, quiet on the train, in need of a shoulder to lean on, a hand to hold. But out there in the middle of all that mess, I am outside of myself.

a new life

2008-04-14T05:16:00.001-07:00

I want a new life. I want a new life where I get up every morning before 9am and I accomplish things. I want a new life where I don't go online every 8 hours to fullfill the void that is my life. I want to be outside everyday, on a bike or running. Things are out of control at the moment. Every day I seem to be able to do less and less. I use to have an agenda and things got done, but now everyday my ability to set a task for myself and accomplish decreases and decreases. It's been raining for days. Last night I couldn't sleep at all. Up all night, turning over and over on the couch, going online to chat with friends and family, listening to music, I even took a bath after the sun came up but even that didn't feel good. Something is wrong. Just a couple weeks now, and I'll be in a new place with a new agenda. A blank slate.

you keep secret, i keep dream

2008-04-10T13:22:00.000-07:00

“Y’know, I grew up in a different generation. I grew up after World War II, and boys did different things in those days. You went camping. You went hunting. You boxed. And the image of a writer, to someone starting off in those days was not some schmuck who went to graduate school. It was Jack London, Nelson Algren, Ernest Hemingway. Especially coming from Chicago–a writer was a knock-around guy. Someone who got a job as a reporter or drove a cab. I think the reason there are a lot of novels about How Mean My Mother Was to Me and all that shit is because the writers may have learned something called ‘technique,’ but they’ve neglected to have a life. What the fuck are they gonna write about?”

–David Mamet

old friends

2008-03-30T06:33:00.000-07:00

One fine night back in March 2008, a bunch of old friends managed to get together at a bar. Some hadn't seen each other in years. Some had been in some silent war or grudge which prevented them from speaking. Others had recently fallen in love, others out. Some had plans to move back to America. Some had plans to move away. Some were horribly lonely and in need of a good time. But for a good hour or so, all of them were devilishly happy. Those who were down and out remembered that we're all in the gutter together. They laughed, knocked back a few drinks, and went home smiling. For the most part.

Cathartic

2008-03-20T14:03:00.000-07:00

You probably think I'm miserable all the time. What a sensitive creature. So fragile and pathetic. But I'm not. I would rather not talk to you if you are just calling to say that you aren't coming home. Music blaring in the background. The voices of your bandmates. I would rather not talk to you because I've been in a good mood all day since we parted ways after lunch. And then you call and boom. Now I'm angry. I wish you didn't have that power over me. I hope in your next life you get to be with someone who's totally preoccupied with her bands. Who leaves you every weekend. Who's only in town half the time.

Your bandmates. I hope you like them a lot, because they're going to be the only thing you've got.

I'm sorry, though. Sorry I'm so full of anger. I guess you never really intended for me to hurt, and never really understood why I turn off the moment you say something that upsets me. Quizzical. Why I cannot look you in the eye. Why I answer all of your questions with either silence or a dead-tone one word answer.

So I guess I don't know how it's done - being my boyfriend. I couldn't tell you. It probably seems like everything falls under scrutiny. So you ignore it. You don't respond to my messages and I don't say them to your face. So we cast this silent war. SMS's, emails, silent lunches. Weekends with you in other cities.

Last weekend I got so drunk off the tall drinks and the graduated cylinders of Jagermeister that looked like blood, carried around by those girls in the skimpy little red cheerleader things, that I almost left this world the following day. I had to come back into the city in the morning to stroll around [read: teach English] with some important guy from Coca-Cola, he got me a slice of the salmon/broccoli kish and i touched it once with my fork and I had to excuse myself to go the bathroom. Sweating, heart racing, I washed my hands and swore to myself that I would not puke on this nice man in that cafe. Two hours later when he let me go, I got on the metro - rode until I got to Electrosila and had to get off. Again, heart started pumping and I stood up suddenly, as if something bad had happened. Breathing hard and standing near the doors. Wishing the people leaning on either sides of the doors would move away, in case the vomit starting flying. I tried to focus my thoughts, deep breath. Just a couple more seconds. Take it easy, now. Get off - walk around the platform until I think I'm ready for the escalator. OK, here we go. 2 minutes later I'm out. AIR. snow. sleet. cold. Don't care. I walk. I walk the 5 kilometers home along the highway.

...

2008-02-16T17:15:00.000-08:00

Denis makes a mean soup.

home, i, me, my

2008-02-12T14:12:00.000-08:00

I'm discovering myself again in the music I used to listen to and the things i used to read and write. its funny to rediscover yourself like this, having being buried in someone elses world, in their domestic life, their records, their food. this is not a bad thing - let me emphasize. i use spices i never used before - i use dill as often as possible. i fucking love tea. especially the funky mixed tea with black and green tea together and rose petals. but to hear again the songs that used to guide me, and read the poets who used to form my world, it is so refreshing. to dream again of home.

letter to j

2008-02-09T03:57:00.000-08:00

i did it! i know its not a big deal for anyone else - but it is for me, these days small things mean the world to me. I stayed up till 4 last night drowning myself in TV and internet and youtube and meditating on how i'm letting my life slip away and how i should be able to go to bed as soon as i'm tired and wake up in the morning and live everyday. and i shocked myself. I was able to pull myself out of bed at 8am and catch the marshutka/train all the way up to chkalovsky to hop on the circus bus back down to pavlosk. i photographed the event and although they are not the amazing shots i took before I'm just proud that i got my ass down there and shot and talked to the volunteer who's in charge right now about my plans to go back to the states and work out some kind of grant with SOROS to help raise money for these guys. thats one of my ideas. It's true - i'll come back here from time to time but i know now that its time to explore other parts of the world. there is so much more to see than this sappy gray city. Larisa the art director of the circus said in the busride back "why are you so dependent on russia?" and she's brought it up before and she's absolutely right, and thats why, i told her , i'm on my way out, because i need to see some other places.

but most of all, im learning that i want to work with people that are interested in helping people/ improving the state of the world. before it was a pipe dream and now it is just a fact of life. i remember discussions with you where you were all torn up about having to help people - make the world more equal and I agree, there just has to be a way to do what you love and help the world at the same time. you feel me? i think you do cause i think you're doing it.

fleur

Letter to Mom about buying ticket back to the US

2008-02-09T03:52:00.000-08:00

It's very hard to press the button. It's very hard to move. Despite how much I want it I'm sure you can understand - my life here as become easy - clients call me to teach them English for 20-30 bucks and hour (mostly just means talking to them), and I record advertisings for phone companies, translate website, do photoshoots, and DJ - free drinks and 40 bucks a night. I have a free friend haircutter, connections at the St. Petersburg Times, the homeless agency, the child circus, Russian and American friends, discount cards at restaurants, and free entrance to night clubs. You see? I will have this all if I ever want to come back, but it truly is daunting to leave it and start again from scratch.

Ha.

Sara

Phonecalls from Shnur's Satellite Telephone

2008-01-07T06:58:00.001-08:00

Russia is such a strange place for the first week or so of January. People are universally unreachable, don't pick up their phones and are generally out of contact. It is undefined when they will return to work, when they will even be able to remember what day it is. I have been getting to bed late, around 4am and rising around 2 or 3pm. That leaves one hour of light. Not so hot for someone who is sitting at home all day by themselves.

I don't really know how to be happy for Denis when he calls from Switzerland. He always asks how I am and is very kind and notes that yes, I have a cold and offers help and asks about my day. But when its always the same thing, and he notes the tone in my voice, the "fuck you tone". He tells me about how they snowboarded all day and now they're up in the mountains and about to play a concert at this beautiful venue there where John Lennon once went to hang out with his wife (he just read that in the biography of Lennon I bought him for New Year's). I cannot be excited or happy for him though. "You're in a really bad mood, what's that all about?" It's always the same questions and my lack of answers. "I'm fine, just sick of sitting at home by myself." So I am a bitch. I hang up the phone and I'm generally frustrated because I thought I'd gotten over this being mad thing, but I cannot seem to have a conversation with him where I don't hang up the phone and he is upset with me for being so mean and I'm upset with myself for being like this. I don't know. I guess I've realized about a year ago that the situation doesn't work for me as a person, that I need to be away from this life where one of us is off doing things and seeing things and the other is always stuck and always depressed.

But the point is I'm not depressed I guess it's just that when he calls and I'm sitting in this dark room as I always am, tapping away on this computer, I wonder sometimes, what could I possibly say "Hope your concert goes well! How was the mountain? Did you snowboard well? Sounds rad!" I just cant be that person. I guess its mostly about me sending him a signal that this is not OK. Or that I'm not happy with the situation or whatever. If you can imagine - it's been going on for one and half years, so it's not going to change.

But it doesn't matter, I always hang up the phone feeling bad. "Do you miss me?" he asks and I don't know how to answer that question either.

I write back an SMS: "I'm okay you know and I don't try to be mean and you aren't doing anything wrong by calling... I just can't bring myself to be happy for you when it's always the same situation. You are always very kind and considerate and I always come across as a bitch and I feel bad afterwards. But I don't know what to say sometimes. It feels so unfair sometimes to hear about how great it is where you are. I hope you understand."

I had wanted to write a 2nd: "Of course I miss you. You are always away from me. Now I want to get away." But I caved in and just wrote "Whatever, I'm over it, I'm making good art and of course I miss you."

After all this I get a response a couple minutes later: "OK Malipus (the equivalent of babydoll i suppose) sleep tide :)" Yes, with the stupid smiley face attached and the incorrect spelling of 'tight'. It's nine oclock. If he were listening to me when I was talking to him on the phone he would have known that lately I'm going to bed somewhere around 4am. So this message kind of just struck me as - "ok, my little stupid girlfriend, go to sleep now, I'm going to go snort another line of coke and drink another shot and go on stage and play my rock and roll now. Nighty night." I donno about you but its moments like this when I know this isn't the person for me. Conversation, serious conversation, is something that me and Denis don't have. I know it's just an SMS message, but this is Fleur here - you know, I am an emotional sensitive person that needs to be able to talk things through with people and in our case, it's just not there at all.

PHew. Got that out. Now I can move onto something else. [Happy face here.]

Letter to Denis

2008-01-06T17:09:00.000-08:00

I made a little artistic breakthrough today and I'm feeling much better. Artistic breakthroughs are really all I need in life. And the occasional friend. It's funny though, how these things come about. You can't just sit down and decide you're going to write an awesome song - it usually comes out of some pain/drama in your life. Like your song "Last night" - i feel like that sort of just came to you when you started thinking about all of the rough shit you've had to deal with in your life. Anywho, that's how my emotions are - very much dependent on what im making with my photography. So i apologize for saying or writing things you don't wanna hear. I know that it doesn't really matter where I am in the world - its more about being able to apply myself to my work - to be productive and creative. And its definitely a process - It can take a week, a year, or 10 years to get to the place where you are consistently making good art, but its always something you cant really control - it comes by accident by life experiences and all that.

It's 4am and I'm still awake. Head is on fire. It's like this. You have shitloads of time - a whole two weeks with no work and not a clue of what to do with yourself - hating yourself for not going out and shooting amazing pictures the way you used to. the way you shot when you first came to russia, and everything was fresh and seen from an alien's point of view. I passed a flaming dumpster on my way out the house but i didn't stop to shoot it. Then I start to get down on myself - so much time! You wait and pray that some kind of creative push will come to you. Then it finally comes. Finally, it comes, and now all you need is time, and most of all, to keep the spark going. Sometimes it means staying up all night cause in the morning it will be gone. Sometimes its about having nothing else to do - total isolation, no work, no appointments. If I could be more efficient at seizing this creative thing when it happens, oh man, oh man, i'd be unstoppable - the way i used to attack my scrapbooks as a kid, and make the most raddest collages. If i could bring that creative force back, the spur of the moment all-nighters where my hands are flying and they can do no wrong. I remember discovering it with the National Geographic magazines. Cutting and pasting and everything that i put down, every haphazard scene was electric and so very right.

I'll have to scan it I suppose and get it on flickr. The world, at the moment, is run by flickr, didn't you know?

Fleur