Wild and Whirling Thoughts

I know I just posted a few hours ago, but I can't sleep. I have too many thoughts racing around my brain right now for calm repose. I have to get up in six hours, and I don't function too well on less than nine hours of sleep, but sleep is impossible at this moment.

Lately I've been seeing in pictures. And by pictures, I mean photographs. Everywhere I go, I see possible photos. I'm going to start carrying my SLR around with me all the time, so hopefully I can start to capture all the pictures I see.

Me, photojournalist. Can it be? It's a dream I've been carrying around tucked in my back pocket for, oh, years now. I put it aside years ago, filed away under "Impossible". Can I do it though? That's the question. Will I be good at it? Do I have enough art in my soul to succeed? Is my skin thick enough to withstand the rough parts (and it will be rough).

I know I'm repeating myself here, but I feel like I've been wandering this past year and a half since I graduated from college. Is photojournalism my destination? Do I even have one? Do I need one? Is the meaning really in the journey rather than the destination? I never really could quite buy that before, but now I think it just might be the truth. It's all about how you get there, not when. Non-traditional, non-linear just might work for me, I think. I rebel. I rebel just to rebel. I don't like being forced to do anything, and that goes for traditional life paths as much as anything. School, career, marriage, children. That is what is expected. Therefore, that is the last thing I want, at least right now.

Do I really need to lay out my life before me in black and white? Do I need a pre-planned outline of how to live? No, life doesn't work like that. I'm starting to realize that I need to just enjoy what happens and worry less about whether certain things are achieved, and whether they are time stamped by such and such date. If photojournalism works out, which I can't help but hope it does, then good. If not, I'll wander on to the next passion, and maybe that one will work out. The journey continues. As long as I enjoy it, do I really need to land anywhere?

Just let it be. Que sera, sera.

Really, though, I'm crossing my fingers for photojournalism.

Not All Who Wander Are Lost

"Not all who wander are lost."
-J.R.R. Tolkien

That quote really resonates with me right now, because I'm wandering. At first I thought that I was lost, but now I've realized that I'm not. I'm just wandering. Where will my wandering take me? Now that's the question.

I'm trying to decide what I want to do with my life, essentially what I want to be when I grow up (and yes, I realize that 24 is technically grown-up, but I don't feel like a grown-up). I keep oscillating between different fields, everything from publishing to photojournalism to non-profits to museum studies. I know, I know, I have a wide variety of interests. That's kind of my problem, I have a little bit of knowledge of a lot of things. I'm interested in a lot of different things, but I don't really know enough about each one to decide if it's really what I want to do.

Right now, however, I've almost-pretty-sure-but-not-quite-decided that I want to pursue photojournalism. The (almost) deciding factor is that it's something that I feel VERY strongly about. That alone is enough to nearly convince me enroll at the Brooks Institute in CA, which I'm about ready to do.

Is passion really enough, though? I definitely have the passion, the burning desire to make a difference, to take a photograph that makes someone cry, or laugh, or petition their government to make a difference. I want to win a Pulitzer (okay, so I'm a little bit ambitious) and affect people. I want people to know that I lived, that I made a difference, that I helped someone. I want to help someone. There are lots of ways to help people, I know, but I love photography and to me it seems like the best way to effect change. I think the media as an entity is vital, and lately it's been slacking in its purpose. The media is meant to inform and question, that is, inform the people and question the government. What is going on in Afghanistan and Iraq right now...the average American doesn't have a CLUE, and while a lot of that is due to the military's stringent censorship rules, part of it is also because the media just doesn't cover it. I want to go to places like that and show your average overweight, consumer-happy American just what the real cost of war is. What it does to the Iraqi and Afghani people whose lives have been, and continue to be, torn apart. Print journalism is another avenue I explored, but words (while important) just don't have the visceral, immediate impact that a picture can have. Hearing that people are being maimed by IED's or shot by insurgents or soldiers doesn't mean as much or affect viewers as much, as seeing a shattered, broken body lying in the street or a blood-splattered screaming child does. I want to move people, to affect them, to make them care as much as I do, enough to want to do something to help, to stop it!

Cozy Cat

My roommate's cat looked so sleepy and contented, I just had to take a picture!

Glass Columns

I took my camera to work with me a few days ago, and since I had a few extra minutes after setting up for the next catering event, I took some pictures.

To Be or Not to Be Part II

Here's a fantastic version of the "To be or not to be" speech from the brilliant Canadian TV show Slings and Arrows.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tk_2tbEN8Ps

Stairway to Heaven

Another picture from my jaunt to Hope Cemetery last spring. I have a question for any of you in the blogosphere that might have been reading my blog over the past few months. I'm in the process of deciding my future, and I've been looking over my possibilities. Photography has always been one of my interests, and lately I've been considering the field of photojournalism, and particularly war photography. That is something that I feel passionately about, I want to do something important; to show the complacent consumers in this country that bad things happen to people in other places and, hopefully, to take images that will affect some of them enough to do something to help stop it. The problem, however, is that while I have the will, I'm not sure I have the way. The talent, in other words. I honestly don't know if I have the creative ability to succeed in the arts. For any of you who have been following my blog, I ask: What do you think of my pictures? Do you think I might, just might, have the talent? And if not, please be honest. I'm asking because I genuinely want to know, so that I can make a decision one way or another.

To Be or Not to Be

I just finished re-reading Hamlet for the umpteenth time, and I love it even more every time. Now I know it's cliche and completely over-quoted, but Hamlet's "To be or not to be" soliloquy is by far my favorite passage from literature. If you get past the familiarity and really think about what the words mean, it's so deep and so sad and really makes you think. Plus it's a little bit depressing, which makes me like it even more. I'm including the whole soliloquy below for your edification. Maybe, just maybe, it'll help you to love Hamlet as much as I do.

Hamlet, Act III, Scene 1

To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover'd country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action. - Soft you now!
The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisons
Be all my sins remember'd.

Ad astra per aspera

You know how, when you're a kid, everyone tells you to "reach for the stars;" that you can be anything you want to be, do anything you want to do? Well, it makes a nice fairy tale, but it's not true. There are no happily ever afters.

Now, I am a happy connoisseur of fairy tales. I know them all; I have read them all. I love them, but they're not for real life. Snow White sleeps her eternal sleep and Red gets eaten by the wolf. I'm not trying to be a downer here, but I think all that BS you get fed as a kid only sets you up for disappointment. You are told, over and over again that you can do anything you set your mind to but then the first time you attempt something and fail to reach it, you don't know how to handle it. You're not prepared for it. Our socializing has instructed us that we should be able to achieve any goals we set, so if we fail to do that we feel like just that: failures. That there is something wrong with us because we didn't achieve what our culture tells us should have happened. Merely WANTING something badly enough is supposed to BE enough, so why isn't it for those unfortunate few? It is never enough. There's always more to the story, more prerequisites which if you're not fortunate to possess, through natural or artificial means, you're SOL, friend. To those lucky few born to privilege, connections, good looks and natural talents: enjoy them while you have them, and please, occasionally look down on us plebeians scrabbling out a life for ourselves by our fingernails, and just appreciate what you have.

One Last Reminder of Fall

I know, I know, fall is clearly over for good. It's definitely November outside; the weather has decided to coordinate with the month for once. All the beautiful multicolored leaves are long gone, so I decided to remind you what trees looked like only a few weeks ago!

I love this picture because the dark branches look like veins spreading out through the golden leaves. It's kind of creepy, but mostly just awesome.

Monochromatic

This is another picture that was NOT taken in black and white, it just looks that way.

Behind the Veil

My roommate looked so industrious and cozy, seen here through the sheer curtain in front of the french doors to my bedroom.

The Colors of Fall

The colorful fall foliage reflected in my car window was just too pretty to pass up!

Vindicated

I'm am so absolutely thrilled about Obama's win over McCain that I don't even know how to express it! This has completely restored my faith in this country, which had corroded over the last several years. To paraphrase the man himself, this election has vindicated my belief in this country also. Obama said that after his triumphal result in the Iowa caucus, which I participated in, and have to love my home state for being the sole state responsible for kicking off Obama's campaign and showing the world just what America is capable of. Before Iowa, he was just another of the multitudes of possible candidates; after Iowa, he was a frontrunner from then until Election Day. Now I'm from Iowa, and let me tell you, the people there are incredibly nice but not necessarily very progressive. When I showed up at the caucus site, I was really surprised at how many people were there to caucus for Obama. His group was BY FAR the biggest in the room, and there were people in his cause from every age range, from high schoolers participating in their first election process to people who've probably voted in dozens. Thanks to my wonderful state, Obama got the chance he deserved to win the most important election in decades.

I firmly believe that this choice made by America two days ago will usher in a new age for America, one that rejects the old policy of fear and imperialism, and instead allows for progress and the promise of a better future, rather than the glimmer of a fear-based 1984-like regression we've been heading toward. I've said more than once the past couple years how America under the Bush administration feels like a regression into the 1950s, so hopefully America under the Obama administration will be like a progression into the 1960s, and everything that decade stood for.