courtesy of my insomnia

i found this and this and also this little gold mine in cyberspace last night. am seriously losing my mind after sleeping less than three hours, two days in a row. me + < than 8 hours of sleep = cranky, grouchy, evil raccoon. but then again, there is a bright side.

#7 on the list, i’m coming after you.

and because i lovelovelove the rhythm of repetition in writing (and any mention of sunbeams), here’s a tom wolfe snipet that made me smile as i read it — over and over (and over) again:

ten o’clock sunday morning in the hills of north carolina. cars, miles of cars, in every direction, millions of cars, pastel cars, aqua green, aqua blue, aqua beige, aqua buff, aqua dawn, aqua dusk, aqua aqua, aqua malacca, malacca lacquer, cloud lavender, assassin pink, rake-a-cheek raspberry. nude strand coral, honest thrill orange, and baby fawn lust cream-colored cars are all going to the stock-car races, and that old mothering north carolina sun keeps exploding off the windshields.

– the last american hero is junior johnson. yes!

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because a girl can have only so many days slip by without pausing to savor the beautiful. the grimy. the simple and the complicated. or worse, pausing, then moving on and forgetting to share with others. here are five photography projects. a challenge to myself: to turn my camera into my second pair of eyes; to play with colors, proximities, sizes and comfort zones; to stop napping so much and start saying yes to ideas that until now have only danced and strutted down the catwalk in my head.

photograph:

1) the city: block by block; broadway from 1st to 2nd street; cesar chavez from belvedere park to vancouver avenue; greenleaf from penn to philadelphia. on and on, a collage of storefronts, people, pets, passing cars, fashion statements and attitudes. a sense of place and language. i want to look back a year from now and say look! this smells and sounds and tastes like home.

2) the love: portraits of family and friends. little stories, quotes, reflections of them and me and what we are.

3) up above: in portland i hardly looked at the sky. i didn’t want to. the grey taunted me day after day. here, i wake up and want to race toward the window and say HELLOOOOO! to the sun, tie a thank you note to a shiny red balloon and release it into the air. the blue, it is clear and vast and bright and loyal and it is screaming for my camera’s attention.

4) self-portrait: given how heavy my camera feels, how short my limbs are and how limited my upper-body strength is, this might be a tall order. but i’m going to try to experiment with different elements like light, wind, water and reflection.

5) words: that tickle my tongue and make me pucker my lips; that slip and linger and beg to be said again. photos of words because of the way they look, the way they sound, what they represent or how they make me feel.

* photo: bridge on the edge of a tiny town in sonora, mexico. march 2008.

** woo-hooo! this gets me launched on #10, #16 and #21 on the list of 29 things.

a million moths. » project # 5

courtesy of my insomnia

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