the carefree society rules

darling,

2009-06-08T17:06:00.017-05:00

aysha is screaming and yelling and franzia and trampoline and stolen clothing and watercolours and underwear and fucking alcoholic and little hands and talking shit and small books and good letters.

taylor and aysha are hysterical penpal ridiculity and summer night cigarettes and hot sun and holding hands and getting lost and hahahaha and all things absurd and i can't sleep and too much alcohol and falling off the bed.

i walk into a bunch of kids squatting on the steps of the catholic church on the drag to ask about the siding at mopac. west, i say. anyone heading west? mikey's the guy you want to go with, the kids say. i meet him and tell him i'll return in a hour with my gear. i bomb home on ersabet and burst in the front door and look at dustin. can i get one last favor from you? i wait for him to look at me. can you take me to the drag in about an hour? i storm into my room and throw my shit together. i own nothing and i like that. i throw two shirts and a pair of cutoffs into my pack, rolling tobacco, matches, compass, headlamp, a few granola bars, harmonica, phone. it's everything i'll need for the next few months; likely longer.

i'm lying with my head on my pack in the bed of dustin's truck laughing at the beginning of the night and then i'm standing on the drag with my pack on my shoulders and a gallon jug of water in one hand. paulina is leaning out of the window of the truck, smiling so wide and looking so young and happy. i love you, be careful, she says. i put my palm on her cheek and brush her forehead and kiss her. i love you too. i'll see you soon. i don't know when soon means when i say it but just because i wander and just because i'm sad still and just because i go alone doesn't mean i forget where my home is. i give my hand to dustin and he takes it and i squeeze his hand. then i turn and i'm striding down the drag after mikey and will.

i'm sitting under a bridge in far south austin, chainsmoking for all i'm worth. mikey is next to me with a handle of kentucky deluxe and a forty. it's a nice night and we're curled up on a scrap of cardboard by the siding and waiting for a rideable train. i'm dizzy with the alcohol and i spin into a blurry shadow of a doze. a line rolls by at speed and it doesn't slow. it's northbound, which is what we need, but it's not stopping at the siding and there's no way we can hop this one on the fly.

we get on a 53 when a line of doublestacks and pigs roll to a stop. i shouldn't've caught out with mikey. i should've told him that there's no place to hide on the open front porch of a doublestack and that we're going to get called in and arrested, which is exactly what happens. we see a derailment on the way; it's old but the units are fucking chewed up, and trains don't get warped like that in a junkyard. there's a crewmember in a ballcap that i see watching us askance from under his bill and i don't like it. mikey insists it's alright. he's gotten tickets in texas but he hasn't gotten arrested for trainhopping here. we sleep uneasily through the rest of the night, bundled under a blanket and sheet. i ditched my sleeping bag in austin for a blanket, but it's a chilly morning and i forget what a 75 mph headwind means, and i should have brought it since i'm thinking of heading north to denver and then up the coast of california to seattle and portland.

i wake balled-up to a sunrise over farmland and green. the light is beautiful and everything is new and growing. you've never felt more free in your life, heading to god knows where on a freight, getting the shit bumped out of you by the click-clack and tossing to the squealing of brakes.

they're waiting at palestine. i walk into my cell laughing and leave doing exactly the same. while i'm there i think and walk around and sleep and climb the bars and do hanging sit-ups and let the whiteness of the walls fill my eyes and mouth talk a little write a little and think some more. i have something that they can't take from me, and time can't take from me, and i can't stop smirking at the guard who tells me i'm not supposed to be happy in jail. they can't cage me here. i'm not here at all. i dream about the shaking of a train and the wind on my face and watching the white dots of the same stars lying on my back on the porch, and i think of crew changes and where i should catch out next, and i'm impatient so i sing chelsea hotel no. two and paul baribeau to myself.

in anderson county jail the inmates of cell 160-71-WD-1 know about the carefree society. they have photographs of all my sewing needle tattoos and match-burn scars and when i lift the back of my shirt so they can take a picture of the mother bird on my back, i can see myself lying terrified on the bare wooden floor of my room in the grey house by the tracks and asking dustin to fill me with ink because i'm afraid and unwell and i don't know what else to do but empty myself out and start over. think of the most beautiful thing in the world, i tell him. a momma bird, he says. he tattoos a little mother bird on my back and a baby bird behind my right ear, so small he looks translucent. i remember the worst days and the days sitting alone on my porch and chain-smoking lucky strikes and the way i woke up one day and felt like i could take on the world and i'm so fucking happy and so alone and wide-eyed and laughing mad.

taylor talks to the cop at the station to pay me out. are you here for andrea lai, the cop asks? yeah, taylor says. are you the one who arrested her? the guy laughs. naw, i would've let her keep going. taylor hands me a dunhill, first thing out the door, and i light it with the same white lighter. stay off trains, lai! the guard yells after me. i tip my hat and wave as i walk away with my smirk.

i'm in denton but i want to go already. i'm back on the porch of eden house and kyle's sitting curled next to me, looking at me and saying, you've got a cute case of the wanderlust, and i'm laughing and awkward because he catches me off guard and that surprises me too. mikey's sitting a lot longer for his warrants in austin. i go alone into the leaf creeks and train filth sunshine clasped hands of summer and i have something no one can take from me. it's shiny and yellow and new when i sit on the porch and smoke in the sun and feel like the goddamn world is in my hands.

i'm alone in the most complete way and free to wander the fucking nation. it feels like i've slipped between the cracks somehow; i'm not here at all, not even in the in-between places. i'm nowhere and i'm nobody. i need and ask for no one but myself and then i'm sitting in the car with taylor and jordan on the two hundred miles back to denton and singing loudly to paul baribeau: you're here for a reason, living and breathing, and if you keep trying someday you'll find out why. i love you and miss you and probably haven't seen you in a long, long time. just don't let it be the last time you come into my life.

my name is ches, i think. for cheshire, like cheshire cat, and i can see caitlin running to me with a childish painting of a tree and skeleton and the large pink letters PAX for peace and a pirate ship and on the back in red sharpie, her favorite quote from alice in wonderland:

"'would you tell me, please, which way i ought to go from here?' said alice.

'that depends a good deal on where you want to get to,' said the cat.
'i don't much care where --,' said alice.
'then it doesn't matter which way you go,' said the cat.
'so long as i get SOMEWHERE,' alice added as an explanation.
'oh, you're sure to do that,' said the cat, 'if you only walk long enough.'

i love you.

caprice, mvt. two

2009-04-06T00:42:00.016-05:00

i haven't been well. i feel like a sleeping danger. i get on my bicycle and discover that when i look at cars in the shining streets, i am seeing myself being hit by them. i want to bike until i'm too tired to continue, and lay down to sleep in the streets. the passage of time loses itself upon my tired body, and the bleary-minded days and breath-twisting nights thieve the tumbling hourglasses from me. i can't make out the past two months. i'm exhausted in the worst way. i've no home. time is wanting to make too many peaces, and i haven't nearly enough of it. i wake in the mornings to lift one less finger on my right hand for the days i have left in austin as the other falls quietly to my side.

i biked out of the city again. i arbitrarily picked a direction again: southwest, and i took tibet and left at three-thirty in the morning with nothing but food and water and a pocketful of change for payphones. i managed not to get run over on 290 w, missed all of my damn turns in the dark, and sat on the pavement at a gas station and chewed gum furiously to mend a leaky water bottle for lack of tape. i asked strangers for directions and was replied, 'you're not a runaway, are you?' the morning came with no sunrise and light fog, damp and bleak and white. i passed through dripping springs, died indifferently on the hills of ranch road 12, arrived in wimberley, attempted to call my roommate at a payphone which ate most of my quarters, and instead demanded of a random, slightly confused man in dallas that i speak to dustin. i dawdled my morning around the old town square, strolling little galleries and shops. when i got bored, i biked down to the blue hole, local water hole, absolutely abandoned except for me. i skinny-dipped and climbed trees and laughed loudly about it, smoked a cigarette that i bummed from steve at the autoshop while stretching out to dry in the sun, and put my clothing back on. i dozed in the early noon sun, got back on tibet, went back by the autoshop to say hi to steve and ask for good places to catch rides, and got a second cigarette with the warning, 'pretty girls like you shouldn't hitchhike.' stood out in the old square with a sign: AUSTIN, and within ten minutes, caught a lucky ride back nearly to my doorstep with rocky, with whom i talked bikes and cycling the whole way. unwise decisions take my life and save it all at once.

taylor gave me a white lighter burn. i am branded with bad luck forever, and i smile faintly about it. the freights pass back and forth in my backyard, and i light a cigarette and wait at the door to watch. my high school photography teacher, mrs. jacobus, died of cancer three weeks ago. i went out and bought a pack of black spirits, chain-smoked in silence, wrote a letter to her, biked to the foundation, and burned it under a yellowing moon and heavy black sky. she is the one who showed me what a darkroom meant, and i am getting my first real tattoo for her: my mother's nikon fg, the camera i started on, and under that, her words: make great art. i am learning to see through a lens all over again, everything a shutter-snap at f2.8 and 1/250 s, wide-eyed and bewildered. i spent an equivalent of a good night's sleep in the daily texan darkroom with fumbling fingertips and the smell of fixer, printing for the first time in two and half years.

i realised today that the only way i would have had a real chance of completing college was if i had chosen a technical school for photography. columbia, pratt, risd, scad: my parents refused to pay the four hundred dollars in application fees when i was in high school and instead, pushed me towards universities with a wide array of degrees, in case i felt like being practical for once in my so-young eighteen years. i could be sleeping in darkrooms and tripping over prints in a bedroom smelling of film. i wouldn't be in austin. i wouldn't be leaving austin. i refuse to take any of it back. i am sitting in comfortable silence on a cheap plastic lawnchair on an unlit porch on the eastside at four in the morning with a still-stranger when he says, you feel everything, don't you? you're a charlie. i hide my startled breath under cigarette smoke: did i tell you that? no, he says. i can just tell.

feel everything.

caprice, mvt. one

2009-03-03T13:59:00.017-06:00

sarah, on the phone, sitting on the floor in the living room amidst our scattered belongings in the empty house that sheltered us for a half-week.

paul baribeau, quiet like a shadow on the right, watching ginger and her band, good luck, play a show at the kickstand bike co-op.

aaron against the door, mary on the steps, and chris lounging on the front porch of the house; the newness of a morning spent awakening next to new friends.

bananas, chris and mary's dog, which they found in tennessee, and which you must pick up when she runs away so she knows she's done wrong.

susie and sarah and bananas, among sleeping bags and borrowed blankets spread thinly between seven kids, with shower curtains as sheets and foam pads as pillows.

sarah, trying to wrestle her hat onto bananas, while pat the bunny, also wingnut dishwashers union, laughs against the back wall.

susie, held up at gunpoint by sarah at departure, tossing around broken toys and bits of trash picked up on the sides of roads and thrown into the trunk to be perused later.

sunrise on i-10, heading east towards gainesville, fl during the twenty hour drive, breaking only for food and cigarettes.

these are photographs long overdue from my trip to gainesville, fl for fest 7: a weekend spent making off with free pizza and sitting on the beer-stained sidewalk to eat it, dumpstering at krispy kreme with street kids until all things doughnutty are utterly repulsive, living in an abandoned house with no heat and sleeping on the floor with anything resembling a blanket used as one, slipping trifles of food from gas stations into sleeves when we run out of money.

i've been behaving erratically. it's nothing new; maybe i've come to expect this from myself, but i am wondering when i will come upon real danger in all of my escapades in and out of austin. i have been unwell. i don't live in my own house. i work half the shifts i should, and get away with it. i sleep outside when i am home, curled on the trampoline or nested cosily in a hammock. i stare at everyone i pass on my bicycle. i forget to feed myself. i don't sleep when i should. i sit on my porch with coffee and cigarettes and let everything that i fear set in my chest. i leave in all the ways that i shouldn't. i go unnoticed. i don't mind.

i have less than two months left in austin. this seems to have come upon me like such a surprise, and now that my time here is ending, i understand with quiet heart through the drowsing days and imperceptible nights that i am leaving family here. winter is shedding her white dress for one of leaf and water. the freights are coming later and later in the night, slowing slightly but not sufficiently for my passage. one train stopped outside of my house, screaming at the neighborhood. it grinded on and then came to a complete halt three times. i stood in the middle of the street, wide-eyed and terrified. i biked out of the city on a whim again, fifty-odd miles southwest to wimberly, tx this time, and hitchhiked back to austin. i put myself in intentional peril and it saves my life sometimes. i am learning to make peace, and there is much to be wanted.

tell me something.

white

2009-02-23T18:50:00.017-06:00

this is taylor, smoking like a chimney sweep, sharing cigarettes at sundown in denton.

this is me, charming my way out of work with blithe and irresponsible ease, driving up to denton at four in the morning on sudden and dangerous impulse, wrecking cars on the highway with white lighters in my pocket. taylor took this, i believe.

this is my mind wheeling, walking in an open field, tramping through brush and scrub, skirting mud and thorn to reach the top of a hill.

i am in austin, still. i have not yet lost my job, strangely enough. i am finding many saviours here, listening with wide eyes, watching as i pass the everyman everywhere. i tear through books, consuming my words and pages like a fiend. i have slipped into the ordinary, into every bicyclist running a stop sign, into every disillusioned college drop-out, into every broke young lover working their shit job and paying their rent. i skulk my way past security and through chain-link fences and climb half-constructed monstrosities in west campus to repress the impulse to fling myself off into the wind on the nineteenth story and watch the city breathe from so far above. i dream through my days and slumber in ten thousand different places at night, biding my time and biting my lip until i am able to go elsewhere. i am unable to offer justice to those asking why i have to go, but i only know that i cannot stay here, and so i say it again: i am leaving.

i don't know what i look for. i don't hope to find different people in the places that i venture to. i don't expect anything. i revise my will casually over coffee on front porches and try to know that i haven't any idea what i am getting myself into, that death and starvation and injury and rape and ill-willed highwaymen three times my size are no things to laugh about. oh, i don't know. i don't know anything. i feel five years younger than i look. i have done nothing with my life up until this time. i am not ready. i have less than two months left in this place, and i go with the heartbreaking knowledge that i have made family here and they will not follow me. things will change and in the time that i am apart from everyone i have grown so fond of, we will become different people. but in the end, everyone just wants to go home. everyone just wants a proper house. austin is no longer where i should be, and i will not be here.

i have been afraid lately, and it is so strange.

daze

2009-01-23T22:36:00.010-06:00

this is tim sawyer, compatriot in trouble-making and fellow troubadour. we are sitting on the railroad tracks atop the tunnel at the end of west oak in denton: let no hand hold you down, let no foot mark your ground. the stonetree society, with a branching tree on top of hastily sprayed letters. television destroys the nation. tall figures with backpacks and wide-brimmed hats. dripping spaceship in orange, words i have forgotten now. paint in places that seem absurd and unreachable. half-smoked cigarettes.

i am in a daze. i can't remember. i have been in denton half the past month; more than that, likely. my house is foreign. my clothing smells new and different. i keep forgetting that i own so many useless things. my hands feel strange on my own guitar after holding countless instruments belonging to strangers and new friends. i can't fathom why i pay rent on the little grey house that i found for us. i am nothing more than a tonguecat, per peter verhelst, trading my stories for your time. i have no home. i am not leaving: i have gone already.

i don't know when or how this happened. it's not that i don't enjoy austin, or that i'm not fond of my family here and of everyone that i have met wandering on my bicycle. i know though, that i am only trying to be where i should be, and that place is no longer austin. i can't let myself stray to browse the rideshare listings. there are too many ways to leave the city. presently: los angeles, new orleans, florida, san francisco, phoenix, charleston. there is a posting for a goddamned converted schoolbus with three beds, driven by a lot of hippies heading up to omaha. this is absolutely ridiculous. i am not here at all.

i don't know why i won't let myself leave. i want to leave clean; to do good, do right. i want to pay off my loans before i go. i need to find a subletter for my room. i should save up. i will want the money later when i am hungry. i am trying to leave right, but i am beginning to see that i'm incredibly unhappy, trying to stay in austin for more than two weeks. my discomfiture in keeping in one place is bewildering, and if i don't figure something reasonable to do soon, i am going to step on a train that passes in the morning and be gone.

winter is leaving, and the cold of a boxcar is no longer daunting. i have a pack and a sleeping bag, and i have pocketfuls of film. i have written a damn will. i have my hands and my stories and the knowledge to find sustenance and keep alive.

'i am afraid that one day, i will just jump on a train and leave.'
'that's nothing to be scared of.'

softer

2009-01-02T17:02:00.004-06:00

i made a softer world comic. a softer world is written by joey and photographed by emily, and they are pretty awesome.

i am in denton again. i got restless and caught a ride up with a guy named alex and a flaming redheaded irish traveller named neiv on new year's day. i should be back in austin within a few days, to attend a listening party for animal collective's merriweather post pavilion. we have been listening to it on repeat for a week and it is fucking brilliant.

she said, 'we will die young, die of cigarettes and marijuana and drink. we are only gypsies.'

drifter

2009-01-01T03:32:00.008-06:00

this is tim sitting down and me sitting up in a tree, and the feets of dustin and paulina in our front yard.

i turned the new year over in a cosy-quiet house with dustin, combing craigslist rideshare listings in every major city of every state adjacent to texas. have i gone insane? i got back into austin just tonight, fleeing denton with my mind all kinds of fucked-up, although i know i needn't have, and i am sitting on my bed in the bedroom i rent but don't live in for the most part, really, and trying to leave again.

there's a lady in dallas that's looking for companions to get to jalapa de diaz, mexico, and when she gets down there she is joining a nomadic horse caravan to promote education and awareness regarding the environment. nomads and horses. fuck. there are a few guys driving up to new york city in a one-shot continuous marathon. if i tag along, jon and minnie and anne all say i can have their couches, or possibly closets, by the sound of things up there. i cannot bend my mind around why i am possibly sitting in my warm grey house, already despicably dirty from not being able to shower for a week in denton, and not trying to hitch to god-knows-where with a sleeping bag and the pack that tim got me for christmas.

at the end of february, tim's friend alex and alex's friend jody are heading to europe to hitch and squat around some more before the authorities find alex, who is kind of without a visa of any sort, and kick him out of the country. it's not important, really. he is driving from manchester to amsterdam and after that, squatting around holland. i am invited, and if i go, i will have to scrape up airfare. to get an idea of all of this denton-austin shuffle and the n'er-do-good kids i am hanging around, alex told his parents he was going to school in england, got there and immediately dropped every class, and hitched across the damn continent instead. i think this is a brilliant idea.

i know: i say i will be here until may, but i think we all know i will get antsy again soon, and i will be gone, whisper in the curtains. i'll see you on the road, then.

negatives

2008-12-27T04:58:00.008-06:00

this is dustin's love paulina lying on my bed, sleepyhead mornings in our home. i live in a little grey house next to the railroad tracks with her and dustin, and we are a family. clearly, i haven't figured out the focus too well on jon's canonet rangefinder yet, and apologies for the dust and the badly placed cuts in the negatives.. i guess i'll blame cvs, too. really, i should scan these in properly, but i'm nowhere near my film, and most days i'm just too tired.

i am no longer a photographer. i don't say this easily, but i know this is true. i am not an artist any more or less than i was before, but my identity has no part in this; i've become a gypsy and a wanderer more than anything else, a polaroid kidd with a 35mm, if you will. my camera and my film is the same as my bicycle, and these are only tools through which i know people. i don't want to be at a newspaper, and i don't want to pursue more shows, and if someone buys a print or two from me, i guess i'll get a cup of coffee or maybe some more slide film or a roll of new bar tape for my bike; but in the end, i am only a child with a camera, another kid with film in my pockets, and i take photographs of my friends and of my life. i won't stop creating art and like kevin says, living like poetry, but i only want to do things completely, and i am no photographer.

i go to denton tomorrow to see tim, blazing merriweather post pavilion the whole way, and to drive to mckinney to have a smoke or two with taylor. i will be in austin in another half-week, working again. maybe you'll see me spinning around town on my bicycle, and maybe if you yell at me on the streets, we'll get coffee.

feels

2008-12-25T17:24:00.015-06:00

how very odd that the first musings i whisper here in months begin with a photograph that is not mine. dustin took this picture: it is midnight, and we and caitlin are standing on a dam in beaumont on the skirts of the outskirts of texas. dustin is bracing his yashica twin-lens against a rusting pole, minute-long exposure. i am wearing caitlin's dress, white and victorian, and spinning in circles, playing with the foreignness of a garment that i almost never wear. this is the beginning still, of the carefree society and consciousness, in many ways, and of someone that i am becoming, have become. i am still accustoming myself to being unfettered, now.

things are different and new. things are frightening and new. things are so new. i don't know even where to begin to speak. i dropped out of school. i used to say i was quitting school, taking a break, as if i were coming back, but in my present mind i am seeing that i most likely will not. i broke the news to my parents and they kind of flipped shit, but they know their words have no sway upon me and i know the truth. i work at jimmy john's with a lot of villians and ne'er-do-good ruffians whose company is my favorite, and i deliver on my bicycle, even in rain and wind and miserable cold. i pedicabbed for a while with my friend michael, river city cabs, and i am realising that i am a very small person, even if i bike like mad. i left my car in arlington and almost biked back to austin with my friend russell, two hundred miles and two and a half days. for lack of a companion and tools and pump, i spun up to denton instead, a chilly forty miles in a morning. someone was flying a confederate flag in their backyard and they were on my route. someone is missing a confederate flag. oh, and i am a vegetarian now. in denton, i broke into an abandoned firehouse with taylor and tim and we stenciled the walls. i just didn't write a paper for one of my classes. i wrote a will instead of studying for one of my finals and slept through it the next morning. i missed a second exam because my rideshare back to austin fell through and i had no way back. i am still not on academic probation, which is absolutely laughable to me. i got a second sewing-needle tattoo, a crying raincloud which is finally crying, now that dustin finished it for me. i pierced my own ear and it really, really hurt. i drove to gainesville, fl for a folk-punk festival with three friends and we lived in an empty house and out of dumpsters for a half-week, scampering and oliver-twisting with street kids and comrade punks. humdrum things aside,

i am home again. caitlin has come home and so i am home, almost home, almost well, and i am glad for it. i have been leaving so much; i have been with another family in denton half of the last month and the half that i spent in austin i didn't sleep in my own bed half the nights, couches and floors and co-ops. i am leaving already, and i know this too well. this coming may, i leave austin for the last time for how long, i cannot say, and taylor and tim and i will hitchhike and trainhop and rideshare up to iowa to detassle corn. from there, we go to wisconsin to pick apples. there is toying talk of flying to italy and of work in vineyards, but there are so many things in the states to see: portland, or and seattle, wa with tim to see the squatter scene and for me to check the courier scene, perhaps crashing with my brother. vermont to help pat the bunny from wingnut dishwashers union with a music festival. san francisco and chicago and new york if we so fancy. we'll drift anywhere.

i am traipsing the country, refusing any semblance of a roof over my head or a stable home or income, shedding the weight of obligation to remain in naivete and safety for three more years in exchange for a degree that i do not want, do not believe in, will not have. i am unfettered, absolutely free, and there is nothing keeping me in austin. i have been making lists: what to do with my things if harm befalls me, stewards of my belongings in my absence, things to give away and to whom they go, instructions for my friends and families. i will have absolutely nothing and it feels so good.

i am fallen in love and everything is new to me.

therighteous

2008-06-25T03:58:00.003-05:00

this is the first day of ramadan last year, a smallish mosque on nueces in the quiet of the day. this is the first photograph i ever shot for the texan.

i have been spending most of my nights at the bar at kerbey, with a constant flow of free coffee graciously offered by all the kerbey kids of whom i have become so fond; if not here, i am at the foundation with tibet, open sky and all of austin sprawling before me in the deep of night. or, as of late and in the case of an unfortunate rib, lay down with a beer and a clove on the still-warm drive of my house, dust in my hair and the earth turning upon my fingers upon ashen concrete.

it is terribly lonely here sometimes. it has been the worst lately. it is strange accustoming my body to only itself at night, when i spent my entire last semester with constant companions. i ceased living in my own room for some time. and now, i am left with only tibet and the wide streets of austin at night all to myself. this is strange.

and so, i have been musing over my art, or whatsoever you should wish to call the work that i pursue. since my arrival in austin some ten months ago, i know and understand now exactly what i want and where i want to be; also, what i want to do. my immense difficulty with galleries here, whether it is dressing snappily and trying awkwardly not to act the punk-ass to land a job, or else searching for a venue in which to show my art, has made me to wonder why i am doing all of this.

i know that my work at the texan is a meagre reflection of what i seek with my photography; that having been said, i do not neglect anything in my photography or art, whether i enjoy it or not, and i do enjoy my work at the texan. but i have come to recognize already that i will not end up at a newspaper. i do not know where i will go after i take my degree from this ridiculous school that is presently beating me over the head with its consistent stream of bullshit, if i finish school at all. i have begun again to turn over in my mind the idea of taking off for some time; i am fortunate to have the texas tomorrow fund and this is counted by hours, and i could come back and pick up what i left behind. but would i come back? i don't know.

before i lose my more important points in this sea of tangents which is carrying me, i should say this:

i am not a fine artist.
i am not an artist at all.

i am a person before all of these things, and i know this best in my conversations with dustin. he says that what we do is too profound to remain contained in galleries and museums. the art that we make isn't fine art; it's the most dirty, unpleasant, mundane, ordinary art. we do not begin with philosophical conceptions. we begin with people because it is what i've fallen in love with, people. we refuse to look like respectable and promising young students, piercings and body art, and we refuse steady jobs and fucking financial stability, and we refuse any other saviour but ourselves. we have our love and our art and this age at which we are very much indestructible, and who shall stop us? we are not afraid at all.

on fine art, the exhibit presently on display at women and their work gallery is slower still, by allison hunter. she takes photographs of animals at zoos and edits the backgrounds out of recognition into a dark, foggy haze, therefore taking the creatures out of their context. this is fine and admirable in its own manner, but i want to know: how is it pertinent to people? why should this matter, save to look beautiful in a whitewashed gallery?

the art that i create is my life and those that i love most. it is akin to stripping myself down in front of my audience, and there are those who are unrelenting in their critiques, and perhaps justly so. but in the photographing of these things, the photographing becomes a part of the happening and so, indistinguishable from that. i want to be alike to mike brodie, the polaroid kidd. this is a rail-riding punk who is essentially a drag person, only he takes polaroids of his comrades. his work is in fecal face online, in american photo in print, in m+b gallery in los angeles, in needles and pens gallery in san francisco. and oh, don't be deceived. if you read his interviews, he is a little bit bewildered that he has been misnomered as an artist. he's only a traveler with a polaroid one-step.

this is what i have come to understand, and i may very well disappear someday, if not before my completion of school, then surely soon afterwards. all this leaves me breathless, to be able to live righteously and religiously, joyously and exuberantly, fearfully and in such great trepidation of this knowledge.

no poets

2008-05-26T03:31:00.010-05:00

lily and chair, a soundless january morning unfolding upon my mother's birthday.

i suppose i have taken a sufficiently long sabbatical from posting here. in parallel, summer seems to have rendered that inevitable effect of sunlit days and softly focused lenses upon all photographers alike, and i will spend my nights refusing sleep and bicycling about austin with my usual armoury of holga and nikon. that having been observed, i am in want of a scanner with which to reminisce my bag full of negatives and prints, so in the meanwhile, i will proffer the remainder of older work which i have with me.

on an unrelated note, austin and the corresponding summer season have been witness to more lovely misadventures and miraculous transfigurations than i could possibly have anticipated. of these i am unafraid.

architects

2008-05-14T14:29:00.010-05:00

meet my brother, eric. he is five years older than me and in five days he will be moving to seattle for a shiny new job! i am really very excited for him, and in the city he will have all his rainy humdrum days to himself, but (as i sit in his apartment and write this) already i know that i will miss him when he is gone. everyone round me is swiftly scattering to their place, and i find myself wandering without any semblance of certainty or foresight.

this is my brother's volvo 850 turbo; he keeps it glassy and bright all the time. here, he is working in our garage at home. when i was just a little younger i used to finish my homework at two or three or four in the morning -- junior year of high school was really a beating, i remember -- and i would slip out barefooted into the driveway and doze in the passenger seat of my brother's car, music blearing and an autumn night's chill.

for some time and lately in particular, i have been pondering with childlike blitheness and naivety my current circumstances: how it came about that i am doing what i now do, and my desire for the most absurd way forward i could have chosen. is it strange that i revere mike brodie's photography and his accompanying itinerant philosophy, and that i want to do exactly what the polaroid kidd does at present? i will not even endeavor to think of what my parents would say to that. anyway, i am forcing myself a little painfully through school -- i've three years left at most -- and it has proven very difficult to elicit any great degree of concern for the remainder of my formal education.

these things do not worry me, really. if he has not yet abandoned me to the swallowing night, i have wholly left god behind in that curious thing of my past -- but even so, i have great faith in goodness and in the engineering of my own fortune. i refuse to settle down, because i've my closest friends and my camera and pockets full of film and the innocence of being young, and what more could possibly be of want? i do not know. the window during which the world opens its womb for your wandering -- and while you are just beginning to be a real person in all its realisations -- is so very small, and i am not going to miss it.

so, these are the things i have come to understand outside the hindrances of school since i have come to austin. i was not always ridiculous and unreasonable, but it is incredible fun.

epoch

2008-05-08T20:36:00.005-05:00

this is me and dustin and caitlin, shot by allison. we will all be too far away from each other much too soon, but summer calls for spontaneity and roadtrips and loves, as it should.

sunshine saviours and blush night. summer has not even really begun in earnest, and it promises unequivocal adventure and mishap already. in the meanwhile, i've a paper due in t-minus three hours and fifteen minutes, and i don't see how i could possibly write anything of use now. shit!

p.s., i got my black and white roll of 120 from marleyfest back from precision and it is damn good. not too shabby for a first run with my kowa six. fucking sweet.

no saviours

2008-05-04T20:47:00.005-05:00

this is scout niblett playing one of my favorites, will you be buried with my people? these are some the most remarkable words ever when in the end she sings, but who the hell knows which way the gods may pull us tomorrow? cause honey, we're writing our past right now, and fear will only beckon sorrow.

fuck.

among my favorite words also are these, sung by why: this goes out to dirty dancing, cursing, back-masking, back-slitting pranksters, kids. as all this earth grows i'm planted, that's some pull. in berlin i saw two men fuck in the dark corner of a basketball court, just a slight jangle of pocket change pulsing.

how dark and casual and fucking amazing is that?

and so, i have decided that you are a false messiah. until you find me in the manner in which i found you, i will wait impatiently and sighing.

no lovers

2008-05-03T22:54:00.019-05:00

caitlin with pomellos and skirts and skies amidst a rooftop picnic.

alex with magnificent afro and sunglasses, jovially carved pillar.

alex and ngan. love is watching, love is watching someone die.

taylor and dustin, vodka night and sharpie. debauchery is my favorite!

dustin and me, strange faces and bare bellies, rolling rock.

alex and his friend malcolm x, hanging out by the lounge with us.

aaron and me, feets and rocks, screaming bridge and trinity banks.

daily texan meeting, chris and peter, blue bras in the prather lobby.

caitlin and a camera, a little bit of heaven and looking glass of god.

i don't know what this means.

disappear

2008-05-01T13:28:00.005-05:00

oh, friend.
i love you.
i love you.
i love you.

sins and redemptions

2008-04-29T14:37:00.002-05:00

shit! sleep is so badly in want, but that is really very insignificant because i am going to a secret show tonight, where exactly i do not know but i will find out soon enough i am sure. lately and today in particular, i am being retardedly ridiculous and i refuse to stop it. this is the most fun, anyway. this is the carefree society.

we are our own redemption.

fight!

2008-04-29T06:05:00.006-05:00

everyone looks absolutely soaking wet and happy here.

me and taylor, making up after the epic battle. i jumped to dodge a balloon meant for me, managed to land squarely on a trash can, and smashed open my holga. consequently, these are a little bit murky, but i don't suppose that matters. these things inevitably happen in such battles.

so, we had a water balloon fight in denton. when caitlin and i arrived in the morning we obtained sandwiches with her friend nathan and had lunch in a sunny green by the art building, and sprawled on the grass afterwards and talked about everything that did not matter. when we went to peer round the corner to see what a very loud ruckus was about, we discovered a honk for peace war protest and also taylor. so we all set out together and found sarah doty and mostly sat around with cloves and english ovals and menthols in the smoking corner, and then walked to the dollar store where we purchased water balloons. the fight was a mess, everyone for themselves, and dripping smothering hugs afterwards.

this particular weekend was a little bit amazing.

morningnews

2008-04-26T17:03:00.007-05:00

shot by dustin, the same shitty sixty-nine cent bulk-loaded superia, and processed as slide film. i must have just woken up here, raining grey mourning.

in other news, the canon 5d i bought last night was retracted this morning. i guess it doesn't exist, but i should have seen that one coming a little bit. and so, the search for a digital slr continues. goddammit.

sunrise

2008-04-25T01:57:00.007-05:00

this is taylor and me at the beach house and we are probably not entirely there. he is one of my favorite people, and i miss him lots.

this is also cross-processed velvia 50, taken by dustin, which makes this picture exponentially awesome. dustin has gotten me into cross-processing, and even though the slightly absurd amount of velvia 100f we purchased from the united kingdom cross-processes magenta and red, it is still pretty amazing. i have lots of red photographs from scout niblett and similar adventures to scan, and they are all rather epic.

that is all. i am going to go pass out now.

summersummer

2008-04-22T10:44:00.007-05:00

i have forgotten their names, but these girls were at the human rights torch relay holding a banner that said, free tibet. they are still in elementary school, and they are very much adorable.

women holding picket signs in front of the capitol, protesting human rights violations in china. the demonstration focused on the persecution of falun gong and the alleged government abduction of human rights attorney gao zhisheng.

a flatbed scan by peter, due to crumpled negatives which would not cooperate with the film scanner. above my human rights torch relay photograph are caleb's filipino basketball tournament shots, complete with chemical stains.

i brought the last roll of superia i shot for film weekend down to the cvs on the far end of the drag, since the photo lab in the nearer one was shut down momentarily. they fucked my film up, light and chemical stains, and managed to botch a scanning job by missing the frames completely. i am going to go back there and yell at the lab manager, demand another roll of superia, and try not to throw anything at him. i suppose if there is anything i am particular about, it is very much photography, and the people at the photo labs at cvs do not even seem to know the difference between glossy and matte.

on another note, i have decided to stay in austin for the summer. i do not yet have a place to live, an actual job that pays more than fifteen dollars a day, anything in the way of an internship, or otherwise pertinent and useful plans of that sort, but i am staying here and worrying about everything unimportant later. mostly i am set on finding a fine arts photographer to assist, and if not that i will work at an art cooperative or a gallery, something like the lombardi or bolm studios or salvage vanguard, and if no one will have me i will find an internship or take classes. this means i will, of course, stay at the texan. maybe p-staff will offer something excellent and exciting over the summer, lots of photo stories and independent work.

i am so fucking psyched.

pinkhearted

2008-04-21T12:10:00.015-05:00

sunset with friends and cloves and cranes on top of the art building.

dustin, worn chucks and pink heart.

felicia, lovely as always among debris and colour.

taylor, bared feet and clambering on a massive metal beast.

dustin, talking to paulina above a lens flare!

dustin, looking petrified next to caitlin, at this moment seducing a stranger in the corner, and then rachael eating pizza unawares.

oh, love. you know me but you do not know how to take care of me, and i love you still. these are my friends and the absurd things we do.

awards and legends

2008-04-21T03:37:00.014-05:00

so, maybe this photograph will more accurately describe the tipa conference of yore. this is colby, janie, and andrew, all making very noble attempts to stay awake through the awards ceremony early sunday morning. janie came back with first for design, stephen second for news writing, andrew second for news photo, and caleb and i first for our photo story, and the daily texan took best of show as a paper for good measure. in any case, i think i may have done something imprudent if we had not taken first for our excellent show of wildart.

also, a note on this weekend: despite early misgivings, the daily texan has been gathering esteem in my eyes by blurring the line between photographic arts and journalistic photography, and as of late, it has been rather astonishingly living up to my ridiculous artistic hopes.

for the past few days, jordan and the weekend team plus me kicked it old school and went back to film. i went through two rolls of thirty-six exposure superia and also a roll of true black and white 120 at marleyfest, hazy with smoke and dusty heat, and then a third roll at the human rights torch relay at the capitol, protesting atrocities in china. all told, i must have spent at least eight hours at marleyfest, wandering wide-eyed with film, and in the end jordan lost the battle for a photo page. i came home to word that two pages of ap stories are running tomorrow. i hope he threw a pen at that budget meeting.

oh, and i have never seen jordan so close to losing it, but peter and bryant stuck it out with him and i did not stay to see if the rest of the newsroom rioted at our inexpediency. we just lay low in the darkroom for a while, hanging film, so that everyone would let us alone. all in all, i believe the count totals eighteen rolls of colour processed in our mouldering and likely cancerous but still functional darkroom at the texan, in addition to several more sent to cvs for want of time. after that, a marathon of scanning and a scramble for editing, and a round of applause to jordan and also peter and bryant for their excellent work.

the paper tomorrow is going to be nothing short of fucking legendary.

death

2008-04-20T13:25:00.010-05:00

caitlin, checking mail in jester and an incoherent shape behind.

dustin and belinda, somber conversations in the hallways of prather.

me and dustin, in the beginning of all these things before now.

dustin and caitlin, an escalator, and a glass man in a top hat.

do you remember what sarah said?
love is watching someone die.

caitlin,

2008-04-17T10:37:00.007-05:00

this photograph was not taken on either of our birthdays, but kisses are nice any time of the year, really. do you know what one of the first things you said to me was? i don't care if you're broken, friend. i love you just the same. and right after that, one of the first things i wrote about you was, where did we find her? our souls are friends.

happy birthday, friend. i love you.