Mayday 3

According to insurance estimates, the average American drives about 12,000 miles a year. That number might be outdated, but for this discussion, let's go with it. Last year, I drove about 30,000 miles with my travel partner that was recently stolen from my grasp. People tell me I'm on a grand adventure, which I am, but think about what one could do with those 12,000 miles the average person drives. What does 12,000 miles get you? Well, by air that's almost halfway around the world. Obviously, most of your cars can't drive underwater, though I'm sure some of you have tried to push through flooded areas, but there are plenty of terrestrial options out there. My 30,000 miles were almost exclusively on U.S. soil, but had I been aiming for a more linear journey, I could've gone nearly from Nome, Alaska to Punta Arenas, Chile and back. We drive what feels like short distances to and from our offices, yet for those with wanderlust and for those who find ways to support that quality, the option is out there to explore.

Mayday 2

In the past three weeks, I have had my car totaled while innocently exploring the backcountry of Louisiana, I have left behind sources of strong feelings and dreamt of adventures, I have found boredom and financial poverty at the hands of Mother Nature, and I have attempted to plan an uncertain future with as many semi-feasible options as possible. A character is a sum of his experiences, is he not? Though it hasn't been the greatest time lately, I'm still here.

Driving through Plaquemine, Louisiana (< 3 square miles), I decided to double back to check out what sounded like an interesting photographic opportunity. While sitting at a stop sign, I watched one vehicle plow into the back of another, forcing a game of steel machine pinball in front of me. One ricochet off a utility pole later, my car and I were no longer bystanders, but victims, and I knew that the vehicle that had treated me so well through my many adventures over the previous decade would no longer be with me. I could do nothing but laugh when the tow truck driver (and later the insurance company) asked me to grab anything I wanted out of the vehicle. It was sadly humorous because I was traveling between cities for the show and thus had everything I owned in the car. However, my hiking boots, a backpack containing some Clif bars, a couple electronic items including my camera, and a short ride in the back of a cop (pronounced PO-leece) car to the nearby McDonald's (For food? Good lord, no! Just a wifi spot and place to steal some alternating current), and I had set up the incident command center on the road to recovery. Within hours of an online post updating the world on what had happened, my widespread family of coworkers past and present, as well as those of blood, had called to check up on me, to offer transportation for both my belongings and my body, and to arrange lodging. My delayed arrival in Cincinnati was of no concern to my employers, so long as I was okay.

The curious ask, “What are these sources of strong feelings?” Let's just say that in Houston I left something behind I'm glad to be rid of, but I also left something behind that I hope to reach again.

Mayday 1

I've sat in my house too much lately. With thunderstorms nearly daily for two weeks, my standard “just start walking” approach to photography and urban exploration becomes a bit hazardous. I've now opted to take the half block walk from my house into the nearby park, which is a curious refuge. I've been writing at the edge of the fish pond, with its quiet waters, plentiful bird calls around, and just enough little bugs crawling to make me question my spot, yet there is the white noise presence of automotive road noise just beyond the forest, there is the glimpse of the University of Cincinnati parking garage, peeking out just above the trees, there are the sporadic emergency sirens reminding me of Doppler and the fraternity boy's subwoofer reminding me of Richter. Is this a refuge? I suppose it could be, but somewhere to clear my mind? I feel sets of miniature appendages walking across my legs and every time I look down, I find a creature that is new to me: A large ant, some small beetle, a psyllid perhaps? I'm concerned less about a bug bite and more about a tiny explorer meandering into my laptop and frying something internal.

What does it mean to clear your mind? Having never been one to practice meditation, I ask myself this question. If it represents the clearing of your thoughts, focusing on nothing but a black void, I've tried that a couple times, but my busy brain always calls me back from that spot: Not necessarily back to reality, though, for my mind spends hours tracing the many paths of what could be.

I don't know where I'll be in four months. I gaze at the reflections on the lake's surface to see a blurred upside-down representation of trees and a small bird fly by and I think, “This world could be anywhere.” The colors are right for what I believe the Southeast Asian jungles to be. The church bells tolling from somewhere behind the parking garage bring the old structures of Europe to mind. I really could go anywhere, and the fear is not what would happen to me there so much as how would I support myself while there or afterward if the travels are not work-related.

Ideas => Options => Choices => Reality

Somewhere between the first two is the necessary “secret ingredient”, which, if I were still working with chemical equations, I would gladly write in a smaller font size over the arrow as a catalyst – ironically, the factor that accelerates the reaction. That ingredient is patience.

Even in this refuge, with all the sounds, smells, and sights of nature abound, my mind races.

Don't drink the Salton water

Desperation can be something to fear. Not only the actions that one's own desperation may bring about, but also the unpredictable behaviors of the desperate around you. I spent last night in Bombay Beach on the Salton Sea: home to heroin addicts, meth heads, squatters, lots of dead fish, broken homes (physically and perhaps in a familial sense too), and who knows what else. To clarify, I spent the night there, but I did not sleep.

Friends with whom I had dinner advised against my passing the wee hours there. My initial goal was to arrive prior to the sunrise, so I could get some long-exposure shots of the breaking dawn on the hypersaline stagnant body of water. However, on my trip south, I found that the moon had risen and nicely illuminated the stark desert around me. Also, I had already achieved my other photographic objectives (dinosaurs from Pee-Wee's Big Adventure, statue of Sonny Bono) for the leg of the trip and I was too tired to drive. So I went to the Salton Sea.

Bombay Beach is a small town (?) on the east side of the sea that, among other charming qualities, has a collection of deteriorated housing and trash partially buried by the sand of the sea. The water level has since fallen, but the properties are well past any redeeming value. It is also known for methamphetamine usage, dealing, production, and so on. It was a bit nerve-wracking driving through the community in the dark, and there were many structures that would've looked great in night photos, but I didn't want to start shooting only to find that somebody was living there. Dogs barked on occasion and the train passed every 20-30 minutes, but besides that, the only noise came from the waterfowl.

I parked on the sand, under a moderately effective streetlamp, and sat for a while, wondering if this was going to be a good idea or not. I eventually got enough guts to go for it and grabbed my camera, a tripod, and the biggest knife I had (~11" dive knife)...just in case. I shot for a while, quite happy with the results, and at some point decided that I felt safer being awake and outside with a knife than sleeping in my car at the same site. Somewhere around 5 am, members of the community left for work and I paused each time I heard a car start or door shut, in case they were running in my direction. I didn't talk to anybody there for good reason.

That's pretty much the story. The reason why I'm running on 30 minutes of sleep. The Salton Sea region is a different world. To live in a town where everyone lived in broken-down mobile homes or shacks is foreign to me. I met a couple very nice, unique gentlemen later that day, but that's a different story for a different time. So, you'll have to either wait for the photos or the next post.

[Written in a Target Starbucks while charging my camera battery and laptop, but sent from a Starbucks I found across the street)

Transmissions from the desert

Wrap my arms around you and lift you to the top of the tree. This is not a home, it's a shelter and not much of one. I dread the sight of Spazier, for its name calls for you to leave me again. We creep past the scene and I can't help but think, "You never know, that could've been me"...but the moment passes like the steam off your breath, like the thoughts of turning back.

Every day I drive past the meadow expecting to see evidence of the wild. On the icy mornings, as the fog sits low, a family of deer stands proud. On the warm afternoons, a bear meanders across the grass. When I blink, though, my eyes remind me that there's never been anything there.

Never wait for the last. Enjoy each, savor every. Less likely to pause, more likely to share.

And as he flies past, you catch his head turn: a quick glance at what he's left and the millions of lost possibilities. I think I can see the monster looming in the darkness with its fingers of ice. The woodsman will keep me safe and alive.

And, like a plane into the clouds, I fade away.

Meet Brian

El Toro Brewing Company, Morgan Hill, CA

Meet Brian. I just did. In a way, I met him a few times, though during the same sitting. The fun part of bellying up to a bar (besides the obvious alcohol consumption) is the social potential created by your grabbing of a stool. My bar neighbor this afternoon opened the conversation with the traditional “Where do you live” prompt. Trouble was, I wasn't sure how to answer. My instinctual answer was Dallas, but I followed that with the caveat that my previous statement wasn't really true, or at least not just yet. The necessary explanation of my nomadic lifestyle soon had Brian caught up in the chat and he told of his past, describing geographic relocations, career changes, and troubles with John Law (“...it wasn't even my gun...”).

A life of manual labor and independent business practices, of which marijuana sales –and consumption – seemed to be a good part, coupled with military experience, concert photography, and what sounded like a lot of white lines to inhale resulted in a man who had, at age 52, new objectives in his duration here. He recently enrolled in undergraduate study at a nearby community college, yet had already changed his major 3 or 4 times. His current goal was to be a dietician (the irony of which did not escape me as we ate fried foods and drank beers) and to not just stop at the undergraduate level, but to achieve either a Master's, Doctorate, or both. He seemed very pleased with his newly discovered, spiritually-assisted clarity in life. I supported his hopes by telling him that I knew people in their mid-50s who had just received graduate degrees.

The sad part, however, is the inescapable character. He told me that he had been free from drugs for a few years and that he only drank a couple times a month. He had been through extensive PTSD therapy and had sold off his vehicles to cover for some bad investments he had made. I'd estimate that for 98 percent of our talk, he didn't make eye contact, oft looking down at the bar near me or off into the eyes of some distant person sitting to my side. The lack of connection didn't seem out of nervousness. He initiated our conversation and had no problem (trust me, he dominated the talk for most of the two hours) talking about his story. However, he couldn't keep a train of thought and he would tell me stories that I'd already heard minutes before. He was quite cordial and would throw in a nice “Thank you” when I would chime in with the thought that he had misplaced.

I'm pretty sure Brian was permanently fried: Not like the tasty ranch-dipped mushrooms sitting in front of us; more like the decades of pot he had smoked. I had a friend in college that was in a similar predicament, but realized it himself. Years of acid had left him with an inability to memorize the necessary biological material of our curriculum. He tried, but he couldn't concentrate in class and eventually dropped out of the sciences that he loved and pursued his artistic endeavours instead. I worry that Brian will find himself having the same issues. The good news is that he was able to retain enough homeopathic information that he could share much of it with me, but the idea of him making it through four, let alone seven or eight, years of schooling seems unlikely.

Was it the drugs, the military, or just his inherent character? A lifetime of experiences makes the person and a unique selection of experiences made my bar neighbor today.

-----------------------------------------------------------

By the way, El Toro Brewing Company has 24 taps of their own brews and I was happy with 7 of the 8 I tried.

The world happens under this striped sky

"There's been an accident"

Sit in one place long enough and you're certain to witness a full spectrum of events regarding human lives.  The circus is designed to entertain, to amuse. Most have expressions of joy, awe, happiness. That, however, is not all that happens here. Children can be scared by that designed to please, much as Santa Claus does.
The other day a woman excused herself from the show briefly because she was nauseous. In talking to her outside, I found that it was not physical malady that induced such discomfort, but rather the fact that she was attending the show with her future ex-husband -- a man that decided to move past her after 39 years.
Yesterday, I was standing with two women outside the tent who appeared to be waiting for another member of their party. Just before I approached them to inquire, a coworker hurried up to them and said,

"There's been an accident"

This is a vague statement that can bring the worst of scenarios to mind when a family member is involved.  Judging by their immediate frightened looks, this is just what happened.  As it turns out, the person they were awaiting had a seizure while rushing between the box office and the tent. I've no idea how things concluded, but there were paramedics on site (we always have at least one EMT at all times).

I wonder what else I might witness while doing this. Will be there a child born here? Would the parents be cruel and name it "Ovo" or "Guy" (after Cirque's founder)?