211/365

things seen today:

old school pool umbrellas
a three hundred year-old live oak
a giant wooden milk carton in the middle of a field
wildflowers run riot along the side of the highway
two billboards for machine gun america
an elegant live oak heavy with spanish moss next door to a gas station
a billboard boasting 'live baby gators and florida tee-shirts'
a billboard boasting a country radio station that plays 'no rap and no crap' 
(in comic sans font no less, as if that no rap/no crap bit wasn't laughable and/or offensive enough)
a cloud clearly shaped like the letter L
a colossal confederate flag, large enough to cover a parking lot
(what I wouldn't give to burn it)
an endless, hopeful expanse of water the color of slate
a dozen gleaming airstream trailers
a slew of pink-tipped clouds
the bottom end of a double rainbow
bubbles in the car

america is nothing if not an endless, maddening contradiction.

210/365

things seen today:

a giant smiling peanut
the inside of an old greyhound bus
lemon meringue pie like a cloud
a mammoth yellow moth at the gas station
a pick-up truck graveyard
burning bales of hay
magic pasaquan color and pattern
hand-painted produce signs
roadside swamps and white egrets
joseph and the technicolor pool noodles
an entire field of sunflowers, all turned toward the sun
railroad ties stacked like lincoln logs
a thrift store called THANK GOD
bubbles in the motel room

day eighteen

there will be hours, I think. hours and hours in the car to do things. seven hours to new orleans, plenty of time. I can read and write, mend jeans, maybe even edit. balance the computer on my lap and edit shoots while we fly down the highway. I have done this before, though with minimal success. still, I think. I could get so much work done. I stuff my black canvas bag with books and zines, sashiko thread. I pack a sketchbook, a small pouch of supplies, my computer, external drives. I am hopeful.

but once we hit the highway, I can only sit and stare. for hours, I sit like this. maybe sing along with the music a little. mostly, I let my mind run til it can't anymore. until the sky turns pink and the headlights of oncoming cars pop on and I am drowsy and drunk from the quiet. I can't even bring myself to read. we are in alabama before I realize maybe this is good for me. maybe this is exactly what I need.

summer twenty seventeen (three)

favorite summer photographs, part three, fini. part one here, part two here and now, in retrospect, I am certain I underestimated summer twenty seventeen.

summer twenty seventeen (two)

favorite summer photographs, part two. part one here, part three on deck.

it's entirely possible I underestimated summer twenty seventeen. 

summer twenty seventeen (one)

in between my inexplicable (or, in some cases, absolutely explicable) summer melancholy, there were good times. really, really good times.

this is part one of a three-parter, folks. a three-part love letter in favorite photographs, dedicated to all the times this summer I managed to sidestep an electric undercurrent of anxiety and find my way through to the good times.

as in, yurtsgiving (2013 edition)

yurtsgiving, as in thanksgiving that happens in and/or around and/or near a yurt.

three years ago, when we were still living out in portland, the madison family said, hey! let's camp! let's camp for thanksgiving! and we said hey! let's camp! let's do it! though we feel we should tell you something. we've never camped before.

which is maybe the first time we'd admitted it out loud, while living in the pacific northwest. because, and maybe this will come as a surprise to some of you, this is not something you openly admit when you live in the great pacific northwest. you do not openly admit to not liking coffee. and you absolutely do not openly admit to never having camped. you just don't. believe me.

and it's not that we didn't want to camp. we just didn't know how. neither of us had ever gone as kids, neither of us had grown up camping. we didn't have any of the stuff. and you need the stuff. you can't just show up and camp, you need the stuff. furthermore, you need to know how to do the stuff. and we certainly did not know how to do any of the stuff. and so this is how we went almost seven years living out in the great pacific northwest (the unofficial camping capitol of the free world) without ever having camped.

clearly, yurtsgiving changed all that. for the record, I do realize yurt camping is maybe not the same as, ahem, real camping. though I'm here to tell you it sure as hell is when you've never been camping before. as the people say, you've got to start somewhere and that little yurt nestled in a forest along the oregon coast was our gateway drug. that little yurt in nehalem bay is where we fell in love with bacon cooked over an open fire and crazy camp raccoon shenanigans and midnight stargazing and campsite turntables and picnic table thanksgiving dinners and, well, camping.

twas our last thanksgiving while living in portland, twas a heckuva way to go out.