nola, twenty sixteen

new orleans, twenty sixteen, with my friends: photographs tonight, words tomorrow. 

sometimes you need to hear it

(scrawled on the beams of the brooklyn bridge, found while walking across it on the 29th of july, 2016)

things considered, over the course of the last seven days

how much banana bread is too much banana bread

can I pull off stripes

do I even care if I can't, since I will wear them anyway

can I convince everyone I know to go see the florida project

will everyone fall in love with it like I did

will I care if they don't

can I convince everyone I know to shun facebook

will I care if they don't

should I start a professional facebook deactivators club

should we have satin jackets with our names on the back

will I care if I'm the only member

is this president real

are we still living this nightmare

will anyone notice if I just hide in the bathroom and read all day

can I just wear leotards in place of clean underwear

would it just be faster to order new underwear from amazon than to go to the laundromat

could I live with myself if I actually did that

will I ever not be going to the laundromat

can I lowkey audit ava's AP lit class

can the marigold be my new signature flower

how much soup is too much soup

girls on film

new orleans with friends, october 2016. new orleans with friends, I highly recommend it. 

(along with a polaroid land 250 and some fuji FP-3000b, if you can swing it)

(more nola to come, more more more)

long live instant film

wildly inspiring me:

1. p.v.'s polaroids of people

2. matthew james o'brien's instant columbia

3. anje niemi's short stories

4. kyler zeleny's found polaroids

5. willem baptist's instant dreams

this feels particularly relevant right now

"if you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy, don't hesitate. give into it. there are plenty of lives and whole towns destroyed or about to be. we are not wise, and not very often kind. and much can never be redeemed. still, life has some possibility left. perhaps this is its way of fighting back, that sometimes something happens better than all the riches or power in the world. it could be anything, but very likely you notice it in the instant when love begins. anyway, that's often the case. anyway, whatever it is don't be afraid of its plenty. joy is not made to be a crumb."

-mary oliver

number nine

number nine: fly down seventy slides. 

I put that one on the list because lord help me if I ever just completely give up slides. not necessarily because I have a thing for them but because of what it might mean about who I've become. if I can't haul myself up a ladder to fly down a shiny silver slide every once in a while, well then maybe I'm a little bit dead inside. also-- cheap thrills, I'm not above them. 

I can tell you right now I have not flown down seventy slides, not even close. but I have been down a few. 

let's see.

there was the big concrete slide in san francisco, just up the street from bob and jen's house. went down that one so fast I popped both sandal straps. put my feet down in a desperate attempt to reduce the break-neck speed at which I was traveling. cried about the sandals (which were favorites) but have zero, and I mean zero, regrets.  

there was the slide at the park in our old neighborhood in portland. a bright red and yellow spiral number circa nineteen seventy something, by far my favorite slide in the city though admittedly, not very fast. I lumbered down that thing like a two-ton drunken sloth. still, prettiest. favorite.

there were the two slides at my favorite park here in atlanta-- the noguchi playscape at piedmont park. flew down those guys on my 45th birthday. I say 'noguchi playscape' not because I'm fancy but because that's what it's called. designed by japanese-american sculptor isamu noguchi back in 1976, it's modern art you can climb on. a dream playground, really, and important but not at all dignified, which I discovered the second my shirt flew up over my head on the way down that first slide. joy, I tell you, unmitigated. mr. noguchi, I thank you.

there have been an assortment of slides along the way, a garden variety, if you will, of average playground slides. sturdy plastic numbers in the colors du jour-- deep purples and teals, sensible browns. great conductors of static electricity but nothing really worth mentioning here.

all totaled, I'd say I've been down about 12 slides but let's call it an even 15. that means 55 more slides in the remaining (as of today) 763 days. it seems I have some sliding to do. 

here's to not being dead inside. and to things that make you say wheeee.

hashtag halloween

we are barely hanging onto things around here. and by things, I mean childhood holiday traditions and by we, I mean me. for her last official year as trick-or-treater, ava went old school slash classic halloween witch (though I believe in my heart of hearts she was really just channeling lydia).  alternately, ezra ditched trick-or-treating altogether. I pretended not to care. for the record, I am no good at pretending not to care.

I could not even get him to carve the small pumpkin he'd picked out at the farm weeks ago. though he did at least manage to scrape his pocket knife across the bottom of it and call it a mouth. since the thing already had two rotten spots on it that looked like eyes, it was promptly pronounced a carved jack 'o' lantern. okay. he will never admit it but he loved that rotten little pumpkin thing. the more it rotted, the more he loved it. and so did I. 

halloween 2017, I'll take it. melancholy and all. last year's halloween was an absolute disaster. this year, we lowered our expectations, kept to ourselves. and, it worked. this year, we celebrated what felt like the last of the last. who knows what next year holds? wait, don't answer that. 

(halloweens past: 2016//2015//2014//2013//2011//2010//2009//2005)

found

sunday seven

and if your insides are itching and screaming and thundering and you want to contribute, here are seven different organizations doing good work, hard work, absolutely infinitely essential work:

1. equal justice initiative: committed to ending mass incarceration, challenging racial and economic injustice, protecting basic human rights for the most vulnerable in america (folks, bryan stephenson is doing some wildly extraordinary work) (read more and give here)

2. the king center: dedicated to the inimitable dr. martin luther king jr. and his philosophy and strategy of non-violence to eliminate poverty, racism and violence, educating and inspiring new generations (crown jewel of our city, down on beloved auburn ave) (read more and give here)

3. southern poverty law center: devoted to fighting hate, teaching tolerance and seeking justice (never has their work been more important than now, under this current presidential administration) (read more and give here)

4. black lives matter: working vigorously for freedom and justice for black people and, by extension, all people (real life boots on the ground) (read more and give here)

5. philando feeds the children: collecting donations to help pay off elementary school kids' lunch debt in honor of philando castile, who was lovingly known as 'mr. phil' at the minnesota elementary school where he worked as the supervisor of the food program (read more and give here)

6. bronx documentary center: sharing photography, film and new media with underserved bronx communities and the cultural community at large (particularly taken with the work of the bronx junior photo league and adult league) (read more and give here)

7. moving in the spirit: using dance to teach young people social, emotional and cognitive skills needed to thrive, producing resilient, compassionate leaders, wholly committed to making dances that explore issues of social justice (friends, I can personally vouch for this extraordinary organization as I've been teaching for them on and off for the last 25 years and have seen up close the good, have experienced it myself firsthand) (read more here but by far, the most powerful testament to the organization is right here) (and please give here)

we can give our money and our efforts to the good fight, we can. 

(p.s. above photograph taken in the wings of a 2015 moving in the spirit performance)

archaeology

portland, oregon, november 2008. 

we manage hundreds of photographs now, at any given moment, we deal in volume. which means that sometimes photographs get lost. and stay lost until we go digging.

most nights

onions and garlic in butter on the stove in the heavy red pot, wooden spoon in hand. ava on the living room floor hunched over a mess of art supplies. ezra on the xbox with portland friends, long limbs slung over a mostly broken old bamboo chair. ward puttering around the house, with a coffee cup, headphones. cats lounging in the best chairs, the chairs that are not broken, the chairs we'd like to sit in. 

file under 'what most nights look like around here', under 'things I want to remember'. 

//polaroid week///

have yet to find other cameras that make photographs like polaroid cameras do. photographs that feel like what I remember, look like how things feel.

(above selections from fall polaroid week 2017)

hello, nablopomo

the hardest part is the starting. the saying you're going to write something every day. the putting it out there, even though you're not sure people even read anymore. once you get past that part, it's gravy. 

well, gravy those first five or six days and then holy crap you're in it and you said you'd show up here every day, whaaaaat. every day. you know for a fact you are not a show up every day girl, you are more ebb than flow, you are squarely, solidly an ebb girl with just a little bit of flow. 

also, no one reads blogs anymore. or so they tell me.

but with november comes many things: banana bread. new tights. the wearing of the boots, the mourning of the loss of light. increased amounts of soup. changing leaves. and, nablopomo.

unbelievably, this is my twelfth year. 

so, here we go. 

sunday seven

seven pieces that have educated me, challenged me, pushed me, moved me:

1. drowning in whiteness

2. questlove: trayvon martin and I ain't shit

3. why we never talk about black-on-black crime: an answer to white america's most pressing question

4. for our white friends desiring to be allies

5. letter to my mother after charleston

6. no, I won't stop saying 'white supremacy'

7. the first white president

we can read, we can learn, we can do better, we can.