other

other

I have climbed highest mountains
I have run through the fields
Only to be with you

I have run, I have crawled
I have scaled these city walls
These city walls
Only to be with you

But I still haven’t found what I’m looking for

I have kissed honey lips
Felt the healing in her fingertips
It burned like a fire, This burning desire

I have spoke with the tongue of angels
I have held the hand of a devil
It was warm in the night, I was cold as a stone

But I still haven’t found what I’m looking for

I believe in the Kingdom Come
Then all the colors will bleed into one
Bleed into one
But yes I’m still running

You broke the bonds
And you loosed the chains
Carried the cross
Of my shame
Oh my shame
You know I believe it

But I still haven’t found what I’m looking for
But I still haven’t found what I’m looking for

funny, other

Here in Guatemala

1. Possums eat chickens, and in return folks eat possums. You know how possums love to play dead? Sometimes they’ll decide to play dead after they’re caught and clubbed. Then sometimes they come back to life after being skinned. Can you say angry-zombie-possum?

2. Common courtship process:
i. Boy and girl meet
ii. Boy decides he likes the girl, drives up to her house sometime after one in the morning and cranks a love song on his stereo for some indeterminate amount of time
iii. Girl goes to window and swoons for this indeterminate period of time, or goes to window to glare briefly then goes back to bed.
iv. Depends on the result of iii: (negative) the boy repeats step iii until he goes back to step i, or (positive) the boy and girl start to date.
v. After some time of going out, they become “novios,” something pretty similar  to being boyfriend/girlfriend. Then after being novios for a while, they get married.

…at any point in the process, either the boy or the girl can tell the other that they do or don’t like him/her; often neither this event nor whether or not it’s reciprocated generally affect any of the five steps.

3. It is not a meal if there are not tortillas. Literally, like it doesn’t count as a meal without them–if you eat what we United-States-ians would usually call a meal, and it’s without tortillas, you actually get to eat another meal (with tortillas, of course) because the first time around didn’t count. This is pretty awesome, although may bode ill for my health if I don’t play a ton of soccer…and number four…

4. Soccer is different. It’s like…eating a meal or walking to work. I’m used to “oh cool, yeah lets go play soccer!” Here it’s not really something to get stoked about. Not that people don’t love it…they really, really really love to play soccer…it’s simply a part of life. Just about everybody has a brother who’s played semi-pro, or plays semi-pro.

5. In the U.S. if we’re going to make a gesture to signify the person we’re talking about, we generally point with the hand or nod with the head. What’s the most common way to do this here? A kissing-like-gesture with the mouth. This one took a while to figure out.

6. They drink lots of fruit punch. It’s very delicious and very specific: apple and pineapple juice with a bit of sugar and cinnamon, only served hot and with little pieces of coconut floating in it.

7. Coffee’s like this: brewed light, heavily sugared and always with sweet bread to dip. Once in a blue moon somebody in a restaurant will order coffee with milk–beyond that, coffee with any sort of dairy product mixed in is purely out of the question.

8. There are tons of motorcycles. They all–
1. Look different
2. Have nearly the exact same Chinese chassis and engine

9. There’s more of life and death and heaven and hell than you can shake a stick at.

other, stories

Today I rode through a little town in the middle of nowhere in a developing country in Central America on an old dirtbike, to my desk inside of a warehouse-building-turned-office.

other

Well, here it goes: this is my first whack at building a website.

Rough draft:

http://www.porchcoffee.org/lifeandhope/Home.html

The buttons don’t work (unless you’re an IE-user), there are no pages but the main page and the two boxes below the slideshow have absolutely zero format/style/font/zing/content. Ok Kelvin, fine, maybe it’s not absolutely zero, but it’s dang close. And with respect to being edgy, hip and cool (beautiful examples: Amnesty International, RED or Kiva), it’s simply not even an attempt.

But it’s a website, which is a new thing in dave world :). Also, for its audience the only need is easily available content. Once we here have made some orders-of-magnitude epic growth, then it’ll be time for a slick website to draw in more publicity and viewers. For now, I think it’s time to go eat a delicious two dollar lunch of carne asada, Guatemalan veggies and an orange.

Edit:
The buttons work now. Done son, wOOt, boomshicka-wow-wow and all that jazz, I’m pretty stoked that they work now. Apparently the slideshow div was messing with the button bar (?). A switch from relative positioning to absolute positioning did the trick. It’s probably a hack way of doing things (I don’t know enough about webpage code to even know if something’s hack or not, haha), and I don’t really understand why it worked, but it worked and (I’m pretty sure) it works in chrome and IE and firefox. Close enough.

other

I left Seattle last tuesday at 10:30pm ish, arrived at Barillas late friday night. Here’s a list of things that I’ve done since stepping off the plane in Guatemala City.

One of them is … FALSO! As the old song goes:

One of these things
Isn’t like the others

1. Eaten at Pizza Hut
2. Eaten at Pollo Campero
3. Played soccer..while having absolutely no spanish-soccer-vocabulary at all (with the exception of “GOALLL!”)
4. Made italian food for dinner
5.  Driven country highways and a little town at nighttime, dodging people, boulders and buses
6.  Not gotten sick from anything…with the exception of the oatmeal I accidentally dumped italian seasoning into. Mmmmm yum.
7. Watched a truck drive sideways (well, not completely, but pretty close to it. That rear axle was seriously out of wack.)
8. Taken ~500 photos
9. Used facebook
10. Acquired 5 (female) body guards. Yessir, one very safe gringo.
11. Read The Old Man and the Sea by Hemmingway
12. Switched to using Google Guatemala. I don’t mind it, but it’s not really by my own volition. Google is very persistent about it.
13. Become…EL MATADOR DE INSECTOS DE MALARIA (yeah you Guatemalan mosquitoes, you heard that right. BE AFRAID.)

ideas, other

I’m moving to a little town out in the sticks..of Central America.

Book list, in the order the stack sits in on my bedroom floor, with little notes when fitting

1. Scarne on Cards (my late Grandpa P.’s copy, with his notes. He was a poker boss), Scarne
2. Surprised by Joy, C.S. Lewis
3. The Weight of Glory, C.S. Lewis (yes..Lewis again)
4. A Severe Mercy, Sheldon Vanauken
5. The Applications of Elliptic Functions, Alfred Greenhill (I will go nuts, guaranteed, if I don’t have a math book on my shelf to study once in a while)
6. The World’s Last Night, C.S. Lewis (and again)
7. The Signature Classics (seven of his most popular books), C.S. Lewis (yeeeeah…)
8. Still Life with Oysters and Lemon, Mark Doty
9. The Short Stories, Ernest Hemingway
10. Jesus and the Victory of God, N.T. Wright (Big thank-you to my friend Grant V. for the recommendation)
11. Bible, NKJV
12. Bible, Spanish (I have no clue what “translation.” It fits in my pocket though..win.)
13. The Old Man and the Sea, Ernest Hemingway
14. All the Pretty Horses, Cormac McCarthy (read it this summer, holy crap incredible. It’s actually a funny story, it’s my Christmas gift from Mom, and I wasn’t supposed to know she was sending it with me. I came across it in a used bookstore, and got very excited. You can figure out the rest)
15. The Blue Valleys, Robert Morgan
16. The Mountains Won’t Remember Us, Robert Morgan

other

PACKING/CLEANING/THROWING-STUFF-AWAY!

There are a few things I’ve been working on getting written these past few weeks and I may try to get one or two up before Tuesday. Maybe I’ll post one from Miami (layover on the way to Guatemala City)? Here’s a rough list:

1. The salvation of a century old Bohemian gypsy violin
2. Football (yes, I’m using USA-English here. Pigskin, first downs and hail mary passes, that football)
3. Old hearts breaking
4. The surreality of reality-setting-in
5. Batch of film pictures
6.  Three languages every soul speaks
7. Facebook, and more importantly why I won’t be using it for a while
8. Why math and music are legit and photography rarely is
9. Coffee-mug-problems
10. A bittersweet farewell letter to two bicycles
11. Why I believe what I believe about life, the universe and everything (that one’s a humdinger. I really want to git’er done though, it’s long overdue)
12. Stitched-up panoramic photos
13. The most powerful lesson I’ve ever learned from a coworker
14. My short lived MLS soccer career (well..um..not really. but kinda.)
(Edit: two more)
15. Film vs. Digital
16.  What it’s like to fly away from the city I’ve lived in for all of my 22 years (another humdinger)

Shoot, that list is longer than I thought it’d be (and there are yet more rough drafts laying around, too). Fourteen things–I’ll aim to finish them all by November. *crosses fingers*

ideas, other

It seems that in Western culture (well–Seattle culture, the only culture I’ve lived in) that us people–humans–we define ourselves by three main things, in varying proportions:

1. What we do (hobbies/sports maybe)
2. What we make/contribute (could be nine-to-five?)
3. What we own

I’m not sure what to think about that, more will follow. I have this knee jerk reaction that I’m either missing something, or that there’s some wrinkle in the way things work, and there should be something more to how folks..ah..well…are.

other

This song is so incredible. It has been hanging out on the “song” page for a while now and I’ve decided it just deserves it’s own post. Is it not so much of life? No matter what you believe, I bet something stirs deep inside when you hear this song.

Taking what I can see from where I am, I’m convinced this is a great part of all that really matters: one day after another, each day a step closer, closer to love, to god, to others, each day one step closer.

One Step Closer by U2

I’m ’round the corner from anything that’s real
I’m across the road from hope
I’m under a bridge in a rip tide
That’s taken everything I call my own

One step closer to knowing
One step closer to knowing

I’m on an island at a busy intersection
I can’t go forward, I can’t turn back
Can’t see the future
It’s getting away from me
I just watch the tail lights glowing

One step closer to knowing
One step closer to knowing
One step closer to knowing
Knowing, knowing

I’m hanging out to dry
With my old clothes
Finger still red with the prick of an old rose
Well the heart that hurts
Is a heart that beats
Can you hear the drummer slowing?

One step closer to knowing
One step closer to knowing
One step closer to knowing
To knowing, to knowing, to knowing

funny, other

shining brilliant awesome as always. From the back of one of Newman’s cartons…

LEGEND:

The marathon in Africa…I’m halfway out and barely chugging. Mountain coming! Liquid needed! What’s around? Water’s bitter! Beer’s flat! Gator, blah blah!…Fading fast. Then a vision – sweet Joanna! – Tempting me with pale gold nectar…Lemon is it? Yes, by golly! Lemonade? No, Lemon aid!… Power added! Asphalt churning!… Cruising home to victory! Hail Joanna! Filched the nectar (shameless hustler) – in the market – Newman’s Own.

From the back of a  Pink Virgin Lemonade carton, to be exact. Is that not shining brilliant awesome? I actually think, if I could be paid to do stuff like writing things like that, I would be down for a career in marketing..maybe. Maybe for little while.

other

a new theme and other small changes after six months, 63 posts and north of two thousand views.

I’m also moving to another continent in not too long. Addio summer, ciao autumn. Saludos a los EEUU que amo, hola hermosa Guatemala.

Words of a coworker: “I love to just be in the weather, all the different seasons and how they change, I love all of it.

—–

Less important note: I switched to an account with my name rather than the “donqvijote” pseudonym. This post should show up as authored by donqvijote, but anything before or after should show “david padvorac.”

other, photography

Well..I’ve done it. I bought LR3; the install just finished, and I’m poking around for a few minutes before hitting the sack. I took my first step onto the slippery slope of digital world a few weeks ago, D200 in hand, and now I step again. I will still resolutely dislike digital photo editing, with the following (maybe sorta possible) exceptions:

1. mellow HDR
The mind essentially does this when you look at a sunrise, it balances color/light so that you can see full detail in the ground (dark) and full color in the sky (bright). Well..actually I think what happens is that you see full detail in your field of view (the breadth/width human eyes can focus clearly on at one time), while the mind corrects the colors outside of that. I think I’m right, but may be far from fallacy-free. From the little browsing of HDR’d images I’ve done, what you “see” lands somewhere between a typical single exposure and a typical HDR job. I’m going to play around with very mellow HDR processing and some low light exposures. All that said, I’m super skeptical of it. I like natural light shots. I like them a lot. Yes details are lost and/or colors get washed out..but that’s part of what makes a perfectly taken photo so crazy beautiful, isn’t it? So yeah, HDR..we’ll see.

2. White balance
Film is awesome. It does white balance all on it’s own..oh wait, no, it’s SO awesome it doesn’t even need to do white balance! As a matter of fact, most film simply captures colors as most folks see them, straight up yo. Digital sensors aren’t that technologically advanced yet (oohhhhHHH SNAP, kid. Yeah huh). So when I have a digital shot with off-key white balance, I’ll fix it.

3. Straightening
Yup.

4. Exposure Value
Ummm..I’m on the fence about this one. I take a fair number of pictures, not knowing how my camera’s light metering functions would be pathetic, so I shouldn’t be flubbing up the exposure value to need to correct it. That said, I will likely use it to “push” exposures when need be (i.e., when cranking up the ISO and opening the aperture doesn’t cut it).

I can’t think of anything else at the moment. Tons of thoughts and ideas go through my head when I think about digital photo editing and before long I start thinking about what photography actually is. Someday I hope I’ll have good clear thoughts on all that riff raff and I’ll write it all up real nice and simple.

other, stories

I have never thought to myself “Hmm, I could appreciate coughing.” Now though, I appreciate coughing.

I woke up last night (somewhere in the middle of it, after taking a long time to fall asleep amidst coughing fits) coughing, but then wasn’t able to cough because the coughing muscles were finally completely spent; I tried to cough and all that happened was this really pathetic sound, “cchhHHeeeaaaaahhh.” It sounds like wind-knocked-out wheezing less the charm, all the ugh of coughing minus the momentary relief of the actual “cough” part. The only thing I can think to liken it to is when you’re puking and you’ve basically emptied your belly, but your system is like “oh no I don’t think so, we’re going to keep at this.”

A different perspective can be a mighty thing. I appreciate coughing.

Apologies, I believe this is the most unpleasant thing I’ve written here by a long shot. Does anybody have some crackers and cheese to go with my whine?