I never post cool car pictures. And by never, I mean once. And that one time it wasn’t a for-real ‘cool car’ post, rather a wacky van (http://wp.me/p14q4r-146).
Two years and three months and three weeks and two hundred and twenty eight posts with no cool cars? Yes. And now, today, check this out:
This is the best thing that has shown up in my Google Reader feed; ever.
Quick, somebody fetch me a lot of money and a plane ticket to the UK. And starter rollers too, please–preferably in white and red.
The power to weight ratio is close to that of a new GSX-R600. One’s 0.29, the other is 0.35. Guess which is which.
http://sideburnmag.blogspot.com/2011/04/xr750-for-sale-on-uk-ebay.html
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
–from All the Pretty Horses, written by Cormac McCarthy
——–
Rawlins mounted up. You ready? he said.
I been ready.
They rode out along the fenceline and across the open pasture-land. The leather creaked in the morning cold. They pushed the horses into a lope. The lights fell away behind them. They rode out on the high prairie where they slowed the horses to a walk and the stars swarmed around them out of the blackness. They heard somewhere in that tenantless night a bell that tolled and ceased where no bell was and they rode out on the round dais of the earth which alone was dark and no light to it and which carried their figures and bore them up into the swarming stars so that they rode not under but among them and they rode at once a jaunty and circumspect, like thieves newly loosed in that dark electric, like young thieves in a glowing orchard, loosely jacketed against the cold and the thousand worlds for the choosing.
——–
That night I thought long and not without despair about what must become of me. I wanted very much to be a person of value and I had to ask myself how this could be possible if there were not something like a soul or like a spirit that is in the life of a person and which could endure any misfortune or disfigurement and yet be no less for it. If one were to be a person of value that value could not be a condition subject to the hazards of fortune. It had to be a quality that could not change. No matter what. Long before morning I knew that what I was seeking to discover was a thing I’d always known. That all courage was a form of constancy. That it was always himself that the coward abandoned first. After this all other betrayals came easily.
——
Tuesday May 25 3:30am
Could God be real?
Could love, pain and beauty, true and deep and human, be real?
I sit outside on the last stair down from the back porch to the yard. A light breeze (the type that sets a sailboat to drifting almost-imperceptibly on a glassy-calm bay at night) rustles through the leaves of nearby Cottonwoods. Inhaling deeply I smell a mix of rain, dew, fragrant flowers, and fresh cut grass–it’s May. Looking to the East I can barely make out the faint orange glow of dawn coming, only an hour or so away. Grandma’s gone now, my buddy Joe has been gone for just over 8 months. My oldest brother is joyfully wedded to the love of his life, and my other brother is near there.
Is jesus christ real?
Are love, pain and beauty real?
Storm is wild enough for sailing
Bridge is weak enough to cross
This body frail enough for fighting
I’m home enough to know I’m lost
Land unfit enough for planting
Barren enough to conceive
Poor enough to gain the treasure
Enough a cynic to believe
Edit:
So…somehow wordpress (naturally I blame it on them. Human error? Nah, couldn’t be that) ate this post, so here’s what I recall to be the four shots I posted.
6/24/10 DP
“The photographer first sees and feels a moment in time and life, then quietly tries to draw it from the world around it.”
It was more humbling than I thought it’d be, which is (hard to admit) a good thing.
Today I picked up my first two rolls of developed film. Although the lab did a great job, I’d like to develop my own film now. UW Photography darkroom, lets you and I become friends.
Part of me feels that I shouldn’t ever post only one or a few photos, as a musician may want an album to be kept whole. Being picky about that is something I’ve got to earn; I’ll wait till I’m better at photography to place/show each roll of film only whole.
The first roll is Ilford HP5+; the second is Kodak Tri-X 400. All were shot through a great 50mm f1.4 with a Nikkormat, both on borrow from my Dad (thanks pops!).
I’m not at all well versed in b&w filmstuffs, but I think I like the tones of the Ilford film.
Without further ado, here are a few that’re alright.
They glimmer and sparkle and blaze. I may loose some serious masculinity points for saying that; but really dudes, before judging me look at a diamond for a moment than look away. Be honest, you want to look at it again. Why is it so interesting? I don’t know, to be frank…it’s one of life’s little puzzles for me for now. That said, I definitely don’t want to own a diamond. I guess it’s like a racing motorcycle (Ducati Desmosedici…*moment of silent awe*) that way. Awesome, but I don’t want one.
Continue Reading
(written February 6th 2010)
My thoughts, as my bus crossed the 520 bridge today:
There is something about it–I’m not sure I understand it (maybe that’s why it’s so…well…er…hmm…).
The water is broken into so many little pieces by the light breeze, and the sun is shining through a cloudy sky.
It’s not one of those perfect glassy lake days.
In the water’s brokenness, its imperfection, the sunlight sparkles; each wrinkle in the surface, made by a single whisp of breeze, reflects it’s own little claim of sunlight in some direction or another.
And all together, the water, it’s surface so disorganized and cluttered, is beautiful in the light shining on it.
Way back in the day, my family took a road trip up there; we took the ’88 Ford Club Wagon all the way, Coleman camping trailer in tow. Ah, good times.
Sadly, there’s not much I clearly remember from the trip: one or two particular vistas, a very cold night, a campground-meandering moose, so on and so forth. I only remember a few things well–most of all, the beauty.
I’m sure that if I were a better writer, I could put it into vivid prose, but all I can really say is that the beauty of Alaska is different (on the safe assumption it hasn’t changed too much since then).
There was a peculiar quality the beauty had–a sort of stillness.
It was more than audible noise though–I’ve been to beautiful places, far enough from civilization to be just as quiet as the places we visited in Alaska. It may well be my long term memory embellishing things, but I swear there was some quality of the beauty itself, this tranquility of sorts.
Now, zip forward a few years (ten, twelve, maybe more?).
By it’s nature, rural education is a risky proposition; there are so many barriers to overcome. I guess I was always aware of that to some level or another, but I never really thought about it. Than again, I never really thought about education too much till a few years ago.
Since I’ve started thinking about education (I don’t know if that happened before or after I decided to go into education–chicken or egg, if you will), I’ve been thinking about rural education. Questions began to drift into a perspective of sorts. Why, why educate kids in the middle of nowhere–will it really mean anything for them, in the long run? Should they be pushed to “escape”, get away from the sticks and “make something” of themselves? What does it really mean for a teenager in an isolated, rural area, to make something of their life?
Whenever I think of rural, I think of a few places: Alaska and Montana come to mind first. “Alaska is what America was.” It’s so pristine and beautiful–so isolated. It also consistently makes the first spot in teenage suicide rates.
So much beauty and peace, and so much emptiness and need.
Disclaimer
If I were to be moving there, I definitely would say so. I’m not moving there..yet. One never knows where all the road ahead leads.