the last burnt sienna crayon

Attended a portfolio day to discuss my work with ‘a professional’ on Saturday. Why is it that I left disappointed that she only had good things to say about what I had produced? (I know I’m not ‘there‘ yet, so I guess I was hoping she could tell me all of those things I had left to do, enough critisism to give me something to work on.) Why were her suggestions to go ahead and do the future things that I really want to do and try for the thing I want to try for and that she thought that I was good enough to do them so disheartening? (I want what she suggested so badly, but know it’s not possible.) Why was it that when I used to be such a believer in grasping the impossible, that when I used to be so willing to try anything that I could imagine because what have I got to lose anyway, go anywhere, have faith that something will work out, never give up, why was it that when she only half jokingly suggested that I write to Annie Liebowitz and ask if I could go on several weeks work experience with her, just for the hell of it, that this once upon a time dreamer, crazy risk taker wanted to cough and say “Shyeah, RIGHT!” Are you mental?”

It has been a long 15 years. And I’ve gone a lot of places I didn’t want to go because of both circumstance and of cruel fate and sometimes because of the very risks that I took, and I never in all that time stopped trying.

But I’m tired.

I took a lot of photographs when I was back there. Snaps, mainly. And most of them from a moving car or plane window. But none of them were of places that really meant something to me. Except for a few snaps of the house I grew up in and called my home for 20 years, speeding past from a car window so as not to stand on dodgy ground longer than needed. And that is so different now anyway, as if it had been built again. All the trees are gone, the two towering blue spruce where the blue jay made it’s nest each year, my mother’s flower beds and the peonies– all gone. Even the windows and siding are different colors. . . that house wasn’t mine. It was a facinating specimen to photograph, but it wasn’t saving a memory. That house was never my home. Those snaps were of nothing sacred.

The sacred places would have made better proper photographs. But were perhaps too risky to attempt. I dared not.

My camera has lain dormant for several months now, so recently I have bartered in the old style currency of words. I wonder why. Even the simple swan photo I posted the other day was from my archives. In part I know why, and am confident of my photos returning someday soon, but right now, even though words are a somewhat riskier endeavour, in a way, they fill a space that the images left, and at least prevent a complete block.

And besides, there’s really nothing at stake anymore anyway.

Today I discovered words again. Last night I wrote them, today I listened to them. I now have a working and useful screen text reader installed on my computer and it is like a whole new world has been opened up to me! Yet now that I am able to once again read the words of others, I don’t, just right now, seem to be able to write them myself. Last night I wrote that poem a friend had assigned me awhile ago. After not being able to even approach writing poetry for so many years, perhaps I used up all of my words in doing so.

Instead, today, all I can do is offer an image. Images are the same thing as words anyway, they just sound different.

… I’ve added a new flickr account RSS feed to the right, though I had been hoping it might upload at least thumbnails rather than just text. And if anyone knows why my photo frame (at the top of the blog) won’t let me upload and customise anymore, or what I can do to fix it, just let me know. Ta.

i was actually pleased with my last photography assignment. of course the difference came in just doing what i do, rather than trying to create unnatural situations to meet someone else’s brief.

a valuable lesson.

perhaps one that can stretch beyond the lens.

9 am

am now faced with a decision.

go back to bed or do something.

the full intention is of course to do something. but the temptation of couirse is to go back to bed. with the Flower Child back at her playgroup, there is scope for me to do almost anything.

no, it’s a career day. it is. it is. i must find determination. must call the gallery and find out about courses. i’m not ready to give up the last remaining shreds of hope that i may someday become a useful, functional, contributing member of society.

but horizontal is really the only position which doesn’t feel painful these days.

so weary. fatigue continues to constantly envelop me placing lead weights in each extremity and eyelid, a foggy haze covering my face and conciousness and a fist squeezing at my solar plexis. though to everyone else i encounter i simply seem a bit lazy and grumpy, which ensures my certain failure in any given personality or popularity contests.

i can’t say that i don’t remember when i last felt alive enough to do anything, because i do. it was around about 2005. which makes it worse. it may start getting easier to bare once i forget what feeling normal was like.

i planned to start the year right, and with the Flower Child back at her Playgroup after the Christmas break, the plan was to throw myself into work on my portfolio and researching web hosting for it etc today. first shock was pre 9 am when husband comes back home with Flower still in the pushchair and announced that “term hasn’t started yet”.

ah.

so rather than portfolio work i spent this morning folding laundry, changing nappies, playing magnetic fish, crashing toy cars, and avoiding tantrums. yes, playing with my daughter is fun and lovely, but to be perfectly honest, today i really would have rather worked on my portfolio.

it will come, the time to start work on making work for myself. . . but will the energy, the spark, the quality of life come too that will allow me to achieve it?

have had a load of b&w films that i shot and developed back in 2000-2003 in my bathroom darkroom and the uni darkroom, but never had the time/money/resourses/health to print the photos off. so finally i have bought myself flatbed film scanner so that i can get the shots onto my computer and printed off. the scans it’s produced are pretty good, plus it was fairly cheap for what it is. for not being a professional level film scanner (oh so expensive!), i’m pretty happy with it.

So far i’ve been pretty happy with the results, proud of my original work (what i’ve gone through so far), and pleased to see the shots.

the shots are up on my flickr account (if you know me well enough to know where that is) in the b&w set in the images and photography collection.