daines'n around

I came home to a great little gift of three small bags of candy by my front door. One for each member of my family, I presumed, so I promptly consumed one myself before retiring to my bedroom. Thanks be to the little birdie who did that.

We watched Sweeny Todd in my Religion in film class tonight. I'm still convinced that the class should be called 'philosophy' in film, and not really religion. I love the class, as it breaks down many films into the simplest yet most complicated human quandaries of our time; namely Love, Pain, Existence, and Reason.

I can remember having the LP of Sweeny Todd when my family lived in Pennsylvania. That time of my life remains a series of striking moments surrounded by a blur of emotions and experiences. But while watching the filmed play of this operatic musical I can distinctly recall listening to the LP frequently until the record became warped and would no longer play.

There is a line in the movie where Anthony, the sailing do-gooder dips into his pocket to purchase a singing bird for the lovely girl who he has seen singing from the window of her prison-like bedroom. He asks the vendor why the bird sings so sweetly and the vendor replies casually with a hint of sardonic humor, "The bird is blind. It doesn't know when it is day or night, it sings all the time."

The movie then delves into the depth of Sweeny Todd's lustful desire of revenge which makes him blind to the reasons he had that revenge in the first place. He began to serve a dark and hungry god of revenge, in such a way that revenge almost became his god.

It mirrors humanity, as most fiction does, exposing the overwhelming emotional connections we make with things around us. Sometimes those connections become obsessions, driving us to the point of insanity and forgetting all about the original healthy connection we had in the first place.

Some facts I learned the last two days:

• Berkeley School Of Journalism graduate studies deadline is Dec 16.
  
• University of Missouri Journalism graduate studies deadline is Feb. 1
  
• Every journalism graduate program requires me to take the GRE .
  
• If I pass all of my classes, I'll be set to graduate May 2006.
  
• Telephone conversations are difficult to have
  
• There is such a thing as too much peanut butter
  
• Heinrich Heine said, "Oh, what lies there are in kisses!"
  

I didn't leave my house on Saturday. It gave me a chance to catch up on reading, south park, and that homework thing. I only left my house for church and later on dinner with friends from the Peruvian mission earlier this year. I slept through my first class on Monday and lounged around my house until the second class. It took me a half an hour to go two miles once I finally decided to leave for school because of traffic accidents. I turned around and went home and left my cell phone in my car and forgot about the world.

You have 7 missed calls.

Oops.

I'm out of bed and trying to break this lethargic streak.

Staring over shoulders
empty rooms contemplate meaning
Strung on a body
Of hope, lust, and simple breathing

----

Back arched and slumped
Forward, chin resting in hands
elbows dig holes in thighs
no emotions initiate the stand

----

The ceiling wanders
or is it in my eyes
the conversation swirls
no attention to guise.

----

Wanting
Your dance
My stumble
Our Advance

I'm tired of telling people the same thing every time they call me or write me and ask me how things are going. "Two jobs, full-time school, photographer and writer for the paper, and two callings in church" has become so automatic there is almost no emotion behind it anymore. I'm anxiously awaiting the opportunity to shave down my working requirements to one job, since I'll have to get used to making little to no money as a working journalist in the future anyway (or so say all of the professors around campus).

I photographed my first basketball game Friday night. Driving to the stadium, I was reasonably happy that I was getting out to do something new, and challenge myself photographically. I've traveled so little as of late that I haven't been evoked emotionally to photograph much.

The action is fast in basketball. I spent most of the evening trying to anticipate passes. I tried photographing with both eyes open, my left eye getting the whole scene and my right eye getting the frame through the viewfinder, but that proved just to be headache-inducing.

The other photographer there didn't have much to offer as far as advice, other than criticism of things he had seen me publish previously. He lives as a sports photographer, and doesn't like many of my photos.

So far as I could tell, the key to catching the faces together with the action in basketball are the angles. Sitting directly under the basket, where it was suggested that I remain to photograph didn't work out to well, but that may be due to inexperience.

I'm happy for humbling moments, like taking about 700 photos and liking two of them, but still not happy with them. I get excited about my photography too much, and I think that being humbled is a good experience for me.

Wrapping up the game, I passed by some journalism students who were at the press table, one girl with whom I've had three or four classes together in the last 3 years left me a certain shade of speechlessness.

I asked what she was doing at the table, if she was doing sports reporting, or visiting, or dating someone on the team. She laughed and smiled that certain way that makes other people blush when they see it. I've seen her smile so many times before so I wasn't too surprised at that.

"I didn't know you were a photographer!" she announced to me in one of those clever 'I just discovered something' tones of voices. She explained how she was learning the statistics computer program that CSUN uses, and was hoping to incorporate it at the sports complex where she either works or volunteers.

I rummaged around in my bag, putting away my telephoto lens away and bagging everything up and we laughed about the class we have together now. Then the surprise.

"Keith and I were talking together, you know... you are very well spoken" she said. I didn't know how to react to that. I didn't even comprehend what she was saying. Keith, a basketball player and journalism student sits next to her in our class. I must have given her an odd look, because she scrambled to rewind and restate the compliment so I could better understand it.

I sit in the front of class usually, and offer my opinion on matters that I find need opinions expressed. Not everyone agrees with it all the time, but I've learned that is what critical thinking and reasoning is all about, alternate viewpoints.

She must have seen me melt emotionally and not know how to respond to the comment, because she giggled to try and ease the pressure of responding to it. I thanked her and told her I'd see her in class on Tuesday and shuffled out of the stadium.

There are times when mischief is not an answer, and sense is but a fleeting feeling. Take us away onto a mountain top, thousands of miles above this land and we'll start to think.

Staring down at a city on fire with action emotion, bleeding darting lines of light, we hypothesize.

What would the earth be like without us? What is the earth like with us? What do you suppose 3,203 people are doing in Los Angeles right now?

Whatever each individual decides, we leave with a smile and an exhausted demeanor.

Descending back into the burning city, the peace is further away. Being a separate part of the world is more difficult to conceptualize down here. That light blood is my car. That dancing light is the police helicopter. That smoke is all of us.

Back into our rooms, we shut the door, awaiting another escape.

It took a friend to remind me of my journalistic motives today. I didn't want to photograph the police and fire department rushing to the front of a school building today. They removed a student from class for erratic behavior.

MaryAlex looked at me and giggled.

"You have a camera with you, and a notepad, and you were just going to walk by?"

I laughed. Yeah, I was tired. But i listened to reason and MaryAlex and was able to submit some breaking news with photos to the sundial. I've no clue if they are going to use it or not, but I was happy to be able to bring something of my own into the office, without having it assigned to me.

I finished the final 100 pages of The Fountainhead today, marking (sadly) the second novel I read for pleasure this year. Its November and I could make excuses of how I was busy reading newspapers, textbooks and the like but no one really likes excuses. And I'm tired of having to use them for this and that, and other things that I manage to forget on a weekly basis.

I really enjoyed the novel, the characters and plots were so easy to follow, fun to anticipate, and the concept was emotionally investing on a level that a novel hasn't enthralled me in a long time. I'm glad I finished it at last. Now I'm wondering which book to tackle next.

My to do list:

• Portfolio for newspaper
  
• Essay on Suffering in religion
  
• Essay on
  
• Essay on Buddhism
  
• "Something creative explaining my philosophy of life"
  
• Report on historic progression (or regression) of portrayals of Latino men in Film
  
• Study for Three final Exams
  
• Prepare application for Editorial position on Newspaper
  

I've got a lot to do in three weeks.

My basketball photos from friday published in today's paper.


My steel drum band review with photos was published in today's paper as well
i don't know what is up with the headline on the web page for that article. SOme editors huh?


How exciting.

Hard to believe the weekend has come and gone. Have I caught up with anything? Not really. Things are going back to that spinning feeling, where the future seems distant, and the weeks fly by but the overall passage of time seems so inconsequential to things going on around me. I've got that distant feeling inside. Where you watch things go by, one by one, and can't imagine any difference if you had been there or not.

I've only crossed one item off of my to-do list, but I've had to add a few things to it. I didn't get around to any homework this weekend, other than some late night photo editing last night and tonight. My thoughts are such a flutter I've got to write something down, even if it is incoherent.

Photographing women's basketball this weekend was a little less complicated than men's basketball. The action is a little slower and the heights of the jumps much less. I was also facilitated by my most recent purchase, a battery grip for the camera. After the last basketball game, where 80 percent of my photos were vertical and the pain in my wrist from photographing that way, I thought this would facilitate vertical photographing. Indeed it did. No wrist pains, and the more comfort I had allowed me to concentrate on the action, and not whether or not I was holding my camera too awkwardly and having odd horizons.

Saturday night I ate with a friend at a great polish restaurant nearby. I wouldn't have likely gone without the friend, but I'm glad we went there. Nothing speaks to spinning heads and lack of attention like a plate of gulaz and a perogie.

Sunday I had a wonderful opportunity to see one of the most published documentary photojournalists over the past twenty years. James Nachtwey spoke on his latest experiences and answered questions from the audience. I left feeling on top of the world in a hope that one day I'll be able to tell stories through my photographs. They don't have to be History with a capital H, but at least a lowercase h with an effect being felt by the communities it directly affects.

This song keeps playing over and over in my head: Time of No Reply - Nick Drake.

I found my notes from James Nachtwey's lecture and question and answer session at the Getty Center Sunday evening. Here are some excerpts:

"I express myself through photographs"

"A photo of any war by its nature almost becomes an anti-war photo."

"My photos aim to affect the mass consciousness, hopefully forming a mass conscience."

"I realized all of my stories were part of one story, and 9/11 crystallized that knowledge to me."

"Information is vital, Journalism is essential. Journalists hold the decision makers responsible."

"Robert Cappa once said, 'A war photographer's wish is to be put out of business'"

"I'm not reckless, I'm aware of the situation and what could happen. I have no illusion that I'm hiding behind a camera."

"I have a sense that marketing is taking over journalism. How do we convince publishers that we want to change where the media is going? Don't underestimate a letter to the editor."

On becoming a documentary photojournalist:
"Find a story that means something to you, and spend a lot of time on it. Make history with a lower-case H, not with a capital H. Follow your heart and don't give up."

On hoping for a more peaceful future:
"I'm hopeful. I've been around tragedy and horrors and seen the people suffering find hope. How can I not have hope? We have to be engaged in seeing it through, and engaged with hope."

On why Islamic followers seem to suffer around the world:
"The main problems would have to be: poverty, oppressive governments, legacy (division) of colonialism, and repression from the outside world."

It was easy to tell how long it had been since I last cleaned my room. I can remember Brandon telling me how funny it was that every six months I would write how I had made a commitment to change and how it felt so good to have a clean room. The truth that lies both behind his observation that I do that every six months, as well as the truth that I really do feel periods of small changes in my life is undeniable. I wouldn't say it has become a sort of predictability. My sister is still surprised when I get around to cleaning my room.

The four day weekend, half over, has done wonders for my sanity. I'm relaxed, in a caring way. I've forgotten my to-do list, which remains 80 percent unfinished. I feel great about the twenty percent I did finish. Whether or not I get the editorial position, whether or not I get all A's this semester doesn't really matter at this point to me. I'm aiming for finishing out the year happier.

Now I just need to find something to make a project out of photographing. December will be project month... after finals, of course. I can't turn into a person who solely photographs sunsets and cats.

After sleeping in until 10 the past three days, I feel odd not having been awakened by the sun.

grasping for fleeting control
life hurtles forward
and the clouds float by
like youth's discarded flip-book

hidden emotions behind feigned morals
hidden a world whose vision judges
hidden from ourselves around us
nothing worth hiding stays hidden for long

honesty is brash
your blunt manner, harsh
a cluttered mind clamors
wasn't this how it was supposed to be?