anniversary: i got summer all over me

I'm lucky enough to live in an affordable apartment at the edge of a very beautiful, established, residential neighborhood in NE Portland that was, I think, considered a near-rural suburb about a hundred years ago. Instead of suburban now, it's actually quite "close-in" to the river and downtown, and everything I need is within walking distance. Portland is a wonderful city for walkers, and I've managed to get along without owning a car fairly well for about eight years.

Today I took my morning walk down the welcoming, shady streets of Irvington with my one-eyed boyfriend, Canon Rebel XS, and together we captured over 40 intimate views within about 20 blocks. There is always something new to see here.

Despite the comfortable affluence of these old homes under the trees, it feels like a family-centered "village" of sorts, much friendlier and playful than the dramatic perfection of the NW hills across the river--where curtains remain drawn throughout the day, and a kind of chilly suspicion clouds the view.

I much prefer life on the eastside, where basic human warmth is generally expected and returned.

When I moved back to this neighborhood last summer after a two-year hiatus on the westside, I found that it IS possible come home again. And now that nearly a whole year has passed, it's more substantially my home than I may have ever known before.

strengths

Since it has FINALLY stopped raining and summer has launched, the camera has asserted its authority over my attention. This week I walked to the hospital garden on my way home and then the next evening, I paused around neighborhood where I work. The light was perfect.

I love shooting flowers. My mom, the watercolorist, loved painting them,

and I have memories of her setting up still life bouquets that would stay in place for days until the blooms fell apart, scattering petals and pollen all over the dining room table. She never really had an appreciation for the beauty of decay, so as soon as the blossoms aged she seemed compelled to clear it all away. Also, we were rambunctious, clumsy children, so there was no hope that we'd be able to leave the arrangement--or her!--alone.

Things eventually fall apart. I have a painting of hers in my guest room. It was the last project before she died: an image of a single, unopened rosebud alongside a wide open blossom, spent but still lovely, petals falling. She never finished it, but it moves me in the way it seems to depict her acceptance of the inevitable.

experiment!

Stimulating to make changes, isn't it? I think I love the new black background of this blog and just discovered that it's now possible to add pages, making the blog a little more like an actual website, I think. So I'm going to try to add more pages soon.

Anyway, I've just added a netbook to the arsenal of my communication weaponry, so am hoping that uploading photos and other media to this blog will be more easily (and quickly) accomplished.

Here are a couple of shots of the neighborhood around my office that I took while on a morning break the other day. I needed coffee (Stumptown) and a toasted pumpernickle bagel with scallion schmear, and had the impulse to bring my camera along. I love it when I do that!

This morning I spent quite awhile processing the shot of the white roses, playing with layers and effects. I think I have a crush on this photograph and might print and frame it this week.

And then I switched over to older family shots and found this one of my grandson, Oscar, from last January when he was so sick with the flu. Poor little guy was miserable, and later that day spent quite a few hours in the emergency room, rehydrating. Of course he recovered, and now is a strapping toddler of 18 months who waved and said "hi!" to me last week via Skype. I can't wait to see him in person soon.

Just want to say YAY!! and thank you to the techies who've made my recent upgrades possible.

Oh, let's talk

I've been procrastinating about this blog again. Wondering if it's enough to post entries that become a kind of open letter to family and friends at a distance, rather than engaging my passion for creative expression on a more regular and open basis. The truth is I've been feeling a bit constrained about the subject matter I present here, always wary of offending others in some way, rather than simply throwing off my social inhibitions and posting my work in a way that honors my diverse interests, opinions, obsessions and enthusiasms, trying always to be honest but not hurtful.

There's a lot going on in my life! I have spent the past eight months adjusting to the reality and requirements of a new diagnosis of a painful chronic disease that must be managed if I'm going to continue to support myself independently. The limits on my stamina have become VERY evident and unavoidable, and this is new to me. It's hard not to feel resentful about not being spontaneous anymore, or at least able to stay up late like a grown-up once in awhile. I'm still fun, but just in a less ambitious way, I guess.

For example, here is a photo of me that my friend John Hogl took yesterday while we dropped in for a visit with the lovely and new Charley Ridenour:

And here are a couple of mine:

My motivation for photography never diminishes, it's just been frequently set aside this past year, while I spend time resting after work instead of taking photowalks or joining other photographers or poets as I once did so recently. I recognize the importance of taking care of myself, and it is the priority. I am slowly incorporating things like yoga and accupuncture more regularly into my life again, but I'm also beginning to try to find ways to get photography back into my life on a more frequent basis.

Two weeks ago I reorganized my apartment and created a studio space in my dining room, clearing the second bedroom out to become a comfortable guest room. Creating the studio and guest room and moving the dining table into the living room turned out to be an awesome way to make more room for my projects, and now I have room for visitors this summer as well. In fact, my niece Tegan stayed with me last week prior to moving into the dorms for summer school at Portland State University. I loved having her here, and caught her excitement for the move to Oregon and the start of her Russian studies. I'm so proud of her effort and it's been so great to reconnect with her mom--my younger sister--more often again.

I still write, but am now more of a diarist than a poet, although I'm continuing to work on the finishing touches of a book of my poetry that's coming out this fall. I have the cover art to arrange and shoot, dedication and acknowledgements, and also need to contact various authors and reviewers to send the galley to for blurbs. This is actually the fun part! Also I was recently contacted by "Quill & Parchment" for an anthology on motherhood they are publishing that will be using several of my poems, and a California lifestyle magazine, "Eucalyptus" is using one of my photos on their Table of Contents page for their July issue. Yay!

But I also feel that I want my photography to be taken more seriously--maybe I need to feel that I'M taking it more seriously! Anyway, my head fills up with visual ideas for shots I'd love to try, vignettes I want to set up, stories to tell visually and narratively, but the reality is the limitations on my energy, time and financial resources continually narrow the options. So I chafe.

Here is a fairly inoffensive shot of the model we worked with at Poverty Bay last month. I deliberately blew out the contrast on this shot reinforcing a quiet passivity that the self-contained posture of the model suggests:

Okay, so there it is. This is my life, these are my priorities, this is what fills up my head most of the time: family, friends, photography, ideas, images and observations all jumble around together along with favorite guilty pleasures like interior decorating tv shows and websites, literary fiction and movies, food and cooking, and wishing I had the time and money to do what I want when I want to do it. Oh, and also? I'm thinking it might be time to finally, really try to go back to graduate school. In my spare time. heh, heh.

I got rich at Poverty Bay

Last weekend I Amtrakked to Tacoma to stay a few days with my friend and photog-buddy, John. We'd arranged to shoot a model and planned to take in Graham Nash's exhibit of his extensive collection of rock photographs at the Experience Music Project in Seattle. Needless to say, we had a great time, per always, and I tapped the richest photography vein I've had in years. Awesome fun.

I love Portland's Union Station. These two shots do not do it justice at all, and I'm planning to try to shoot it some evening when it's not crowded and I can take my time. Tacoma's Amtrak station is a cramped, soulless, afterthought of a building in a completely uninteresting part of town. The plantings around the parking lot are its most interesting feature. I got a great shot of a fly resting on an azalea (see Flickr slideshow at left).

But hanging at John's cottage on the bay at the edge of Des Moines, Washington was a perfect antidote for a month-long stress-fest covering two jobs at work (hiring a replacement for a coworker means I get to cram the extra tasks into my 40-hour week. It's a daily marathon and I get kinda tired... ). John collects antique toys and his beautiful home is a visual feast, inspiring and playful, casual and comfy .

This is the view from his front porch--the little sculpture is one of John's. Yes. He's multi-talented.

And here's what we did most of the time at the house: sit and watch the color of the sky and water change from the front window, listening to jazz. I got to slow w-a-a-a-a-y-y-y-y down.

Here's the other thing we did to amuse ourselves:

Saturday we shot a model, Katlyn, who was incredibly professional, lovely and bendy. John and I both did very good work and I'm really proud of the number of good shots I got. Often in the creative excitement and collaboration of a photo shoot, you can be positive you've gotten exactly what you wanted, but then afterward when reviewing the day's shots, you find that really it wasn't all that remarkable and end up with only a couple of images worth saving. Actually, that's what usually happens. Well, not this time. John and I both love to shoot figurative or nude images, so I can't show you much here of what we got, but here are a few I think might be safe enough for family viewing. I adored this girl and hope that we can work together again soon.

[I realize these are fairly pedestrian shots. Guess you'll have to trust me that the nudes are more artistic. Or check them out the next time you drop by my place. I'm kind of proud of being such an interesting grandma!]

The next day we drove up to Seattle early and walked around Pike Place Market, Post Alley and had a gorgeous breakfast at Maximillien's in the Market, before heading over to the EMP exhibit.

[Um, yeah. It's gum.]

This is at the entrance to Maximillien's. I'll spare you the usual food porn shot of my amazing breakfast. I had Oeuf Brouille de la Mer (Srsly. Lordy.) with cafe au lait. Actually I didn't take any pictures of the food. I was too busy doing other things with it.

EMP: Frank Gehry extravaganza.

Last shot. The EMP is covered in panels of reflective metal, tinted amazing colors. I'll be posting more shots from this trip to my Flickr pages and maybe to my Fotoblur account. And printing quite a few for the walls of my apartment!

on a lighter note

Photos from a baby shower this weekend. Guess what? It's a girl: Charley.

Awwwwww.

Andrew MacArthur, 1955-2010

What I wanted to say is that Andrew died. His suffering ended and now the poetry will change without him.

I have been reading about his illness and its impact on his friend, noko, in her online diary. Andrew cared for her, called her his best friend, appreciated her constant attention to his needs, her consistent accommodation to his requirements. Noko wrote of her experience of Andrew's illness, her suffering over his long exit, knowing it would be spring, and so it is, and now she is very alone with few friends and no children; so much of her life tied up with his.

Andrew didn't want to write about his illness, instead he focused entirely on his poetry and email correspondence with a suddenly ardent old flame, trusting noko to get the narrative right. And over the months of reading her online diary I've come to feel a kinship with her for loving someone so complicated; her years of devotion, her romantic love unrequited, but always valued and trusted by Andrew anyway. And I can relate. Finding myself identifying with her grief, I can't help anticipating inevitable losses of my own, a memento mori in kind.

When I started reading poems in Portland's open mic scene, Andrew was an encouraging presence who was steadfast in his generosity to less experienced poets. Though he largely quit attending the open mics a few years ago, he continued to write, of course, and maintained connections and friendships with several others who were still active in the scene.

I've looked through my endless files of photos of Portland poets and haven't come on a single shot of Andrew. I have portrait after portrait of poets whose tenure on the scene was so brief that I can barely recall their names, but not a single photo of the tall, soft-spoken gentleman in dark colors, smoking in the back.