At 7:30 a.m. we were on our way to pick up car share, and it was that zen weather that only comes to Philadelphia in September: air cool on our bare arms, sky a perfect cloudless cerulean blue.
“This is a perfect day,” I said to Elise.
people
i am sounding out the silence
A few weeks ago I visited Rabi in NYC. It was an relatively ad hoc trip – I owed her a visit, and she was free for a few days. Things just fell into place.
Rabi and I are not the bloggers we once were; both of us allow our domains to fall into silence for weeks or months at a time, when the span used to be days or mere hours. One might imagine, then, that we had more to talk about than usual, having missed so much errata, minutia, and other blog-worthy details of life.
Not quite. In fact, upon my departure I had the distinct impression that we had spoken markedly less than in any previous encounter. The quantity changed, though the quality of the conversations wasn’t any more or less.
It made me think: do I speak less now, in general?
I’m quite sure that I do. At work I am almost entirely autonomous, and spend long stretches of my day quietly creating project plans or proofreading. Elise and I operate on slightly less words than we used to, if only because it takes less to communicate our meaning these days. And, I despise the phone, as ever. Yet, even in public situations – in meetings or dinners or parties – I have the perception that I’m saying a lot less than I used to.
The next question in sequence is: why? The easy answer is “circumstance,” but all of the circumstances that surround me are ones that I manufactured for myself, which leads us to a second “why.”
Do I just have less to say? Am I becoming less self-involved as I (presumably) mature? Am I growing more comfortable with myself, and in turn with the silences that surround me?
Does it mean that I’m listening more? Or, am I more introverted – less likely to expose myself to others?
Looking back into the microcosm of Rabi and I, walking in circles in the East Village and around the Seaport, I can see a little of each reason. I’m sure there are days where one dominates, and others where they are equal.
It just makes me wonder: where did all those other words go?
five years stuck on my eyes
You don’t date a photographer for nearly five years without picking up something – a certain vernacular – but that something is entirely different when you finally have a camera of your own, and nearly unlimited space to store hundreds of indiscriminately snapped digital shots over the course of a day.
Two days into my spree of snapshots and I can’t decide if digital cameras accelerate a photographer’s novice phase or distend it. Sure, it helps to be able to bracket the same shot at every possible exposure and film speed to see the difference in action. Yet, it’s easy to slip into the habit of continuous clicking – shoot now, sort it out later.
I don’t know why I feel I have to master each little thing I lay my hands upon. Just when I was getting decent at theatre I started playing guitar, and I interrupted that to be the best at blogging, and in the middle at being the best at blogging I decided I needed to make a sporting try at singing. I just can’t pick something up with the goal of being mediocre.
Will I ever be as good a photographer as Elise? Will I ever be as good a songwriter as David Bowie? Both aspirations are irrelevant to the reality – the tools of producing pictures and songs and web essays have been democratized, and each tool is a weapon if you hold it right.
I have a new weapon in my arsenal. While I’m futzing with my Flickr account, here’s my favorites from my first forty-eight hours as a photographer.
Return of Girlfriend and Prickly Pear Mojitos
After a week of her absence, every aspect of life involving Elise seems like an adventure. Let’s cook rice! Let’s light candles! Let’s go for a walk!
Okay!
The dizzying newness of every trip up the stairs to see the light on in her office only serves to emphasize the advice I received from my-former / Elise’s-new co-worker Dan: a couple needs to vacation together and apart.
Since I had Bonnaroo in June and we had St. Louis together in July, Elise was suffering from a one-vacation handicap. She needed time away from me to have an adventure, and I needed time to shuffle around the house and pretend to be a bachelor. With her returned from San Francisco it feels as though our balance has been reset.
Our walk this afternoon took us through the Italian Market*, and afterwards past Pat’s and Geno’s** to wander down Passyunk to find a fabled Mexican restaurant with excellent margaritas.
It had been fabled by an old professor of mine who, apparently, has only a relative sense of location. We didn’t have directions, or the name of the restaurant, but he told us that we would have arrived when we were able to see a mural, a parking lot, and the Mexican restaurant all at the same time.
We came to such a point, and were faced with a drab Mexican restaurant with multi-colored blankets in the windows. It did not look like the home of excellent margaritas.
“Do you think that’s the place he was raving about?”
“Well, consider the source.”
The source being my motorcycle-riding, monochromatic- dressing, ponytailed senior project advisor.***
“Well, i suppose…”
Elise tapped on my shoulder. I turned to regard her and noticed that we were standing in front of a giant orange slab of a building with no sign and a huge wooden door.**** It looked like it needed a moat.
“Yeah, that’s probably it.”
Indeed, it was. And, not only were the margaritas excellent, so were the mojitos. Several drinks later I learned how to use Elise’s new camera, and bit my poor drunken tongue so badly that we thought I would need stitches.
It’s nice to be having adventures together, again.
* Note to self: The Italian Market is a ghost town by two on a Sunday. Start getting out of bed before one.
** Note to the internet: No Philadelphian who enjoys cheesestakes would ever eat at Pat’s or Geno’s. They are for tourists and people in South Philly who don’t know any better. If you want a good cheesesteak go to Jim’s or Tony Luke’s. Trust me.
***Yes, essentially my father as a communications professor (except i don’t think prof owns several dozen rifles).
**** Name, undetermined. It’s just above Morris on Passyunk, and both we and Prof. Steggy highly recommend it.
NaBloPoMo Round-Up #10b, or Possibly #11, but Most Definitely Last: A Splendiforous Surplus of S, and the Complete Abridged Works of the Fab Four
Because i have a minuscule, highly-atomic OCD-Godzilla tramping around in my soul, crushing tiny mitochondria like so-many prop houses made out of cardboard, i almost couldn’t allow the Roundup series to extend to the hideously prime 11.
Then i realized that this is the eleventh month of the year so it would totally make sense.
I’m still not completely at peace with it, but Godzilla has retreated back to his radioactive hidey-hole so i can get down to business.
209 S blogs between here and recording more new music and writing real content. 209. 209. 209. I should record a whole song of me saying it over and over and over.
Seriously, my Beatles Complete Scores book actually has the score for Revolution #9. As if anyone has that at the top of their list of Beatles songs to play out of the 200ish in the book.
Okay, now i’m just stalling. Although, that book was possibly the most satisfying $50 i’ve ever spent on myself.
But, hey, that’s a great idea! I’ll listen to a tiny fraction of every Beatles song chronologically for every S blog i read! If a song ends my time is up, and the blogger gets an honorary link for wasting my time holding my attention.
Although, more likely is that I might hear 2 whole seconds of some of them while i frantically click away!
Just kidding. I actually average 46 seconds of attention per blog, which means this should take me about three hours, and plenty of catchy choruses.