The times they are a changin'

It appears that the last shreds of summer are quickly turning into chilly evenings and painted leaves... Fall is quite beautiful out here in good 'ol Utah, it's a shame we don't have more than 2 weeks of it :) You can almost smell the frost thinking about settling over the valley.
In lieu of shorter days and snow covered mountains, I am scrambling to fit in any portrait work that needs to be done before we have to bust out snow shoes to get around. Typically the blanket of winter lulls my photography company away from portrait and wedding work; however, I have a feeling this winter I might see more bookings than last winter. Even though outdoor photography will see a sharp decline (sans landscape/skiing shots) I am thoroughly looking forward to exploring the unique architecture that surrounds SLC. Admittedly I normally steer towards the great outdoors for portrait work, but this year, I am actually excited to be forced to manipulate creative lighting within Utah's ever present dichotomy of interests which seems to integrate itself into the physical structures themselves here (maybe more so than other cities?).

Anyway, rather than rambling on and on... because this post seems like it has the potential to do that... I say, enjoy what warm weather is left! Get out and play in the leaves- rake a big pile then throw it around! Carve some pumpkins! Remember what fall felt like when you were a little kid? Take some time to slow down, put away your to do list, ignore gas prices, and have a fall play day!

Travels Untold

Talk about an emotional month!! phew.. and August isn't even anywhere near over! Some really great things are on the horizon and I have to say I am pretty stoked about some of the potential for my photography company. I got a bid accepted for some huge landscape prints that are to be displayed in a new office building and I am really quite excited about it. The deal should go through next week!! It's rewarding to have some positive reinforcement for the landscape portion of my photography. Hopefully with this commission and a few other deals, I will be able to suck it up and make the switch to a mac laptop!

Along with that, some even cooler news.. .oh yea, I'm published!!! Saaawweeeet. I published a book. Yup. that's right. And no, it doesn't matter if you can't read, it's composed of landscape photography. This has been interesting, because it started as a small project to test a printing company for wedding albums and it has slowly manifested into something that may turn out to be really beneficial. Since the feedback has been soooo strong on the book, I decided to chuck it all and go for it. I'm hosting a book release party on Aug 15th where I will be taking orders for what has been called. "the ultimate backpacker's coffee table book". I take that as a compliment of the highest order. But in a seriousness it is way traumatic in some ways because there are a lot of what-ifs, but if I silence that nagging self-doubt voice, I actually believe I have a pretty good chance at getting some really positive marketing. It would be fantastic to kill it. You know what though? No matter the outcome of the book sales, it's a good feeling to put something together that takes people into the recesses of their memory and imagination to evoke feelings of longing and belonging, of solitude and connectedness.. you get the point. Anyway, I'm excited!! So if you are in town COME DRINK BEER AND BUY A BOOK.. if you're not in town.. GET IN TOWN- DRINK BEER AND BUY A BOOK!! :P heh heh heh

Traces of familiarity

Another rise another fall-
heart open and vulnerable
with each misted breathe,
knowing,
somewhere hidden among secret desires
and forsaken memories,
pain will sing again.

Uncompromising injustice
fevered by infallible innocence,
the tip wields ever so slowly-
watching
waiting
expecting.
a quick exhale and the intoxicating
anger teases the iris
yet again.

Happy Xrays

Wahoo!! I saw the doc on Monday and my xrays showed that the bones in my foot have stayed stable. So far so good. As of right now, he said he is glad that we decided to try it without surgery :) I am allowed to start putting a little weight on my foot and start to slowly progress into walking with the boot for the next month. I can try to go from walking in the boot with both crutches then one crutch and so on. He said to let pain be my judge on how much to do.

It's crazy trying to put ever so little weight on my foot. Kinda feels like my foot isn't really my foot- that numb, less than reactive extension that is somewhere by my ankle. Even better, I'm allowed to take this not-so-well-ventilated boot off when I am just hanging out and to sleep. YAY! I have to keep it on while trying to put any weight- which is fine, because I'm pretty sure my whole leg would collapse if I tried to walk without it right now (I think I remember what my calf USED to look like before it all ran away).

Seriously, it's just so reassuring that at this point, it looks like I am actually healing. A hell of a lot better diagnosis than, "if you don't have surgery you will be a crippled arthritic". Yup, I'm happy. I'm plotting my return to the saddle and actually believe it will happen in the near future. Now I just need to take it slow and relax.. because I will be able to drive again :) Only one more month of this boot!! Which means I can go on a road trip. Enough said :)

Road Trip Frenzy

The open road is calling!!! Oh it is time for a road trip! Loud music, windows down, overly caffeinated driving, with random maps thrown on the floor that is littered with camping accessories and dog hair (let's face it.. I have a collie-cross)... sigh. It's been a while since I have been able to explore new territory! It's one thign to be financially restricted from road tripping, but i'm kinda a little physically restricted too.. so both kinda suck.

You know, even just dong an over night is some national forrest would probably make me feel better too, but I actualyl think I am going to have to book it to the water sometime soon.

My doc appointment for my foot is coming up and I am really hoping that I can start weight bearing. I would looooove to be able to drive again. I'm thinking a coastal tour of Cali would be great. I just kinda want to go somewhere I haven't been yet and just chill. Course, the other thing is, I'm kinda feeling like an old school raod trip. You know, like a few years ago, when 4 people would pile into a car and get outta dodge. I've been doing more solo trips the last ocuple of years and I'm thinking some rowdiness is in order. You know the kinda that result in borderline blackmail pictures?? So.. anyone out there that is up for some old school driving til the sun comes up.. give me a holler.

Claiming the Dark

An excerpt from, The Light Inside the Dark :


To learn how to live means claiming more of the territory of life, even, or especially, the darkness. When we begin our inward journey, we think it will be a continuous ascent. But we find that however well we try, we fall into pain, into the excruciating awareness that if we are human we love, and if we love we are vulnerable. The darkness presses hard on us- turbulent, autonomous, full of obsession and loss. It seems greater than we are and has a mule-like resistance to common sense. As Jung remarked, everything unconscious remains fate.

If at this time we cling to the spirit, we will think that the fall itself is the problem. Spiritual traditions have a strong tendency to see things this way. The classical solution, then, known in monasteries around the world, is to detach and so cease to suffer. But it is more likely that we pay too little attention to our pain, that we are too eager to clamber back to the cool, pure heights and their certainties. Here, in this human life we share, another kind of spirituality might serve us better: one that sees it is our very losses that save us, by bringing the aspiring spirit downwards and initiating us into soul. This is why the way up- into the true life- begins with the way down.

This revelation of the intimate closeness of beauty and suffering may unbalance our previous idea of order. It tells us that, like Rilke in front of the archaic torso of Apollo, we must change our lives. We must learn to attend more acutely, to grope through the labyrinth, holding the twine of spiritual practice as we head into the dark. Through patient observation, then, we find that it is our thoughts and feelings that make us happy or sad, that the quality of our attention changes the colors of the day. This discovery of the reality and then the consolation of the inner life is our one solution to the problem of suffering, which is also the problem of living up to the underlying, and equally pervading, happiness of life.

Something to ponder, yes?

Week 5 of crutches

It's officially been 5 weeks since I broke my foot. In some ways it seems like it's been a lot longer, in some ways, shorter. Someone was saying how they were prepping for their kids to go back to school.. that hit home! Man it feels like my summer hasn't even started and yet it's swiftly moving on past. The idea of it getting cold again anytime in the near future is not exactly welcoming. Something tells me it doesn't matter that much though... like maybe I won't be here for another winter. Who knows?

A lot of time for reflection. A lot of movies and with poignant lines about life in general lately. We, as a society, take life too seriously. Does it really matter if we work 40 hours a week or 80? We are the only ones looking in the mirror. The rest of the world just goes on spinning around, with or without your presence. I don't mean that in a sad, lonely way- but in an observing relatively detached sort of way. In a self-realizing way. How do you define yourself? Is it by what you do 90% of the time, or maybe, just maybe, that 10% that you discount as downtime is in actuality closer to who you really are. Maybe it's because that 10% is so important and vulnerable, that you (we) throw ourselves into the 90%. Because it's safer, it's easier to explain, it's more predictable, more tangible. What would happen if we released the "importance" of the 90%, if we instead, openly admitted the 10%? Without self-importance, without judgement, without expectation... do you dare imagine what it (we) would be like?

Who are you?

Weak of brokenness

Sigh.. what can I say? I am not meant to be inside ALL day EVERY day. The walls are closing in. I rely on everyone and anyone to get out of my apartment out back into the real world. It's a good thing I have unlimited minutes on my phone. Or would be if I could get ahold of anyone...

In two days it will have been three weeks since my brilliant attempt to get on my horse bareback. I'll tell you what, yesterday was fucking miserable. I think I had a beer at 11am (right after my morning coffee) just because it was something to do. I folded all of my laundry- oh yea, that's how bored I was. But guess what? I actually couldn't put any of it away, because try carrying folded laundry on crutches. Not so much fun.

I have 5-6 weeks before I go in for another set of xrays and at that point might be allowed to start weight bearing a little bit. More than anything, I'm afraid that my foot won't hold and at that point will need surgery. Hold your breathe and cross your fingers... Another 8 weeks after these 9 weeks just really doesn't seem fair.

I'm clinging to the hope that by my brithday I will be able to sit on my horse. That would be 10 weeks from the date of injury. please.

Week Two of brokennesssss

I'm not so sure that brokenness is a word, but I feel that it should be. It seems to fit the ability to describe a situation/feeling in a simplistic straightforward moderately amusing way. (hence the name of this post) One of long time friends and confidants mentioned that in my copious free time I should blog more... admittedly, though I thought it was a good idea, I was not so sure that ANYONE actually read this. However, to my pleasant suprise, there is at least one random reader- so blog I shall :)

The theme of the week is bi-polar disorder. Not the medically treated kind, nor the kind typically diagnosed by professionals, but the kind that settles in the dark recesses of your iris when type-A people are thrown to a screeching halt and wonder where all the noise is from their usually frenetic life. That kind of bi-polar disorder. The kind that seeps emotion into your daily tasks where emotion had previously been void. For example, the joy at being able to clumsily carry boiling pasta across the kitchen while on crutches, and conversely the intense despair at having to spend 10 fucking minutes balancing boiling pasta, while chaotically dodging cats and dogs while on crutches. That kind of bi-polar disorder.

Admittedly, I am in a fairly decent "space" at this particular moment, so this post doesn't have the wrist-slicing depressed thoughts it might have had week one of brokenness :) I've been able to keep amazingly busy and have had time (forced time) to sit down and figure out some more technical aspects to my website that I haven't been able to as of yet. Lame, yes, but I am still pretty excited that I was able to figure out the html coding to create PDF files and have my price lists link to my website (even open in new window-thanks to Sarah and Scotty) AND.. oh yes.. there's more... I have actually figured out how to add music to my website. Take that 6 yr old programmers.

I know it's all stuff that is pretty basic, but that's not the point. The point is, as my life in many aspects has come to a screeching halt, I figured why not take the forced vacation and increase my working knowledge level? So that is kinda my mantra right now. I may not be able to ride, walk, drive, work, go to shows, jump around with my camera... but at least I can read and play on my computer. Yay me.

Broken.. yet again....

THE ROAD NOT TAKEN
BY Robert Frost

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel bothAnd be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

or so I thought....

My eulogy

Sounds macabre, doesn't it? It's not intended that way. A long, long time ago, when I wore business suits and drove a fancy car (shhhhhh.. its a secret- but it's true) I did some public speaking on "Beginning with the end in mind" (thank you Stephen Covey). The basic idea was to write your eulogy; what you would want others to say about you if you died. It was really interesting, because it forces you to realize what is important to you in your life. Even more interesting for me was that nothing that I was doing at that point in my life was on the list. Hence why I don't wear business suits anymore (though I still have a car fettish).

Anyway, I was flipping through my journal and found the entry. It is dated 10/30/02. Think about that for a moment. How much has your life changed in the past 6 years?? Back to the point, I decided I would share my eulogy. It's fairly personal, so no harse judgements on the one. But, you know, I figured I might as well send this one out to the universe. So here it is:

______________

10/30/02

Beginning with the end in mind:

At the end of my life I would want to be remembered by a memorial service and cremation- not a funeral with a casket. Here's a list of what I want said:

genuine care/concern for others

selfless

goes out of her way to help others

sacrificed

fun loving

smiled all the time

saw people for the good in them

raised other people to see their potential

donated to charities

ready to road trip anytime, anywhere

non-materialistic

talented artist

enchanting guiter player

cello and piano compositions

played for groups

publshed poetry books

respected and influencial

wordly traveler

multi-lingual

experienced outdoorswoman

successful rider/trainer

never backed down froma challenge

mountain/rock climber

WFR certified

non-smoker

health addict

athletic build

ran every monring along the wooded trails

in shape

shed possessions to maintain being down to earth

confident but not cocky

remembered the little things

never passed an opportunity to see the world

traveled every continent

exhibited photographer

intuitive and skilled oratoe and motivational speaker

spiritual and rooted in nature

extremely self-aware

went through jungles/safari in africa

meditative

took time to get to know poeple around her

natural/rustic

carpe diem

known for her faded leather cowboy hat

loved by many, hated by none, respected/appreciated by all

used her time as if each day were her last

relaxed and controled

so oopen to new thoughts and ideas

loving husband- true soulmate

always sent b-day cards/ thank you cards

artist

lit up the room when entered

designed her own house/stable

always offered a shoulder to lean on

continuously learned/grew as a person

maintained relationships and pulled people together

could be seen playing guitar while sitting on the beach

changed people's lives for the better

quoted and live by, "no worries"

managed her time to devote to family and friends

painted sunsets and inspired by clouds

stared at trees while lying on the grass

proud and strong

backpacked/camped/white water rafted

experienced life for all it's flavors

I picture myself driving into town in my Jeep wrangler or truck (or riding my horse). Smiling to everyone, getting reeted warmly by everyone- dog by my side, warm from weather, happy, free, relaxed, enjoying the sun, surrounded by mountains and trees but near water. People saying, "She went through hell but would do anything for anyone with out ever expecting something in return".

I want to be the willow tree withstanding the hurricane.

Self-sufficient

reflected true beauty with no make-up but shined because of teh love oterhs had for her and she had for them

had inner-peace

never forgot htose who helped her along the way

ageless

free-spirit

Danced like nobody's watching, sang like no one was listening, loved like she had never been hurt, and traveled like she had no destination.

Lived by the heart of a tiger with the wisdom if a dragon.

Fought tooth and nail for those she loved

______________

So yea, I dodn't say it was a short eulogy. I remember writing it and jsut kinda getting caught up in the entry. So there it is.

Horse Therapy

Yet again the temperatures at the barn have reached near frigid lows. Yes, we passed below freezing (quite literally) and have maintained a sub-human temperature for more than a few days already with no break in the near future. By the way, have you heard that Salt Lake City is actually a desert? Amidst the bone chilling, tooth aching cold our equine friends have taken it upon themselves to fully embrace this temperature disaster as a meaningful lesson on what happens to ponies brains when it is this cold. For you non-horse people, it is similar to taking a small hyper-active child, feeding him/her 18 gigantor pixie sticks, washing it down with a liter of cola then giving them sparklers (and matches). Do you have the disastrous mental picture yet? If so, let's just say that small child weighs, I don't know, 1,500 pounds. If you don't get the idea yet, sorry.

The funny thing is, to those of us that dedicate more time to our horses than our loved ones, this is a mentally torturing time spent debating, "should I ride and risk a near-death experience on a horse higher than Whitney Houston or should I not ride and feel incredibly guilty for not 'working' said horse (the entire time thinking about all the recent progress made flushed down the toilette)" And yes, we really do think that way.

As sick as it is, most of us can only rationalize not riding for two days at the maximum- then the guilt and withdraw kick in- much like in Trainspotting. So today would have been day three of being clean (from riding that is). I headed to the barn, fully expecting the frostbite to reinforce my decision to turn-out my horses and not ride (again). Then the twitch started, followed by the minor shakes. No sooner had my eyes begun to shift into a wild eyed must-have-crack look, was on sitting on my horse bareback riding around the arena. And yes, when we go off the deep end, we often chuck all safety equipment designed to keep us on the horse such as: saddles (to sit on) and bridles (to steer said beast with).

Wouldn't you know, my higher than Whitney horse was near-perfect today. Don't get me wrong, I have learned to stay on bareback during bucking, but honestly, it was one of the best rides I've ever had on Malachi. The connection, fluidity, and impulsion we had today was incredible. We successfully stayed on the bit (in a halter), had great bend in our circles, did shoulder-in, and a crap load of leg yields.... yea, I know, damn near amazing. Horse therapy. Somehow, one great ride and all the other crap fades away with into the dusk; you leave the stable thinking, "It's cold, but hell it was worth it".