i could go work in thailand

or istanbul

or cambodia

or peru

or switzerland for a while

today's pick is cuzco, peru. yesterday's was thailand, and the day before that, cambodia. there are still a couple of months before i have to grow up and make a decision. the first ticket i buy will be a round trip to somewhere, leaving this june and returning in mid-december. and then i'll leave again in january. maybe for a year. i don't know yet. i could go to veitnam or laos or prague or india or korea or china or bulgaria or anywhere. wherever i don't go this time i can go later.

rinse and repeat until exhaustion. i will go to nepal, though not to work. i will go back to switzerland.

i explained to space suit that i feel like i'm killing time this year. "you're not killing time," she said, "this is where you stockpile. like a squirrel with nuts in the winter."

everything is better with a fisheye. even ice skating. i'm starting to be convinced about this "winter" business.

(there are a couple more on flickr.)

my grandmother does not like this one:

and she didnt know what this one is:

i found a fisheye attachment for $40 on craigslist, embarrassed myself supremely in front of an Actual Photographer when i randez-vous'd with him at the impossible-to-fucking-find-ihop in the part-of-town-i-dont-know, and have been engrossed with it for a good portion of the day, taking pictures mostly of my kid sister, and pictures mostly that she does not like. more eye. less forehead.

it is good to be home for christmas.

photography as a serious ahrt and issues of equine dentistry

merry christmas! (tomorrow!) it's good to be home.

AHM SO HUNNGRRY IMMA EET YO FREEKEN HEAAD.

more horse photos likely coming soon.

two for two indulgence

today's daydream: i travel around the world and write essays that are somehow irreverant and hilarious while simultaneously being insightful and deeply moving. i sell collections of the essays for a small portion of my income and herd cattle/work a seasonal fruit stand/swab down gym equipment/or something for the rest. i pretty much want to turn into the lovechild of mary roach (stiff, and spook) and gretel ehrlich (the solace of open spaces, and islands, the universe, home) (sans ye olde being-struck-by-lightning part).

i know this is kind of stupid, but i'm wondering who reads this thing. there is the followers whatsit, yes, but also google reader, which doesnt show up on the page hit counter. if it's not too indulgent, a head count would be kind of cool. say hi.

every time i see a high-quality classical music performance i am increasingly relieved that i'm not going into it. my father got tickets to yuja wang and the shanghai symphony last month and i'll be damned if it wasn't a very accurate performance. she wore a pretty sweet dress. sometimes i get to go for hikes.

you know that joke that goes:

go, go and practice until your fingers bleed?

yeah, well, my teacher actually does that shit, and the moment her fingertips split open, she gets really excited. "it means hi hem practicing enough," she says.

on a conservative day i'll put in four hours; what does it take to break open your fingertips? i have no idea. people who do that have, in my book, officially crossed the line into nutso. its been three days of no practice and my tendons are still hurting off and on, as they do. how does the skin of your fingertips give out before your tendons?

maybe she doesn't have tendons.

she used to put superglue on her fingertips to stop the bleeding.

"superglue hiznt good enough, hi have to use za chrazy glue." she laughs.

it's not funny.

maybe she's some crazy bulgarian octopus robot who has to use crazy glue to maintain a human shape. maybe she moved to california because she had some west-coast octopus relatives on her father's side that she wanted to get to know. maybe at night she drives to the ocean and takes her true form (leaving large, human-shaped shells of crazy glue on the shore) and they all tour old shipwrecks together. (maybe the glue-shells fill with moonlight and are buffeted around by the sea-breeze so the hippies who sleep at the beach think they're ghosts. maybe some of the hippies have gotten wise and now use the glue-shells for shelter. or boats. maybe they hang small shell and hemp and bottle-cap amulets around the inside of the glue-shells so that when they leave, the shells are large clattering moon-filled idiophone ghost-hollows that go whoom clatter clatter whoom clatter clatter as the night wind bounces them down the length of the beach. maybe.)

her sister played the bach concerto i'm currently working on when she was seven. my teacher didnt say when she herself played it, but in one section "when hi was a little ghirl," she said, "and didnt have such good control, hi used dis fingering. now hi can do dis, but you see."

uh huh, lady, i'm getting wise to you. i've heard the shore-hippies whispering.

meanwhile, i'm turning into one of those crafty 65-year-old ladies who gifts shitty hand-made earrings for her female relatives. i can't wait to see my kid sister's face when she opens the box: you mean, i'm supposed to hang this crap off the side of my head? are you serious? is this a gift or an insult? her friends'll be asking her what's the name of that clever little five-year-old in her life. it's fuckin' cute.

you do not know this man, this hall, this piano, or the man who tunes this piano.

i think i have a more sympathetic relationship with food than i do with people. this will eventually need to be remedied.

last night i saw preservation hall and danced onstage. it was one of --if not the-- best live shows i've ever seen. this morning i tried to teach one of my disheartened students st james infirmary. she seemed less disheartened? how do you tell a twelve year old to sing it sad and nasty?

let her go, let her go, god bless her

wherever she may be

she can search the whole world over

but she'll never find a man like me

okay, two more food photos because i'm feeling whorish today.

the time is defined by the event, rather than the other way around. the defining portion of the events have often been food. last night was wine and chocolate covered strawberries, now is orange chicken and underdone rice. later is salad with raspberries and walnuts and maybe some leftover gluten free bread if i play my cards right.





i feel like shit like this shouldnt make me as giggly inside as it does. also, blogger crops things funny.

fuck you, lisa frank.