Oh, the Weekend!

Oh how I hate working. I really begrudge having to work for a living, well, not really, but I begrudge having to keep an 8-5 schedule in a job that I just see as a paycheck. I don't have anything in common with the people I work with - none of them are educated - actually I think the temps are more educated than the full-time people - all of them have millions of kids each - they seem to like their pointless jobs - and I just feel like an outcast, at best. They are really nice people, unlike the people I used to work with at my last crappy temp job, but this still just feels like a place-marker in my life. My life is crying out for me to divorce it. That's what one recently divorced friend told me: "Maybe you need to divorce your life." Maybe so indeed. I'm plotting and planning ways to do it.

On that note, I love weekends. I haven't done anything this weekend except drive around, grill out, and spend time with family. Yesterday I hung out with my mother and we went to Wal Mart to buy her mother's day present, which was a grill, a chimney, and some charcoal; we grilled out steaks on it last night after I put it together. Today I took her over a flat of flowers, because she said she wanted to plant something, and we went out for lunch at this place that I've been driving by for weeks and dying to try. It's a little Mexican restaurant and take-out on Gallatin Road named, quite simply, after its menu items. It's a run-down little place but the draw is its smell. They have a ginormous oil drum barbecue outside on which they are grilling whole chickens night and day and as you drive by, the smell seeps into your soul. Now, you know how I feel about grilled chicken these days, so I just had to try it. I persuaded my mother to step outside of her usual let's-get-take-out routine and actually come with me to this place. We shared a whole grilled chicken, with rice, beans, salad, and tortillas for $11, and it is one of the best meals I have ever had. Wow, it was truly delicious. I am definitely going back.

I have had an affinity lately for restaurants named after menu items: there's my new favourite - Tacos Y Mariscos Y Pollo Al Carbon and the similarly named House of Gyro, Salad, and Hamburger. I think this naming trend might be something to look out for on my constant search for good and unusual cheap eats in Nashville.

New Film, and Floods.

In case you haven't heard, and if you have been listening to national media, there's a good chance you haven't, Nashville flooded this weekend - the entire city and environs of Nashville. It's a 500 year record apparently, although I'm not entirely sure how they know that. I'll write more about that, but I have to make up hours at work tomorrow and get there ridiculously early, so I must sleep soon.

I picked up five rolls of 35mm film yesterday. I'm excited. I have seen some of the pictures and I am sure I will be posting more soon. I knew it was raining pretty hard, but when I drove to Wolf on Saturday, I realized it was a lot worse than I had thought. I didn't get to pick the film up until Tuesday, and as of today, Wednesday night, large parts of Nashville are still underwater.

But.... I am tired. More on all that soon.

Nashville: Signs of Light, Easter 2010, with a Zeiss Ikoflex

These photographs of mid-century signs were taken with my Zeiss Ikoflex, a camera of approximately the same vintage as the signs. The camera isn't in perfect condition either - it has some issues with the viewfinder, and sometimes the shutter sticks, so I think it's the perfect camera to use to take photographs of these decaying, but still strangely beautiful and compelling signs.

This photo epitomizes Dickerson Road, an area replete with seedy liquor stores, discount tobacco, porn stores, thrift, second-hand appliance stores, really good BBQ, crumbling motels and trailer parks. What is the "last chance"? It seems like there's a message here beyond the literal.

The World Keeps Turning...

Photography puns aside, my life feels out of focus. Everyone tells you that life goes on, that the world keeps turning, even if you stand still, and that is true. I feel like I have to go with the flow and the rotation of the Earth and all that, but it's making me a little dizzy.

I haven't taken many pictures this week, and perhaps that's why I'm feeling a little ungrounded. I should get out on my lunchbreak tomorrow and snap some pics of the river near my workplace. Today I sat and contemplated the turtles sunning themselves and then dipping back into the water for a swim. I have to admit feeling a little jealous as I sunned myself in my business-casual attire on the riverbank, trying to extract joy and relaxation and sunshine from every moment before I had to go in and wither under the fluorescent lights.

I have a new job, in case I failed to mention. That's really how much I care beyond the obvious need for a paycheck. However, the people in this place are really nice and the job is at least marginally more interesting and doesn't call for me to consistently question my morals and the state of health-care in this country, like denying medications to elderly people on Medicare did at my last job.

This week has flown by. I always think on Mondays that it will drag on forever, but the days have gone conveniently by, and work hasn't seemed too much of an imposition on my actual life, although it has robbed me of much needed sleep a couple of times this week. I have been out a couple of times with the aforementioned guy with whom I went on a date the day after my birthday. I guess I'm getting to know him now, and I still find him interesting and fun to hang out with. I have zero expectations and I hope he has zero expectations of me, but the time has passed with great conversation, good laughs, good food, lots of beer and a movie or two. He is very smart, as I've said before, and also extremely sweet, but genuinely above-board about his life and his situation in it. He's not too happy with his life either, and like me, not really in the place he wants to be, so we have something in common there, and it's nice to talk about how to improve our relative situations. I don't know how I feel about any of it, but I went out with him on Monday, and I actually (gasp) called him to suggest Happy Hour imbibing yesterday, which turned into a much later night than I had bargained for. Oh well, I can sleep when I'm dead, right.

There's no word from the ex-boyfriend (The Aforementioned Man Who Unceremoniously Dumped Me, or AMWUDM) - a friend of mine called it "radio silence," and that's a pretty good way of describing it. He booted me from Facebook, which I suppose was expected, although I'm surprised it took him so long. Perhaps my posts were annoying him, although I suspect they were doing something else, but hey, I won't get into it.

I've been honest, to a fault I think, with this new guy (we'll call him New Guy I'm Hanging Out With or NGIHOW) and I came up with a drunken, yet appropriate analogy in which I compared my heart recently to the post WWII ravaged fields of France, which has now naturally progressed into the Cold War. I think honesty is the best policy. I haven't promised him I won't freak out at some point - there goes the Cold War analogy again - and I have said explicitly that I am simply not capable of a deep emotional connection with anyone right now. My heart has not been set right, and there are certain things that will have to happen before it will be. Right now, I am in a period of stasis. I don't actively feel any healing going on, and I don't think I will, but I am learning coping mechanisms and I am learning to just do, even if I don't feel - perhaps that will come later. That goes for relationships, getting out of bed in the morning, remembering to eat, laugh, and see the good surrounding me - I am going through the motions, but generally I still envy the turtles and their easy life and that convenient shell under which to hide.

My Response to Mr. N.

I love the points Mr. N. brought up, and even though he intended them as "an argument," they really validated what I was saying. I don't think film in itself is inherent to true camera knowledge, but rather, I believe that having manual control over your shutter speed/ISO/aperture gives you an insight into the way light works, whether you are working with light hitting a piece of film or a digital sensor. I love the way he has explained how working with the manual focus and a low aperture has forced him to become more creative in his portraits of tango dancing. I am sure that shooting inside and shooting moving and unpredictable subjects in low light forces choices that otherwise would just make it easier to shoot the more conventional way with a pop up flash and action stop. Here, as he said, you have to plan for mistakes and learn what works and what doesn't, and I'm a believer that only that absolute control can really give you that, just like only driving a manual car can give you insight into the way a car shifts gears.

He also said that as he shoots more, although he still manipulates in photoshop, (which I am learning too), that he finds he has to manipulate less and less. I totally agree with this - as you learn the control, you learn to get it right the first time, because you inherently know what will work and what is beyond the realm of real possibility, but you also learn, with this, what IS within the realm of possibility and you learn to make creative choices based on aperture and shutter speed, and you can picture the kind of photo you're going to get. This does guide your choices. You can say: I know I have a shallow depth of field, but I know I can capture this movement and I can capture one particular piece of it, so that might make a more interesting photograph than capturing the whole scene.

I am curious what happens if he employs a pop flash with this, or what happens if his camera has rear flash synch (yay, great modern invention). If you pop a flash manually, you don't have to worry too much about aperture and it gives you the freedom to be more creative visually. But the rear synch flash would make the motion make sense, even though you would sacrifice the weird unpredictable bulb/pop flash thing. So hey, Mr. N., I challenge you to the results.

I would like to say that I would love him to post some of his pictures on here to illustrate what he is learning.

I always find those kind of situations challenging, and as you can probably see from my current photo postings, I shy away from taking pictures of people, and I have a lot to learn. It's something I've never been good at and I would love to see how his pictures progress as he gets more comfortable with the method and with the people. I'm hoping he can teach me something.

And Mr N., I too have a 50mm lens with a 1.8 that I haven't busted out yet, but it is an amazing lens - I once heard that 50mm is the closest to how we actually remember the scenes in our lives, and that's why it was so popular, but that super-shallow aperture gives such a dreamy quality that can't be equaled. I'm currently in love with my 2.8 24mm lens, but I shall have to dig out the old 50mm and give it a try too, especially when I get a chance to take pictures of people.