rollover to me

I've moved.

To Wordpress.

Farewell, Blogger.

All I still want to do is dance.

i like the way you nod after everything i say, like it actually means something to you

When I look around at everything, talk to friends and sit on that couch in the photo room and look at the wall of pictures that took me a year to produce, I begin to wonder why I can’t seem to do anything right.

It’s probably a common feeling among people, that everything we accomplish, everything we put effort into never really goes the way we want it to.

I look at my grades and think to myself that I could have, should have done better.

I look at the pictures I take and know that there was a better way to shoot it, but I didn’t do it.

My writing is lacking in grace and elegance, and I seem to not put the effort into strengthening it. I would if I had the time.

(Even as I type this, Microsoft Word is correcting my grammar. Geez)

But there should be time. There are fewer hours in my course load, but I still seem to be constantly going.

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When I first watched the movie Elizabethtown I really wasn’t a fan. Sure, Orlando Bloom’s beauty caused my high school heart to throb, but as a movie I couldn’t seem to really justify seeing it more than once.

While flipping through channels and On Demand nonsense, I discovered that we had a subscription to some movie channel.

My roommates and I huddled around the television and we watched Elizabethtown from start to finish. And somehow it was better, infinitely better actually, the second time around.

Maybe I didn’t appreciate what it had to offer. I needed to grow up a little, see a little more of life and experience what life has to offer in general. When I first watched the movie, I’d never felt the pain and excitement of being completely and totally head-over-heels for a person.

You know the feeling. It’s the excitement of seeing someone, the butterflies in the stomach when they look at you and the joy that rushes through your body when you first kiss.

As ridiculous as it may seem, there are some things in life that can’t be appreciated until you’ve received your first real kiss.

I guess one of those things for me was Elizabethtown.

I’m listening to a mix cd that a friend of mine made for me back in March. It’s been my favorite cd I’ve ever received from a person. We're slowly losing contact with one another, and I don't see it ever getting better. As more weeks pass and I see him less and less, the tougher it is to pick up the phone and call him to tell him I miss his goofy face. This thought alone makes me question how close of friends we were in the first place.

I hate when friendships fall apart.

and we want spectacular views if we're to stay for the weekend

I'm about to fall asleep. I'm on the cusp of being fully awake and deeply asleep, intoxicated with exhaustion.

Last week was rough, in every sense of the word. And this weekend wasn't exactly peaceful either. And I guess it's my fault, but I've come to learn you roll with it, look back on your mistakes and hopefully you come out of it a little bit stronger and wiser.

I feel like the entire month of October is conspiring against me. I know it's midterms, but this year seems so much more overwhelming than last year and I'm not even taking that many hours. I've never been a motivated student, and I haven't really decided on whether I want to do graduate school or not. And I feel that if I did really want to go to Berkeley, I would and should be trying harder. There's the potential there to achieve so much more, but I don't really feel the need to give anymore than I am. I'm such a slacker.

I'm having trouble writing my story. If I thought I didn't do it justice with my pictures, surely I should compensate with a strong story.

Washington D.C. in the fall should be pretty. Only a few more weeks.

In concert news, the Arcade Fire show fulfilled every need I had musically. I doubt any concert will be able to live up to their performance. I didn't let anything that went down that night bother me, because I was determined to have a good time. Nothing could ruin it for me, and nothing did. If you would have seen the look on my face that night, you would have been able to tell that there was nothing but pure joy there.

On a high note, I was reminded of what my high school taught me after a visit to my old summer abode:

I am a valuable person. I have dignity and worth. What I do makes a difference.

Thank you, Assumption High School.

sometimes we lie in the hammock, caught between the mesh

It's Autumn. I think the most change happens during this season. Everything is still so fresh and new, from the beginning of the semester, but people are slowly becoming more comfortable in their new roles, in their new lives. It's not that we've changed, but we've grown, and int he process the person we were last year isn't the same person we look at in the mirror each morning as we wash our faces and brush our teeth.

I love autumn. I get to wear warm sweaters and step on crunchy leaves and ride my bike up and down the streets while the cool, crisp air caresses my face. I let my hair grow long and maybe, on a special occasion, I'll wear it down. You'd be lucky to catch me with my boring brown locks out of a pony-tail.

Some of my best memories of last year happened during the fall. They're things I now look back on with fondness, and not with regret.

One of the best encounters of my life , and quite possibly the most life-changing was the day I met Dave LaBelle.

Dave was the photo adviser for the student newspaper I work at, and he was the person who really inspired me to pursue photojournalism. He believed in me from the very beginning, helped me when I had questions, guided me when I was lost, and was like a second a father to me.

I've never met a more genuine person than Dave. His heart is so incredibly big, and the amount of love and concern he has for those around him is inspiring. I can only hope to be half the photographer and person that Dave is. He has affected so many people around him, and changed the lives of so many people, including my own.

He's leaving this week for California to pursue his own personal projects, and get back to being a photographer. And I'm being selfish, because I don't want him to leave. I'm not ready for him to leave. Not yet. Deep down I feel like there's so much more to learn from him.

Just listening to Dave speak, I feel like I'm gaining a deeper insight into the way Dave sees things. Today he was talking to Elliott, and my friend Matt was in the room. I told him, "Stick around. You'll want to hear what Dave has to say." And he did. Maybe it was out of courtesy, or maybe it was out of curiosity. Either way, I think Matt gained something from it.

I'll have to say goodbye. At least, for now. I know I'll be seeing Dave down the road, at workshops and what not. I'm emotionally preparing myself for it, but how do you say thank you to the person who's influenced your life so much?

The least I can do is make him proud. And from here on out, that's what I plan on doing.

"Into the Midst of It"

-Bronwen Wallace

You’ll take a map, of course, and keep it
open in front of you on the dashboard,
though it won’t help. Oh, it’ll give mileages,
boundary lines, names, that sort of thing,
but there are places yet
where names are powerless
and what you are entering
is like the silence words get lost in
after they’ve been spoken.

It’s the same with the highways.
The terse, comforting numbers
And the signs that anyone can read.
They won’t be any good to you now.
And it’s not that kind of confidence
you’re after anyway.

It makes you think of the people you love,
How their faces look when they don’t know you’re
watching them,
so that what you see there
forces you to recognize
how useless your love is, how little
all your hopes, your good intentions
can ever do for them.

You, who have lived your whole life believing
if you made enough plans
you wouldn’t need to be afraid,
driving through a countryside
only the road seems to care about,
to rediscover every time it enters
with that kind of love that’s partly tenderness
and partly a sort of confidence
you can’t put words around.
Like the look
the people at home will give you
when you get there: nonchalant and almost too deep
for you to see, as they turn back
to whatever held them
before you came.

I almost ran over my friend while we were both biking today. I was so caught up in trying to get somewhere, that I didn't really acknowledge him. He said it was the most bizarre and weird moment he's experienced in awhile. I think I almost hurt his feelings by not saying hello.

I was too busy balancing on a bike that was too big and missing a pedal.

My face gets this weird vacant and anxious look when I'm overly stressed or tired. I never noticed it until he pointed it out to me.

I'm taking pictures again. Maybe I'll finally get out of this rut and back into the swing of things. Maybe.

"You may all go to Hell, and I will go to Texas"

Let's just get this out of the way: I am a horrible photographer. Scratch that, I'm a horrible photojournalist. Alright, time to get this thing going.

Austin was amazing. The four days I spent with my two of my favorite and great and closest friends are quite possibly the best four days I've had this year. They may not know how much I love them, but these two kids made my summer as memorable as it was and I'm glad we were able to experience Austin City Limits together. This will be something I'll tell my kids about.

We were crazy, driving down to Texas. And by crazy, I mean, we were crazy in even thinking about driving. It's an exhausting drive, but looking back, was worth it.


Succinctly, we saw as much of Austin as we could in two and a half days. Ross, Chris and I got into Austin around 10:30 on Friday and after dropping our bags off at my cousin's apartment, we hit up the Drag. The Drag (Guadalupe) is similar to Limestone in that it's the road that divides campus from city. Except, being that it isi n Austin, the Drag is significantly cooler than Limestone. We had a delicious dinner and spent the next hour walking around and exploring campus.

Ross said it was a sobering experience, to walk around such an amazing and neat campus. He said something along the lines of it being sad, knowing that those opportunities to attend a cool college, and more broadly, the college experience, is gone.

Saturday was spent checking out downtown Austin with my cousin and the boys. We walked to the capitol (which is bigger than the capitol in D.C.! Go Texas!) and took pictures. Had lunch and played pool in a bar, cooled down for a bit with a nap, shopped at Waterloo Records and went to dinner with some of my family friends. After dinner we walked to an ice cream shop and really just soaked up the Austin evening. Later that night everyone cleaned up to check out the infamous 6th St. bars.

Fingers were crossed that I would get in and luckily I did. Overall that evening was great, and thought a good friend, we heard about an ACL After Show and saw St. Vincent perform at a bar a little ways from the bar we were at.

Sunday was the festival. We saw:

-Yo La Tengo
-The Broken West
-Midlake
-Regina Spektor
-My Morning Jacket (w/Andrew Bird)
-Bob Dylan & His Band


We saw bits and pieces of:

-Bloc Party
-The Decemberists
-Ghostland Observatory
-The Jelly Dots...

There was tons of food and arts and crafts and local vendors. And I'm not going to lie, there were moments were I was completely miserable. We all were feeling the heat, but the festival was set up so that if you need to cool off, you could. Plenty of misting stations and an air-conditioned AT&T thing that people could walk into.

I love Texas and can't believe this weekend went by so fast. The drive back home wasn't too bad, and everyone took turns driving. I'm pretty sure I got stuck with one of the most boring sections of the drive: Dallas, TX to outside Little Rock, AR. Blegh. When I drove over the state line, I was honest to god, incredibly sad. Both the boys were asleep and I had Sufjan Stevens on (didn't want to wake them, they deserved a hearty nap) and everything about that moment was so...overwhelming.

When Ross dropped me off at my apartment that night and we exchanged our casual "see ya later!"'s, I felt dizzy. Like, this whirlwind of a trip just occurred, and I as thrown out right in the middle of it.

What a great road trip.

In other news, this is why I believe that music, live music at that, is the most moving and beautiful art forms of all:



(by the way, that's a Davy Crockett quote. Ross quizzed me on the way down to Texas and surprisingly I remembered all my Texas facts. Shoot me a question and I probably know the answer!)

my days always dry up and blow away

It's just another day now. People forget and don't remember until they turn on the television and they're shocked. It's been six years? they wonder as the flip through the channels, because it's just another Tuesday and it's beautiful outside.

One story in a myriad of tales and broken hearts and shattered lives.

My dad was working in D.C. at the time. I didn't connect the two and two together at first.

I was in the eighth grade, 13 at the time, and it was just another morning. I sat down in Earth Science, behind Ben, who was teasing me about something I said or did. Our teacher, Mrs. Smith said something about a plane hitting the Twin Towers, and he and I laughed. We thought it was some little glider and didn't think much of it.

A few minutes later, our principle came over the intercom announcing what had happened. A disaster had occurred, many people were seriously hurt and we needed to pray. The entire school fell silent as she prayed, our heads bent down in solemn recognition. God had a plan, an intention and would help the city of New York during this time, she said.

It dawned on me. My uncle was in New York City, in Manhattan in fact. Was he okay? Our day continued, and we weren't allowed to call our parents or watch the television. No one was allowed to pick up their children; they were determined for this day to continue. No one told us about the Pentagon. No one would tell us a single thing. I think it was this moment that I truly began to resent my middle school.

Sometime during the late afternoon we had to go to the media center to work on a project. The librarian had CNN on and we gathered around the television, all of us curious. What had happened? She turned it off when the teacher told us to get back to work.

The entire day I was left in the dark. My mother picked us up from school, throughly distraught that they wouldn't let her come earlier. She didn't want to make dinner that night, since it was just her and my dad was away on business. It was during the ride home from school that my mom told me about the Pentagon. Not that my father would have been anywhere nearby, but she assured us he was okay.

We went to the Chinese restaurant, where the people knew us by name. They had a gigantic television, and for the first time all day I saw it: the footage of the towers falling. People screaming and crying.

That night, as I had my radio on before I went to bed, I fell asleep to patriotic music because that's all they were playing.

What was your day like?