The Sparrow

Peace Garden. Interior Courtyard.

Is a sparrow who kills a hummingbird in cold blood and proceeds to eat him a cannibal? Is he something else?

I am getting ahead of myself.

Peace Garden. Interior Courtyard. Brooklyn.

The sun is shining and there is a woman with a clipboard. I do not know who she is, and I do not know why she is holding a clipboard; I assume she works at the hotel, because why else does a person have a clipboard? She comes outside in something of a rush. She seems alarmed, but calm. She tells me that the sparrow has just murdered another bird and spirited the body into the bushes where it now pecks the carcass.

I know this story already, because it happened, is still happening, mere feet from me. I watched the whole thing. I stood up aghast, removing my glasses to get a better look. “I thought it was a bumblebee” I’d said. There had been the living thing, buzzing about among the petals of the forsythia bushes, and then the Sparrow, a gliding swoop that plucked it from the sky and pinned it helpless to the ground. There was a struggle. There was a great deal of buzzing. There was a retreat to the bushes, and a metallic whacking sound as the sparrow grasped the poor thing in its beak and bashed it against the metal wall of the planter. And then there was…well whatever came after. I’d had enough of watching. After that, it was the woman with the clipboard.

Where had she come from?

How did she know?

What else had she seen?



Artwork via https://www.audubon.org/birds-of-america/chipping-sparrow

Tucumcari, New Mexico

Tucumcari, New Mexico
April 2017

Can’t wait to go back and spend a little more time in one of the most photogenic towns I’ve ever seen. I’m working on a larger piece collecting photos and thoughts from my trip to New Mexico last year; it was transformative and I have a lot more to say about it.

Home

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I long, as does every human being, to be at home wherever I find myself.
— Maya Angelou

One Hour With “One Hour Photo”

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One Hour Photo” is a new photography app for iPhone. The idea is simple (and I must admit I scoffed at it at first): You take pictures with the app, which has virtually no settings at all (it’s very much like shooting with a disposable camera or something). The screen turns white for a split-second. Then a timer starts at the bottom of the app, and the viewfinder reappears. The photos show up in your camera roll an hour later, with a dreamy black-and-white “film” filter.

There’s something very zen about the whole experience. It quite literally takes away my usual perfectionism and attention to detail and makes me take photos of moments and let them pass. I spent my dinner break last night driving / walking around in Austin snapping photos, and I really enjoyed it. Something about the format — the anticipation, the not-looking-back, and perhaps most importantly the lack of immediately firing up any number of editing apps — made me really enjoy just pointing my phone at things and shooting. I really can’t recommend it strongly enough. Almost as an added bonus, the app has some of the most convincing faux-film effects of any app I’ve ever used, and it does so completely automatically.

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Seven days in New England

2014-04-24 22.31.15After being back under the Texas sun for a couple of weeks now, I’ve had time to mentally catch up after my amazing whirlwind of a trip two weeks ago. It also occurs to me that it all happened so quickly that I didn’t really get a chance to share (in any detail at least) what I was even doing on the road.

I was traveling with the amazingly talented poet, spoken-word artist  and dear friend Lauren Zuniga. We’ve been talking about me coming along on a trip with her for a long time, and things just fell into place this time. I am extremely grateful for this opportunity, and it was seriously so much fun.

I’ve got more snippets to post from the trip, and I’ve been busy logging footage and audio I collected along the way. I’ll likely be posting some snippets of those videos here in the near future, and I can’t wait to share all this with the world.

I’ll be posting more photos, and some journals from the trip, over the next few days. Please stay tuned. 🙂

Live Free or Die

81A738F9-683B-4A89-9709-D1802E342E85Tonight Lauren performed at New Hampshire State University University of New Hampshire. Met lots of fantastic progressive young minds — also felt a little old. College kids are pretty young these days.

Other points of interest: ate the most amazing lobster roll ever (resisted urge to post food pic), drank delicious coffee (the caffeine is creeping back into my life), talked about gender and sexuality in a car while driving through a pine forest, ate “Mexican” food (sorry, New England, it’s just not your forté), and met lots of interesting people. And in case anyone’s wondering, I’m a little bit in love with Portland, Maine (and not just because of the seafood).

I have poetry in my bones, and it feels so good.

 

On the Road

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAThis week I’m tagging along with the amazingly talented Lauren Zuniga on the final leg of her tour throughout the Northeast and filming a short documentary.

We had breakfast this morning at a giant wooden table at a coffeeshop  in Lawrence, Massachusetts, among what I could only describe as a sort of industrial ruin. I’ve been in three states today. I really like pointing cameras and microphones at things and people I find interesting. More soon.

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I’ll be posting snippets and updates from the road this week, so check back (or comment on this post and select “Notify me of new posts by email”