Two weeks ago, my grandfather passed away at ninety-six. It’s been something of a whirlwind couple of weeks. I did the only thing I ever know to do. I took lots of pictures.
Death feels like such an exotic thing sometimes, but then suddenly you’re going through someone’s possessions with a simple purpose: they don’t need anything anymore. We will all be buried in our nicest set of clothes, and everything else will disperse into the world.
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.
Post Office, Mineral Wells, Texas.
November 2017.
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What have you been up to? Let’s talk about it.
Why I really moved to Austin.
Thee Oh Sees on the McGarrah Jessee rooftop.
Thee Oh Sees on the McGarrah Jessee rooftop. People kept shaking up beers and spraying them everywhere, which was annoying.
Sitting having a beer on Congress and suddenly a Gay Pride parade went by. (This was actually Sunday. I lied.)
Enjoying a somewhat more laid-back Tuesday before starting the all-out crazyface music-overload that will be the next four days.
It’s mid-March. Where has the year gone? It’s a quarter over. It’ll be October before we know it.
Foggy photo from October 2012.
A couple of months ago I visited a dear friend in Oklahoma City. On the way back I stopped by a little spot ten miles west of nowhere near Edmond, Oklahoma…to see a tree. Supposedly this was no ordinary tree; I’d seen pictures of it, heard stories about people driving out of their way to see it — needless to say, I had to experience it for myself.
Except it turns out it was 1) after ten p.m. by the time I made it out there and 2) so, so cold. I tried to take a long exposure photo but the whole thing turned out to be completely out of focus and looked pretty awful.
A loss, right? Not really. As I stood there sipping my hot cocoa, chilled to the bone, looking at this little tree (a dogwood, maybe?) I felt this weird feeling of…well…of standing out in the middle of nowhere by myself but feeling anything but. There’s something to be said about sharing a spot with a whole bunch of people across space and time (some of whom you’ve never met, some of whom you have). Sharing space. It’s something we do every day, but I suspect we rarely think about. It got me thinking so much I’m devoting episode two of my podcast to it — but more on that later.
In the meantime, if you want to see some photos of the tree that don’t suck, check out geotagged photos on Flickr.
I made the illustration above because I was sad I didn’t get a good photo of the tree.
Undertaking a project to document the place where I grew up. This one’s from last April.
