it was

Exactly what I wanted. Hours of flat pavement spread out before us only to disappear in the invisible haze where it met the horizon. Skulls with leathery flesh melting in the dry sun. Normally this sight would make me vomit but it somehow fits the rugged landscape. Dust coating the black luggage as it sits near the open hotel room door.

I always become a little melancholic at the end of a trip but that quickly fuses into a blissful ecstatic state which carries me for quite some time. It is my plan to slowly scan this continent and adhere to my preferred process of elimination while I target out my next dwelling - the nomad that I am. I already know I want the South more than any other place, but this series of road trips is partially meant to slowly obliterate the thought/option of living anywhere else at this stage in my life.

In the meantime I keep filling my ears with the Southern tunes, my belly with the Cajun goods, and my eyes with Southern imagery from those artists whom I admire most. This all makes clear sense to me.

annoying

for some reason I am unable to leave comments on any of my favorite blogs...

crisp new blue

Yummy. Crisp new dark blue sheets I glide into. Warm light. Fresh images from the film Baraka racing through my mind undisturbed. I put the words that truly mattered in my journal where they belong. My last entry was coated with the syndrome of PM.
Deep down there was a little stone well with about a foot of water which contained beautiful orange coy motionless in my belly and they held the tiny gigggle which was about to erupt.
Friday the sun broke through and we were all standing close to the windows all day, sometime my face was pressed to the cold glass of the familiar strangers home. When I was finally freed night had long since fallen overhead and there was only crisp darkness and a stretchy moonlit cloud above.
Saturday evening ran into 4am Sunday so quickly that they had to kick the crowd of us out all at once from their new lovely home. What a nice party. I tackled the Swede with the big nose and then later when I was unawares, while tiptoeing delicately down the middle of the barren steep street, he came from behind and picked me up and tried to turn me upside down but we both fell to asphalt quickly. Only moments before Hubby warned me that this Swede liked to turn people upside down...Hubbs supposed it was the wrestler in him. You think? When I showered just now I could make out in the dim light raised red gashes across my legs and arms from the fall. The hot water burned them raw so much so that they opened and liquified. I love when my skin holds the memory of a night within it for days like this until i am ready to let it go and suddenly I realize it has quietly healed before my eyes leaving no trace.

done

Hmmm, my server is maxed out so I can't post any more pics for the time being. The trip ended abruptly and less than 6 hours later I was on my feet for 3 - 11 hour days on photo shoots and I am beat, still haven't unpacked completely, the words are slipping away, the smile fading, today I could be found gazing out at the grey rain falling without stirring even slightly. I hear them calling my name but I tune it out and focus on the dry Arizona sun and cacti popping up around my shoulders, the friendly strangers telling me their secret locations and directions for me to drive there so that I can shoot these sacred places. Photographs with Vegas magicians and Tombstone cowboys as I clutch them tightly waiting for Hubby to focus and snap....the painful digital delay. Mineral baths warm, warmer and scalding hot we walk around in our robes all day with feet dangling in the steamy mineral brew, European breakfast plates on our laps. Everyone mingling in the quiet buzz of desert. Long sighs and shooting smiles across the dusty plains to your gaze. The Crand Canyon was burning in controlled flames and I shot it in the freezing cold, hands going numb and limbs convulsing. 26 rolls of film in total which I am about to scan.

Last night I went to bed with three (yes 3 really) milky grey tear stains on my right cheek. I watched them fall from the bathroom mirror as I got ready for bed and chose not to wash that part of my face, little did I know that I would awake to find that the city stole them while I slept and spent the entire day pouring that grey water on me all damn day long, socks soaking and cold around my little toes.

almost done

...just a few more days until my southwest road trip is over...

t-shirt

Hubby bought me 2 Lewis Thornton Powell T-shirts for my b-day - yippee! Although not one person knows who he is - it's kind of a bummer - I scan faces for any sign of recognition to no avail. All day I couldn't refrain from stabbing the air and shouting "I'm mad! I'm mad!" ...uh...O.K., anyway I was also flooded with Civil War literature so I have a hefty suitcase for my trip as a good fraction of my luggage is paper...and 70 rolls of film.

gettin' ready

Soon we're off for our southwest adventure! We have a final destination to see an old dear friend in Arizona and aside from that we haven't planned anything, just to casually stop by places like Vegas, the Grand Canyon, Montezuma's Castle, 4 Corners, Hoover Dam, etc. On the way back we'll meet up with good friends in Palm Springs to kick back and spend Turkey Day with. More when I return!

those summer days are gone

::: ::: :::

We were planing on going to Sweden this fall and decided to take a road trip through the American southwest instead. Now I am longing for the familiarity of Scandinavian soil.

::: ::: :::

Every evening Hubby and I would mount our bikes and head over the rolling hills to the local supermarket to pick up treats and beer and I'd lug them back home in my basket. I loved the little basket because it reminded me of the one I had on my bike when I was a little girl. It was white and woven with little pastel flowers.

::: ::: :::

On one of those little trips Hubby got mad at me because I was riding too fast as I was trying to pop a wheelie over a speedbump and it backfired on me - breaking the basket off the bike and our stuff went crashing down to the pavement, flying out everywhere, beer cans denting and fizzing.

::: ::: :::

Oops. I couldn't stop laughing. "Come on...live a little...little sour-puss...aaaw, come on!" My words never work, he often just shakes his head at me.

::: ::: :::

I miss owning a bicycle, I just want a simple, traditional, old-school bike with a basket...just think of the smiles it would put on my face. I saw a really cool chopper style low-rider bike the other day that I'd worship having.

::: ::: :::

I can't wait...

Four more days until my Thirty-Wonderful party. I submitted a list of 49 names to Hubby and that's before he added his buddies. Last winter we had a pre-holiday decompression party and people were calling us for days afterwards thanking us and stating that they hadn't had that much fun in a long time. So many things to prepare and too little time, plus we haven't even planned our road trip and we're due to leave Monday. There are very few spare minutes these days but I am happiest this way...no time to be alone very long with my thoughts (which tends to be dangerous in this cold, grey, and rainy weather...)

last nights picture diary

Five hours, four new friends, three bars, one taqueria, and one play. The chair difrectly in front of me at the theater was reserved for a ghost. It had a plaque rested on the seat and a mexican candle burning below it on the floor. My legs were crossed, and the foot of my top leg kept gliding between the back of the ghost's chair. I kept catching myself doing this and would jerk my foot away quickly, immediately sit up straight, and then apologize outloud to her.

a ballad

In an hour and a half Hubby and I will walk to the Mission District and meet a friend and a bunch of strangers for a walking tour of where a Latino Bonnie and Clyde couple went on a crime spree in the late 80s and early 90s robbing Mission District bars and nightclubs until they were finally caught taking a cab as a getaway car.

We will meet with this group of people and go on a bar-crawl to the 4 bars that they robbed and then end up at a theater where we will see the play of Pancho and Lucy's story - the scenes being the bars we will have just visited - "re-imagining the seedy late night stories, songs, heartbreaks, and crimes that brew in the underworld. Set in one of these same Mission District watering holes, they orchestrate a raucous all-nighter inspired by the songs and stories of the local legend...."

Can't wait. For our $40 we get one drink ticket for each bar (then supposedly everyone goes to a local taqueria for a quick burrito) and admission to the play.

photo shoot

So, I had my first - what I consider - real photo shoot yesterday for a London music magazine, featuring a 4 page interview with the lead of a band wheras I was commissioned to shoot 2-3 portraits of him. Hubby was my assistant as his contract at Apple is over and he is a free agent once again (well - that lasted 3 days - he's already off to an advertising company for the next week).

I got to do the shoot in my house which made it all even cooler, Hubby hung out with the entourage while the artist and I trotted around to my various setups, then I treated Hubby to a 3-course lunch at our favorite neighborhood restaurant. We always daydreamed of days like this and now it appears they are starting to come true. And hopefully in a week and a half our road trip will commence as planned.

Yay.

the Be Good Tanya's

They are my newest obsession. They make life a little sweeter. Three weeks ago a friend told me I would love this band so last Saturday I bought their Blue Horse album because I liked that cover best. They put sunshine in my eyes and thoughts of light cotton summer dresses on my limbs...mmmm. I am not Winter's child. I don't fair well. Now it's time to construct the imaginary paper walls with painted summer blossoms falling all around in the corners of my mind... to protect the fragile soul from the harsher elements that lay waiting outside my doorstep every morning. Time to drink cool summer drinks and tiptoe barefoot around the house late at night pretending the overheated wooden floorboards are of southern hemispheres. Playing that summer music in the hopes that it will lift me past one more winter, oblivious.


"We're both gypsy souls and it's time for me to roll
And I'm askin' do you wanna come along
Cause I've gotta get away to sing my song
Oh, be good Tanya, Tanya be good..."
-Obo Martin McCrory

To watch their "Littlest Birds" video please touch your screen right here.