betty davis eyes

my currency is lost! longing for what i don't know, but not in photography. very reluctant to work, to reflect or review all that went down. less than a creative block, more like breathing. "everything is special everyday" my new motto/sale sign at a thrift store i've been very focused on love lately. i've been feeling through anna karenina. have been to very many film screenings of the avante garde nature. most have been very good, but tonight's screening was a pretty big disappointment (a found footage film festival). makes you wonder who/what makes it work/works it. sadness, like the deep kind in east of eden. and never hungry.

all in all and deep by deep

eating raspberries in the sun.

house is not perfectly put together, but it looks good for right now.

the top of my hair is brown (a layer of sun), the bottom is a shadow of my natural black.

my skin and hair have a distinct preference for california, the united states. my body, in general, is doing better, although not completely relieved of pain.

thinking outwards, i have a very large and overwhelming bucket list. the most important part is talking about my feelings. i need a lot of help - that sort of thing. it feels like i need a very big and potentially long break from my creative self.

i've been taking part in surfing! it's a wonderful escape that has me being tossed in the ocean like a salad. i have been tumbling across the ocean floor because the tide is so low. the waves are louder than my thoughts, which is perfect. the sky is very big, much bigger than my thoughts, which is also perfect. this force that is bigger than me is an important element in bringing me to a calm. i need to be reminded often that we can't make every single choice in our lives, and with the choices we do make, not every single one of them can be the best or the perfect. as an optimist, i struggle with that a lot. it's important to try, but i tried too hard and now i have to take a break. i am looking forward to this break.

I could try to toughen up

Rose:

Completed a day-in-the-life paternal grandfather tour in my parent's home town. this included eating his favorite pork's blood noodles, duck noodles, tasting local desserts, seeing the site of my family's old humble abode, learning how to pray to my family's chosen chinese deity, Matsu (Mae Tsup in Thai), visiting chinese and thai temples he was devoted to, cleaning my grandparent's grave and leaving them an offering of flowers, and seeing his room before he passed away (an empty, bright room made of concrete with nothing in it except for 13 eclectic wall clocks - very strange).

Bud:

Going home.

Making a home with my brother.

Cooking from Plenty. And looking forward to getting Jerusalem in the mail too.

Swimming everyday I can.

Running everyday I can.

Riding my bike.

If life is favorable, adopting a dog.

Thorn:

Undiagnosed and symptoms remain relatively the same. Although very slow and subtle, I think I am starting to see some improvement.

Testing one two three!

i have this horrible, and real, deep fear that all of my pictures will be out of focus. i haven't felt this kind of horrible anxiety and anticipation in a really long time. not a good feeling. in looking back, my first photographs with this camera were really amazingly sharp, and now i believe the images are looking blurrier and blurrier. god, and since my camera experienced a real crash this weekend, i'm praying to all the higher beings that the images came out right. the focus alignment is severely out of alignment, but i decided to shoot even after the accident because i figured there could be a chance that it could still work and i could at least eye ball it. it gave me such a headache. that's how bad the focus is. if the actual focus is that bad or even a little off, it means that any close up or low light photos will have a higher likelihood of being true trash. BABY JESUS SO MUCH ANXIETY AND ANTICIPATION. I will find out tomorrow when i go to pick up my film, but i'm at home feeling nothing but anxiety. i went over to my aunts house today and on the way back I realized I forgot to bring back my spare camera and extra film, which means taking another 2 hour trip there before i leave for Mae Hong Son this weekend.

the drawback of having a new and unique medium format camera is that you probably can't take it to any old camera shop, instead you need to send it to an autherized dealer. i'm totally crying inside. and shit, right before some of my most important trips. this means, i'll have to use the old mamiya c330, but fortunately, it's a really good alternative. she really is a workhouse. my only fear is that there won't be a consistency to the images...

one of the reasons why my anxiety is so large is that there were a handful of pivotal images made on this trip. the CF youth posing as a bicycle gang. youth surveying the forest. mushroom hunters - many!!!! more rice factory images. rice fields. amazing women cooking. ugh etc etc. WE WILL KNOW TOMORROW. Putting my anxiety under the pillow. Back to applying to grants.

vistas of our youth

i take longer and longer to update. i have a few different vehicles for writing so some of my thoughts gets diffused else where at times.

i am reading a biography that pin points a lot of my experiences here as a thai-american (i recently admitted that after meeting thai-english or thai-belgium or thai-germans i feel that i come from a 'lesser culture', although i know this is not true). some of my experiences here distinctly remind me of being in high school again. more specifically, the state of being so self-conscious that it results in me losing sight of my self...often. strangely though, this change of confidence benefits my community forest project. no one likes women who come off as too strong. well, you can be strong inside, but to have a loud voice is not the most feminine feature. in turn, it's when i'm working on my photography or when i look at the images i've been making that remind me of the self that i frequently lose sight of here. this must mean i don't look at my work enough. i'm not acting, but i think some people might see this as acting as a way to find what i wanted to look for in my visual journey here. method acting everyday.

although not disenchanted with my purpose in thailand, these days my life is incredibly boring with routine and banal goals like eating more vegetables, exercising, and finding time to sit in a cafe and read. i have less energy to follow these routines. instead my inclination has been going to the cinema after work and eating steak or vietnamese food, or vietnamese food with steak.

the only exciting thing really is almost two weeks of traveling next month for work. going back to Ban Thung Yao for a training and hopefully being able to finish a roll of film there! there are many photographs from april waiting to be developed. then off to a 'network dialogue' and a study tour of a very strong community in Mae Hong Song with Thailand's CF Network leaders. lots of good photo opportunities there, which mean opening my eyes at all time and knowing where everyone is and what's gonna happen.

my body is feeling very crazy. i just started a journey of making 24 maps, which means super intense 4 hour intervals of sitting in front of the computer. exhausted by the sheer focus, but the (educational) profit will be good - i can feel it in my back ache! i'm only on the first map, but my pace and efficiency has been picking up quickly. 24 maps of community forests!

not feeling like my usual physical self after sitting all day long. instead of running, i want to just lay down and read more poetry from this wonderful website that e.youle sent me. i always felt guilty that i only had one other internet source for poetry (but it's very good!). now i can feel a little bit more relieved because i have two!

this weekend i discovered an amazing library/resource in bangkok! everyone i know has heard a great amount of enthusiasm about the Thailand Creative Design Center from me. they respond by saying that they're surprised i had not heard of it before. i'm so very grateful that it's now in my lyfe, but it's a bit sad to me that such a wonderful collection of information is guarded by a paid membership (the amount is much harsher for foreigners). it makes sense but it doesn't make sense (the part of me that doesn't get it is spoiled by my past experiences with amazing, amazing, free libraries). i have been craving a space like that in my bangkok-life that is aesthetically and educationally designed for true study!

this place also houses an archive, one of seven in the world, called material connexion. this is a sculpturists', texilist's, or anyone who makes physical objects dream come true! a brilliant, 3-d, library of innovate and sustainable materials.

a very rewarding weekend to have discovered this place and spend all of my sunday editing photographs as a way to start thinking about sequencing and applying to grants. i also think i might be ate the point of understanding what this year has been all about.

in love with the way some people think.

i have unbelievable faith - a feeling beyond knowledge - in autonomy, complexity and the relationship between effort and reward, in others words meaningful work and diligent study. and true study is a form of experience.

why do we search for new things? because we don't need to understand something we already know twice.

whoa, sally gall. why have i never heard of you before?

Sometimes i don't feel worthy shooting in color- that it's just not my medium. It's because I spent so long trying to understanding why black and white prints, if done well, felt sculptural. I feel like i really get black and white, and it makes my heart so warm to see it done well. Especially these years when digital looks too good to be true. Each definition in the frame attempts to be sharp on behalf of our believed reality, but our own eyes don't even see with that kind of precision. What we've created is beyond us. At least the color of film speaks through the grain and ashiness, which is mountains more sculptural than the images we see today.

the first and second image remind me of another pie-in-the-sky. my adventures in the swamps of georgia and florida. i must go. i will go. and i'll stop in new orleans to gets oysters on the way.

"You can’t be an artist and have your identity reside in only one thing. The thing that you master will become a stranger to you, and you will outlive it or you will need to live into something else. You will always need to be educating yourself to the complexity of your feelings as they grow, and you don’t want to do something twice, really. Everything that makes you an artist in a sense is the way things are understood; how they fit together in ways that have not been understood before. How can you discover the inherent value that’s hidden in things that you haven’t yet seen? It’s in that sense that you want to do something new."

satisfaction - more or less, a perfect day

breakfast. writing. second breakfast. grocery shopping. reading in a cafe to elevate the mind. came up with challenging questions and tasks to push my photography/thinking/learning e.g.:

1. make a list of my prejudgements before looking at works of art. (the clearer I am about these, the more likely I will not misjudge the ones made by others)

2. should readers know my personality/history to understand my work better?

3. knowledge vs. opinion. what 'problems' ('questions') am i creating in my work and do I offer the information (in my work) to answer or respond to these questions? and what are my opinions?

4. look at other photographers/artists in relation to each other. (create a conversation between two artists to create living issues from their bodies of work)

5. am i contributing to the conversation, the history of great photographs and photographers? am i moving the conversation forward? if not, how can i?

6. have more live discussions about my work.

7. do i deceive myself about my ability to read (visual materials) intelligently?

I spent the last hour chipping away at number four. I compared Alessandra Sanguinetti with Erika Larsen. Similar, but important comparisons. For inspiration/faith, I draw from Sanguinetti's On the Sixth Day, and Larsen's Sami. I find myself in between both of them when I think about the work I want to make - FILM, NATURAL, LIGHT, COLORS, WARM, NICE LANGUAGE, LAND, LIVING, and DEPTH OF FIELD.

In my photographic research this evening (the best kind of Saturday night always), I found these amazing interviews of photographers talking about their work/experience at this intense photojournalism program. The first video harnesses all of the integrity I want in my work, and in a way renewed my commitment just listening to height of quality that can be achieved if you work hard. Plus it's indispensable to listen to these photographers talk about the emotional attachments they have to their work and the persistence that is needed in carrying out their projects.

With that said, I've got to go back to the working table. Think about some of these Q's, edit photographs, and lay out a master plan.