Dreamy Assemblage

HDR Phone App

Fisheye Phone App

Assemblage 3: Version 2.0

Isolated Bouquet

Painted Elephants: A Headboard I Painted for Natalie

This is a headboard I painted for Natalie.  I used a tapestry she gave me to design a stencil and traced the stencil directly onto the headboard.  Essentially, she will never have to miss that tapestry because she sleeps with it's pattern above her head.

I want to own a florist shop on an island someday.

Assemblage & Collage

Ever since I was a teenager I loved to glue things to stuff.  Read that twice, let it sink in.

I found myself frantically shredding paper and fabric. Covered in rubber cement, feathers, and plastic gemstones.  Surrounded by magazines, old chinese fortunes, tarot cards, movie ticket stubs, you name it - I was forever on a mission to effectively assemblage my trash. I've tried scrapbooking, it just isn't the same thing as working on a wall piece.  I don't want another place to put random fragments of my life, I want to trim the fat and display the meat.  Even if it is just for my own personal enjoyment.  I gave up on rhyme or reason a long time ago and just went with it, figuring at least my mother will enjoy my collages.  Well, enjoy!

Interview 4

I am preparing myself for interview number 4 in person.  Including phone interviews, I have actually interviewed 6 times since the beginning of April.  I'm starting to find that being nervous really isn't the problem.  It's being researched, studied, and prepared - that's what either gets you the job... or not.  So I've studied 3 or 4 times to prepare for this one.  


I'm growing tired of the question: what are your weaknesses.  I think it's a trick question, unless of course they actually expect you to be honest and would trust you to already be taking action on said weaknesses.  How often does one give the benefit of the doubt to someone they are meeting for the first time, and subsequently "grilling?"  Not often I imagine, so I'm being really careful about my proposed weaknesses.  Keeping it simple: Math, French/Spanish, and Laundry.  Those are my safeguarded weak points.


Funny: I only feel nervous when I'm getting out of the car on location.  Once I'm past the shaking of the hands I'm good to go.  So here goes nothing!

"Everywhere I travel, tiny life."

Isolated Orchid

Never underestimate human stupidity

Note to self - Pet peeve actualization:

Human beings that actively pretend to be stupid.

I'll elaborate: People who actually act like they are less intelligent than they truly are... Some people have been acting this way for so long, they cannot distinguish the difference between their "reality" and, well... reality. (These people are normally in the realm of the mid-life crisis age group range. The younger the individual is, the more likely they are to be "transparent" and easy to identify.)

I have put a lot of thought into this and I stand by my decision to label this pet peeve, as it has had a longstanding effect on my life in the workplace. I find it absolutely bizarre. I find it as more a nuisance than a threat in the greater scheme of things now that I've identified the demon.

That behavior impacts my moral/ethical brain nodes and the resounding synapse is a simple statement: pretending or acting can easily be found in the same action as lying. For me, lying brings everything to a grinding halt in terms of the natural progression of any interaction or relationship. For me, lying is pure ending in lieu of a complete and utter lack of malleability. What can you do with a liar?

Simple, obvious foundation realities about knowing a pathological liar:

-Go ahead and assume everything the liar has ever told you was a lie in one way or another.

-Take note of the quote: "All fiction is based on fact."

-Take note of my experience-based quote: "Never underestimate human stupidity."

(Their alternate realities are based on something, you'll just never know what.)

-Consider their intentions... not good or impure.

(Why? Well go ahead and you trust them if you want, but that is probably a bad idea because of words like "pathological.")

-Know there is a gradient to everything - not all pathological liars are easily detectable, consider frequency of lying.

-Good luck with continued correspondence. (I normally disengage all social interaction with an identified pathological liar, it saves time and energy as well as eliminating the negative element and, simultaneously, you are in the right by not enabling further pathological behavior.)

... It's just freaky when the person pretending to be stupid is your boss.

... I think that's what spurred this whole pet peeve actualization.

Misfire social norm inspired ambivalence party of one.

(A letter I never had to send because I read it to the recipient)


I don't know if you'll read this.

I should be asleep right now.

Sometimes I have an urge to write about you, or to you; I feel compelled to use unspoken language, an impromptu monologue in scriptspeak... except written with no oral expectations. To be spoken and heard by solely the narrator that accompanies you every time you read silently; written to be articulated by the inner voice.

It begs me to question what of this urge?

I've recently come to terms with a linguistic reality that has haunted me for years... people do not use spoken language to express truth, counterintuitively they speak all things except that. Thus leaving the only possibility of communicated truth to work itself out in the silent dialect of body language.

Let it be known that this has been misfire at the frequency of never fails and always.

These situations remain infamously undefeated in a race of irreparableness.

People change never.

And by the power of deductive reasoning, case rested.

And what of it if changing other people is an impressively stupid thing to pursue?

Lets pretend for a moment that we're over optimism.

Give it all up to worst case scenario.

Still. And what of it?

Lets say it is true.

You are alone in your world of truth motivated spoken language and action translations.

Misfire social norm inspired ambivalence party of one.

Translated first person POV for screen this feeling would be a zoom out and dolly back to wide shot, naturally. Hitchcock invented this, and dubbed it le "zolly."

If you're actually hearing this, let me guess. The problem has always been:

You cared all along.

Even when you didn't want to and eventually tried not to.

It still doesn't matter either way.

Apathy translates to me in those words.

The always caring by default instinctual reaction.

The suddenly defeated force of habit.

Hello Darwinism.

If you're smart you recognize that caring, if a relevant variable, is a volatile constant of rival sprawl competing with the endurance of said widely accepted and ignored language of miscommunication/fire.

When what is cared about has an unequivocally bipolar disposition, the peculiar black/white fork in the road phenomenon occurs. Most notably characterized by how it is impossibly easy to avoid the wrong direction because both sides of this imaginary fence are clearly marked.

Can't get out of a ticket in this part of town with the "I'm lost" bit.

Probably much better off with the "wow I'm amazingstupid" monologue instead.

You can't ignore math. A mean, median or mode. Ratios. Counting. Adding subtracting multiplying dividing. Math is inarguable IF you have the correct answer. A mathematical solution is a textbook example, a reminder of how specific a process of any kind can be.

This could probably be a narrated satire.

At best, it'd project to screen with infectious direct cinema pheromones.

At best there would be riots.

Deep down, I feel and know these things every day.

The moment of impact is foggy, but why is certain.

You don't have the same self actualization twice.

It can only be experienced at the moment of origin.

Hello reality.

The day you inventory when you stumbled upon a recurring truth, you forfeit the power to forget.

The funny bit about you and all this overanalyzation...

probably precisely what catalysted an urge to record the present internalized thought:

you say exactly what you to mean to me every time.

Like yin and like yang, your actions directly reflect your intentions as they are described to me.

I suppose I should find beauty in how after articulating that, I feel full-circle enough to retire internal monologue 001.

To you or about you, I don't know. But you have my full attention, unabashedly.

What Lupo will do for French Fries

Old Artwork

Why We Run

Smudged/Liquified Mountain Range/Cloudscape

The Whale Song

Well I know I was a scout

I should've found a way out

So everyone can find a way out

Liquified Summer Moonrise

Waiting, Trapped, Escape - A Serious Series of Shorts

Waiting, Trapped, Escape - A Serious Series of Shorts: I created these pages in an artist book for IB Art class my senior year of high school. The purpose of this section, which had pages with glued envelopes enclosing the writing (titled/labeled with "My name is" stickers), was to recount one of my many trips to see my shrink. It's creative writing/prose but could easily be confused with poetry.

WAITING

I sit in the corner near the windows and the potted plants.

I sit so very close to the rain.

I sit on a maroon couch in a building that reminds me of the hospital.

I sit with pen in hand, sweating in a nervous sort of way.

I sit and write this down hoping I'll remember where I am because I am getting lost again.

I sit and read all of the signs on the walls hoping I'll find myself soon.

I sit where I can smell the dirt and play with the leaves on the plants.

I sit so very far away from the television.

I try so hard to sit perfectly still.

I sit and try not to pay attention to the maroon on this couch, the shade is overwhelming.

"Alli(it's pulsating)son Carmody."

I stand, unsteady on my feet.

I blink, the faint feeling subsides.

I walk, glancing back at the maroon couch.

TRAPPED

How can I put these thoughts to paper... these thoughts that travel at the speed of light. She watches my every movement, she counts the breaths I take. In a pleasant voice she states so clearly, "This isn't going to be easy. This will not feel right." It all seems so very far away. Her voice, seems so very far away. "What is your safety net? What is it that gets you by?" Prolonged silence. The answers refuse to form into words, refuse to be transferred. I am not ready. Ironically, in this vague and multi-planed language being "not ready" means you will never be more ready. Torn between the familiar and the great unknown, I take one giant leap. One giant leap for... for what I have yet to establish.

"Yes."

It's hitting me in waves now. This nausea, this monumental inner conflict.

It's truly quite scary.

All I have worked so hard to suffocate, all of the old fires I silently doused in secrecy, will be burning brightly and breathing post-deprivation tonight. I can already feel them.

Somehow this is right?

One. Two. Three. She's counting on me.

Four. Five. Six. For all the broken sticks.

Seven. Eight. Nine. I tell myself I'll be fine.

Somehow this is right.

ESCAPE

Heatedly walking outside into the rain.

Stubbornly enjoying the wet cold, acknowledging how appropriate it seems.

Calling home but being awarded no voice of reason.

Frolicking in thoughts of secrecy.

Remembering how this came to be.

Arms dropping to my sides.

Tears falling between drops of rain.

Standing so still.

Waiting for an answer that will never come.

I stand so still amidst the rain.

News

Recently in pictures...

25 dollar wall hanging piece from Big Lots.

 Deer crash in Aprille's car, I was sitting passenger.

Morning rush hour on Route 7, always a trip.

I walked to the Sterling DMV from my house to get my passport.

I highly recommend, the wait wasn't bad.

filter celebration

This blog is about...

Many people, places and things - kind of like the app for iPhone called Path (which I try to use, taking 1-3 pictures daily).  Recently, my Nikon D50, Sigma lens, Hoya polarized circular filter, and Adobe Photoshop in conjunction with Aperture has been my release from my environment.  Not to mention the Aer Lingus possibility as of late... which altered my perspective on which direction I should travel when applying for new jobs.  It has made me keenly aware of how I spent the past year and a month crunching numbers in a cubicle and handling collateral like "Tax Sale Certificates."  It's been 5 to 6 years of office politics, 4 walls, and no windows in northern Virginia.  Can we say "cabin fever?"  So now the story is maybe: Triple Canopy, Delta, Aer Lingus, Wisconsin Air, Colgan Air, and a few others I have yet to gather a name for... not a bad list.  Some hopeful prospects, and interviews already attended and currently scheduled.  Here is one of the pictures I used to keep on my cubicle wall, since I was under fluorescent lights with no windows the Appalachian trail became part of my mantra.

I'm addicted to liquify.

Glass Mosaic: Sick Forest

Nobody's Daughter

I made this for Julia today.  

It's lyrics from a hole song called Nobody's Daughter.

tattoo material

Do the things that scare you most.
We'll never be as young as we are tonight.
Because nothing is as perfect as you can imagine it.
It can only take a moment to waste the rest of your life.
What we don't understand we can make mean anything.
What we call chaos is just patterns we haven't recognized yet.
May I never be complete. May I never be content. May I never be perfect. 
You can spend your whole life building a wall of facts between you and anything real.

CHUCK PALAHNIUK

I liked, having hurt.

So send the pain below,

- Chevelle

• Like violence, you have me forever and after. 

•• Every time I look for you the sun goes down.

- b182

• I guess I am a scout

So I should find a way out

So everyone can find a way out 

•• I know I am a scout

I should've found a way out

So everyone can find a way out

Instead of seeing a neighbor out

God, I wish I would've found a way out

••• I know I was a scout

I should've found a way out

So everyone could find a way out

Well I know I was a scout 

I should've found a way out

So everyone could find a way out

- Modest Mouse

• Like violence, you have me forever and after. 

•• Every time I look for you the sun goes down.

- b182

• Don't believe in me 

don't believe in me 

'cause I will let you down.

- Letter Kills