60 mph, white knuckles, barely enough room for two cars! 90-degree turns in the city, where I swear, people are not heeding the 30 mph speed limits! And if you were ever worried about driving on the left side of the road, or going through a roundabout, I say BAH! Try driving in the English countryside!

But the people are friendly and it’s a lovely place, really!… If you survive the roads and everything.

Picture heavy under the cut. These photos were taken between Wanborough, Marlborough, Swindon, and Bath. (Click here for the full set, 72 photos in total.) Please enjoy the following photos while I attempt to get my brain jump-started again to prepare some more verbal posts! (more…)

This week’s excerpt is actually a title, from my in-progress collection of stories and poems:

How to Stand on Your Hands

notes: And so I went on a quest for the ultimate mangled dandelion. And I took a damn lot of pictures of them too! (I may or may not have even dreamed about dandelions last night… I know, that’s a bit much, isn’t it?) (more…)

Amelia came home to an empty house, and Drew’s absence from it felt unsettling. Coming home to him was a comfort she never realized until he wasn’t here. They didn’t officially live together, except that most of the time, they did. He’d even taken up a corner of her spare room with his laptop, his stacks of The New Yorker that came faster than he could ever keep up reading, his pens left around the house, his scribble of random poetics on grocery receipts and sticky notes.

She picked up an electric bill payment stub from the kitchen table, his handwriting scrawled over the back of it: freedom, friction, fiction, fallacy. She examined it, tossing the words around in her head like a puzzle. She asked him once what these meant. “Oh, it’s nothing,” he had said. “I thought it might be something, but it was nothing.”

- Amelia, chapter 1.4, Exactly Where They’d Fall

notes: a looser translation of the text this time. I took this when I was sick, playing Scrabble with D, and it seemed like the kind of thing Drew might do, make random words and see if they might or might not be something.

I actually tried to make all four of his words on here, but there’s only two F’s in a Scrabble game, lol!

Eeek, and I’m SO far behind with my photo/story project weeks! Writing has been keeping me busy though, and I refuse to complain about that!

But I actually do have an idea that should catch me up on a few photos at once pretty soon here.

*kind of a long excerpt this week*

It was a concrete drain pipe, discarded and long forgotten at the side of the creek. She came over, bundled up like a marshmallow in canary yellow, and he was too, in dark green. Snow melted in patches on the ground, but there was none inside the pipe. Instead, he found a black plastic trash bag. He knelt down to it, pushed at it to guess what was inside. He imagined live mice bursting out, or miniature-sized alien creatures, with slimy green skin like toads. But whatever was inside felt firm. He broke it open and found newspapers.

“Wow,” she said, picking one up. “I bet they’re from a hundred years ago.”

The date said 1981. He read a couple words from the headline, stumbled and stopped at one he didn’t know. She looked at the word, mouthed the syllables. “It says ‘embargo.’ Don’t you know anything?” He would have figured it out. She just had to be so quick about things.

“What’s ‘embargo?’” he said.

She shrugged her shoulders. “I heard it on the news once.”

The bag of newspapers was heavier than he expected, and he dragged them out of the pipe and crawled inside, sat in the middle. She followed and sat next to him. He imagined it was a submarine, or a space ship – yes, space ship. He stretched his feet to the other side, pressed against it like there were pedals, turned a steering wheel out in front of him. She pressed her feet out too, but she wasn’t driving. She didn’t need to because he was, and she planted her hands down like she was holding on.

He swooped left, a whole body swoop, and she did too, to avoid a plummeting asteroid. He swooped right, and she did too, so not to collide with another space ship. “Whoa,” she said. “That was close.” But they weren’t out of danger just yet, they were still being chased – yes, by white-suited inter-galactic soldiers in stealthy space jets. He drove, and she held on. She was his sidekick, his wingman. She got to be the sidekick because she was shorter, because he was seven now and she was still six, and because she knew a lot, and a trusty sidekick needed to be smart. She was a funny little twig of a girl with a mop of wild blonde hair. She talked about panda bears or how you should turn off the water when brushing your teeth. She knew every endangered species there ever was. And the planets too, but he taught her that.

- from the practice novel, which is now buried in a shoebox in my closet, may it rest in peace.

notes: sorry about the length on this excerpt. I always really liked this bit, but the novel as a whole was going nowhere. So I thought I’d rescue a little bit for this photo project, so that it might have its little 5 minutes of glory

Also kind of meh about this photo. It’s not my favorite photo of the week, but as per my project rules, it’s the one that was taken for a story excerpt. If I hadn’t had D with me I could have gotten a better shot, maybe climbed in there to clear some of that brush away. I would have liked a clearer shot into the pipe – it was SO dark in there, and super cool.

And much like the kids in my story excerpt, I totally would have climbed inside if I were 6 (and in fact did climb in many drain pipes like this). But you know, I didn’t want to give my own 4-year-old any ideas about climbing into creeks and drain pipes, lol!

outtakes that I liked better:

“This part is my favorite,” Keri says, leading her mother up the stairs to the observation deck. The room is gray and empty apart from a single row of metal chairs, just as gray as the room itself. It’s quiet here, the only sound a slow whir of ventilation banks on the wall. And there, through one large pane of protected glass, is the Earth. Home in a flat black sky. “It feels better to see it sometimes,” Keri tells her mother. “Then you don’t feel so far away.”

There’s another soldier in the room, and he’s quiet too. People rarely talk when they’re here – not because they’re not allowed, but just because it’s better that way. Keri’s mother stares out into the blackness, Earth in its three-quarters view. It takes some getting used to, that this isn’t the moon in the sky you’re looking at. It’s the other way around.

“I’ll show you the terrarium next,” Keri says.

But her mother is stunned by the view. She’s entranced. That’s normal. Everyone is like that the first time. She finally turns, her eyes full of more wonder than Keri has ever seen in them, like she was a child and not the old woman she actually is. “I didn’t know there was a terrarium.”

“Yeah,” Keri says. “There’s birds and plants there too. And even rain sometimes. It doesn’t smell like real rain though. I can tell the difference.”

- Keri, from a not yet titled chapter of Lakeside Heights

notes: this one was taken in the photo gallery of the National Air and Space Museum, and believe me, when you go all the way to the National Air and Space Museum to take pictures of metal chairs, you get some really strange looks, lol!

But it was sitting in those chairs, and looking at photos of the Earth from space, and the gray tile and walls all reminded me of my moon base from my LH story, and the observation deck room where the soldiers can go to see the Earth in the moon’s sky.

Though in reality, the gallery was far from quiet. And I kept getting annoyed because people were walking through my shot and trying to sit in my chairs! My chairs, people! Leave my chairs alone! lol!

outtakes:

You recognize a friend’s car when you see it, even if it’s just an ordinary black one, four-door sedan like any number of cars like it in this city. She and Jodie have the same model, because Amelia told her it was a good car. She recommended it. Jodie bought black, and Amelia has it in beige. Jodie got the built-in GPS, but Amelia wanted to spring for the moon-roof instead.

Funny thing is, you don’t forget the car just because you happen to not be friends with that person anymore. You still remember it; you still see it go by and you stop a little.

- Amelia, part of the soon-to-be novel, Exactly Where They’d Fall

notes: and it dawns on me that this excerpt might be a little spoilery for this novel. Ah well, I think from the set up, it’s largely clear these two might run into some trouble along the way, lol!

I’m not really sure what I would have liked from this shot. I’m not sure if I captured it or not. I’m thinking not quite. Maybe I’ll have to make it a project of mine to take pictures of moving cars, lol! Any time I caught a shot of a car moving through the frame, I didn’t like it. It felt ill-placed. But this one has black cars stopped at a light, and I could imagine Amelia walking toward them, as if Jodie was in one of them. Anyway…

I also had a tired four year-old with me, who was exhausted from walking around the city all day.

And I’m pretty sure that guy across the street was wondering what I was taking a picture of, lol!

Matt always loved the fireplace. When Felicity was a baby, this is what he and Leila used to do, light a fire and spend the night sitting in front of it. He thought they both enjoyed it. She would talk, and he would listen, and now he’s sorry that he never had anything to say back to her. But it was enough for him, the timbre of her voice, lyrical and clear, the crackle of the fire, the rustic smell of wood burning, as close to the earth as it gets. It was all he ever needed.

One night, in one of those first tumultuous weeks after it all came out, they were sat in front of a fire just like this. The silence between them was almost comfortable, the way a fight fades and loses momentum, the way anger dissolves into apathy. So they sat in front of the fire, trying to summon a conversation but finding so little to talk about beyond what their children did that day. He tried to reach to her, and at their contact, she jumped back like a shiver.

After a minute, he tried again. He reached out to her, and this time, she eased into it. And so did he. He pulled her close, and for a moment they settled there. Until he caught a glimpse of her eyes – behind the reflection of firelight on their glassy surface, underneath, they were lost and full of so much despair. It gutted him. He couldn’t stand the sight of it, so he pulled her cheek to his shoulder and forgot it was there.

- Matt, from “ghost from a wishing well, part 4″, Lakeside Heights

notes: cheated a little bit here, if it counts as cheating – I actually took these fire shots a couple weeks ago. I won’t count it as cheating though, because once the real project gets under way, I’ll have to use my time as best I can to make sure I have a photo to deliver every week. If that means I store up a bunch ahead of time, then so be it!

Again, it was hard to pick just one. I also liked the one below with the reflection on the floor. But I think I liked the wide shot just a little bit better.

Oh, and sorry for using a piece of “The Saddest Story Alive” as an excerpt, lol!

A runner-up:

And more outtakes on the Flickr page!

Every night, part of me says, find a day job. Find something responsible, teaching piano lessons, or audition for symphony work. Likely both if I want to support a family. The other part of me says responsible is the last thing I want to be.

I come home late most nights, the same time of night that drunks get kicked out of the bars, stumbling and laughing through the streets. Lara sleeps on the couch, TV on mute, book slipping out of her hand, two empty wine glasses on the table. Two glasses is not unusual. She has friends. I can’t expect her to spend all these nights alone. She breathes so softly, but I can see her chest rise and fall. I don’t hear her breaths, but instead the breaths of our girls, asleep upstairs, sound carried by baby monitor fuzz. We tried all the different brands, all combinations of channels and frequencies. I insisted on this house, she always likes to remind me. Constantly she likes to remind me, this one is my fault. It must be the spot, this one spot, the radio waves or cell phone towers give us inescapable static. We learn to live with it. We tune it down, still there, crackling beneath our perception like background noise.

- Pat, from “The Static” a neglected short story

notes: I’m not exactly impressed with this shot. I did actually drink the wine out of those glasses, lol! So perhaps I wasn’t in the most creative state of mind. Anyway, the static on the baby monitor was hard to do, and I ended up bringing the base into the living room to make it buzz. (Note, my actual child was sleeping at the time, and I didn’t want to make too much noise.) Also, baby monitor interference is annoying to listen to while you take fifty-million shots of the monitor lights

I don’t know what I would have liked it to be. I don’t think I like the composition. Not sure how I would have done it differently though, because the other arrangements I tried were mostly fails too.

Here’s one outtake that I liked, and almost chose for the “official shot”. I wanted more of the wine glasses in it, but overall, I like the composition of this one better. Ah well, let’s call them both “official” shots, lol!

Posting this week 4 shot a little late, so I’ll probably follow up with week 5 pretty quickly here. I do already have it taken.

People were refusing to go out for New Year’s Eve this year – or at least some people were. Parties were being kept to small groups of friends, safe indoors, with candles and bottled water, canned goods and books to read. Maybe it was a bit silly, but I took note. I knew where our flashlights were, and yes, we had plenty of batteries. Some of those fat Ds our flashlights needed, and piles of the AAs that ran everything else. I even changed that stupid little 9-volt in the smoke alarm (with all those lit candles, who knows what might happen). And since it couldn’t have been any more than twelve degrees outside, I went shopping for extra blankets, in case we lost heat. And while I was at Target, I saw some Duracells on sale. And I had a coupon too – buy one get one free – so I bought four packs and got four free. Four free packs of batteries!

“Maybe we should stock up on ice and coolers,” Danny said. “So we can keep our beer cold when the power goes out.” His smart-ass grin spread cheek to cheek.

Really. No one was ever hurt by being adequately prepared for something. I don’t think anyone had serious regrets about knowing where their batteries were when the power didn’t go out.

- Lexi, chapter 4.5, Paper Birds

week 3: this is not an advertisement for Duracell or anything, lol!

(Might also be useful to note that this story takes place around Y2K-time, not sure if you could guess that from this excerpt alone.)

I almost went with another photo for the “official” week 3 shot – the slanted one in the outtakes below – but in the end, I just didn’t. It was, I don’t know, a little too off-putting? Lexi is clearly too much of a control freak for such a skewed photo, lol! Maybe that’s it.

A question, which I’ll need to know for my real project when it’s time: If I were to take a picture with a product brand in it like this, can I publish it in my story (for money)? Are there permissions needed for something like that?

outtakes:

And bonus, pics of the snowLADY we made too

Sunlight came through the blinds of our bedroom window, splitting her skin into slats of light and shadow. It reminded me of the first time we kissed, in her parents’ living room, wet from the pool, late afternoon sun beaming through tall windows, my hands on her wet, cold skin. Our bedroom now was not very much unlike the one she grew up in, with its yellow walls and white bedding. She even brought her cork boards, pinned up with old movie tickets, prom pictures, and one of those paper origami birds I used to fold for her.

- Danny, chapter 1, Paper Birds

week 1: and so the project begins?

The idea here, and for the next 52 weeks, will be to see if I can capture a piece of my stories in images. And further, to see if I can illustrate a variety of different story subjects, and continue to do so every week for 52 weeks. Because the idea for my novel series will require one well-planned (and hopefully interesting) image almost every week.

The second idea here is to practice my photography skills. To take better, more interesting, and more adventurous (= less lazy) pictures.

So this one was tricky because it required a very particular time of day, and sunlight, which was much harder to come by (being January) than I assumed. It was mostly cloudy all morning with only these occasional bursts of sunlight that I had to run and grab quickly when they happened. That, and my camera works for bunk in low lighting, and I’m still trying to figure that out.

I ended up taking over 400 shots through the morning (burst mode, people!), and this was the one I narrowed it down to. I chose it for the light versus shadow, and that the birds managed to face each other. I felt it reflected the intimacy of the story excerpt

So there – week 1 down!

I’m expecting these next 52 weeks to be very eye-opening for me. Either I’ll learn a lot and be well-prepared to start my novel series… or I’ll be ready to pull my hair out and run screaming

I’ll still write the novel series even if the photography thing doesn’t work out, but I do hope I can keep this up.

Feedback/advice is welcome.

Some outtakes in my Flickr stream: