shetland island dreaming

austin in winter

today was wet and cold. i visited a big warehouse full of used office furniture and related items. it was dark, i could see my breath, and there were blue office-sized trash cans that zinged blue from the large but weakish overhead lights. i'd like to go back for photographing, in that whole neighborhood for that matter. today i intended to, then it really began to change drizzle into almost icy rain. and on a sunday. nobody outside. what a joy. i've been subjectively waxing overcautious about stagnation and things that just won't go away. in part, what i mean is that i took one half planned yet extraordinary trip to scandanavia via bicycle some many years ago now, and have waited so long for another such trip who i'm not sure which reasons. i found a website this afternoon for the north sea cycle route - www.northsea-cycle.com/lande_index.html. seems i biked a sizeable portion of this behemoth 6000 km marked route back in 1997. things might be ripe for a revisit somewhere along this seven country terrain. if there's anything i like as much as the chihuahuan desert it's a moorish fjord-like landscape terraformed over the centuries by smallish grazing mammals.

if you really wish to protest the pace, simply slow down.

a community outside of man's pace

maybe poor management and/or conception of current time progression or maybe i've been hanging on to a drag you around type of cold i picked up at work over a week ago, but i love the periodic slow down. the sun feels warm and good in january, the wildlife active, and the rub of my bicycle's tires against grit and urban quite loud. the most important task at hand for me this week is to articulate what i will be spending so many print lab hours on in the coming months. etching for certain. quiet, unpopulated, spent and no longer useful, hard to recoginize for its intended purpose, and out of season, this is what i'm attracted to when i walk to the bus stop and notice something in the gutter or in the grass behind the cell phone kiosk. maybe a few pieces of broken off pipe, a flattened phone cable, or a gnarled few bits of litter in the corner of a parking lot. what about concrete? how will it take to being sent though the sd300 then onto a copper plate backwards? i'm not averse to escapism, if you will call it that. it's just that routines are so inane, all illusion like. just what catches me as beautiful, less species specific - that's what i want to capture. that state of comfort, things being the way you want them, a feeling of relaxation in the body because the environment is going well, having money and things running smoothly - not reliable. the flawed and unique that's in front of me right now, that's where i'll spend my time.

david's new flat files!

by the grace of serendipity, my wife spotted this crucial item for my ever expanding need for storage at a nearby thrift store. since we have no large car to transport said item, i walked a dolly over to pick it up. in the dark, the two of us carted this retro monster down cracked sidewalks back to our place, barely squeezed it through the door, and settled it into the last remaining niche.

the evidence

remaining bits of canon powershot

so many parts! i have very happily upgraded to the canon sd300 , which is also quite handsome and easy to use. i took the old one apart with nothing but a small phillips head screwdriver. many new photos will be posted using the new tool, which i purchased after the art fairs in december. now i'd like to use the sd300 to help me compose some scenes for some etchings, as well as a large relief print to be printed as part of the University of Texas' steamroller event - http://www.austin.cc.tx.us/stdioart/Announcements.htm (i'm the one pulling the large blue print on fabric)