i want my thunder

Patty’s three rules of thumb for iphone photography:

1. Never use the zoom. The resulting image will be fuzzy and pixely, so in the end that close-up thing will just look like crap. Which doesn’t make it all that worth it. Instead, crop that shit later when you’re editing. It will be smaller, but that’s life – things get smaller, and we just have to keep on keeping on.

2. Depth of field gives any photo integrity by making it seem skillfully executed and often adds a bit of drama. If you can pull this off by just messing around with focus, it will look more natural than applying a filter later. Just remember that generally you want the object in the foreground to be in focus and the background not, except in special cases of artful crafting. The filter is appropriate for macros of objects, photos with a uniform color/texture throughout, or food (as in food porn). The filter is not appropriate for people or landscapes. So cool it!

3. Speaking of filters. Filters are lovely, but you must use them wisely. I love when color- or light-enhancing filters make a photo feel like how it would actually feel to be there, but sometimes the unedited photo does this best. I’m also a sucker for vintagey looking photos (me and your uncle and his dog and everyone else) but you can’t use this for all your photos or you’ll ruin the effect. For EVERYONE. And basically I’m of the opinion that filters that do really weird shit, like make your photo completely red or add some sort of crazy texture, should be used pretty sparingly and only with specific intent.

Lastly I would just like to say that a bug flew into my ear today, and never came out. True story.

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Some things that may or not be really boring. So now that you’re really excited…

1. I need to have like five things at my disposal at all times that provide a temporary, superficial sense of safety and relief. Most of these things are weird but effective. Ever wonder why I sometimes randomly take a shower at 3pm? Now you know. Two other examples:

• Putting on the most comfortable warm shirt. I have been searching for this, but I have not yet found it. I think the problem is it needs to stand the test of time – the comfort that it provides cannot slowly ebb away, it must endure. This is hard because clothing becomes less soft the more you wash it and acquires interfering memories and associations the more you wear it.
• Every night for the last few months I’ve slept in a different orientation in my bed. I’ve repeated lots of positions, obviously, but not consecutively. Diagonal and upside-down is particularly cathartic. I can’t explain this one, it just makes me feel better.

2. I put a full cup of liquid detergent into the wash with my laundry no matter how much laundry I have. Because everyone always tells me how good I smell and when I ask what I smell like everyone kind of shrugs and says, “You smell like you.” So my secret to smelling as good as me, which is who I am and what I smell like, is to smell like the most gloriously fresh laundry. Don’t think you can get away with copying me, I’ll be able to smell it.

3. This, from my breathing fail a few weeks ago.

4. I make it a point to learn and use middle names (if I’m not already [ab]using some nickname) as much as possible. I like this. I think other people like this. I think it’s a reciprocity of intimacy. It’s a give-and-take of community. A collaboration of camaraderie. A synergy of spirit.

5. Since I’m going to spend my life blending in with the peasantry, I’ve decided I have to use the word “folks” and not “people” or “individuals” or whatever else people say. This new identity is sinking slowly into my skin. I like this. It makes me feel almost as good as when I have my hands in the soil.

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I’ve done this a hundred times. I’m trying so desperately to find you. Everything is dark and when I talk no sound comes out and my legs crumble when I try to run, but I know how close you are. Every place I go is where you’ve just been, your footprints in the dust. But I’m never fast enough. There are only moments, seconds, before it’s too late but I can’t find your number, I can’t get the numbers right. And my desperation is my pounding heart and my throat tightening and my stomach sinking. It’s the ache in my entire body that starts at my chest and spreads to my fingertips and the ends of my toes. I’m running up and down stairs and trespassing on private property and knocking on the doors of strangers. I’m screaming, silently, in a sideways world with oblong buildings and it’s freezing and I’m so haunted by you. But you’re not here. You’re just out of reach except everything in the universe stands in the way. Invisible in the air between us.

And that has distorted my reality. What once was the kind of sad that makes you cry silently in a chair by a window is now dark and cold and wrought with fear. You’ve never felt further away, and I can’t escape this nightmare. I can’t unlive this nightmare, walking up your driveway and knocking on your door. The saddest thing in the entire world is this: who will love you?

Who will love you?

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I got a job working here this summer. I will be tending plants and animals and organizing a CSA and learning about canning and preserving and generally becoming a pioneer. Barry says most days we wake up at 6am and quit around 1pm and the rest of the day I’m free to nap in the hammock or cool off in the swimming hole. I’m looking forward to sweat and sun and dirt under my fingernails and tired muscles and quiet sticky afternoons in paradise writing and reading and listening. And I can’t wait to get to know Barry, his wife, the other interns and the CSA community.

After I got the job I realized I don’t know anything about Kentucky. So I did some research. Here are some important findings:

• largest cave system in the world
• highest per capita number of deer and turkey
• known for its bourbon distilleries, tobacco and bluegrass
• 57% democratic, 12.7% German, 86.3% white, 52% christians
• Transylvania University
• Tater Day
• the signature cuisine is the Hot Brown, a dish normally layered in this order: toasted bread, turkey, bacon, tomatoes and topped with mornay sauce
• home of the Old Fashion cocktail
• official state beverage: milk

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If only SOMEONE would learn to play this on the piano for me ;)

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I want to start off my post about my mini roadtrip with Ali (entitled Nooniis Do NorCal) with something like:

California is a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream.

Which, of course, if you add on “Cannery Row in Monterey,” is the first line of Steinbeck’s Cannery Row. It just feels right. Especially because I am just so absolutely enamored with California and it only increases with each new place I explore, each long drive that leaves me exhausted from gasping and yelling with excitement the whole way. I want to make it a point of my life to explore this state as thoroughly as I can. Because there isn’t any tiny speck of it that I haven’t loved so far, and it brings me to the core of something important. Something that is visceral and definitive.

Both of us Nooniis really needed this vacation. And all either of us really want from a vacation is just to explore cool places and take cool pictures of cool shit we see. So that is what we did, and it went something like this.

Davis > Harbin > Fort Bragg > Sebastopol > Point Reyes > Davis

On the way to Harbin.

Hubcap Ranch.

The only picture I was able to take at Harbin Hotsprings because it’s
clothing optional (we were super naked).

The gorgeous house we stayed at in Fort Bragg with an incredible view of the ocean.

The note we left for our host Ted.

Breakfast and wandering in Fort Bragg.

Glass Beach.

“this is the best day of my life!”

strange objects embedded in the rocks from when this beach was a landfill

a gloop glop creature

My first drive through a redwood forest.

Lagunitas!

Breakfast in Sebastopol where we met some of the best people ever at a rock shop.

(noonles doesn’t know how to drink out of a straw)

A beach we went to near Russian River that had amazing rocks.

(click to see bigger)

A drive through the most gorgeous rural area I’ve ever seen.

Point Reyes.

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This one goes out to the GH, who gives me the GBs.

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I’m too wound up to really say anything, except that I love the witty and clever satire that comes from the left in this and other similar situations. I can’t think of a better tool than satire to make it clear how confounded we are with the profound idiocy of the right. The fact that we even have material for satire (and the right does not) speaks volumes.

This is 2013 folks. Gay marriage is happening whether you like it or not. Move forward with the rest of us or get left behind in the dust. Religion-based bigotry and oppression are going out of style.

God shmod. Bible shmible. It’s people, people, people.

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Prompt:

What are the major connections between the two themes for the class (Plant Genetic Resources and Global Trade & Development)? Have the speakers from the second half of class changed your understanding of plant breeding techniques, dissemination of knowledge, seeds, or the Green Revolution?

Response:

Plant genetic resources have always been valuable to humans, but recently in the history of humanity the perception of them has changed drastically. Today they are something to be tinkered with both for profit and the perceived benefits to agriculture and medicine. They are something to be owned, marketed and traded. Their location at the center of advancements in genetic engineering has changed them in the eyes of many from something natural to an object of manipulation and opportunity. Their location in the context of a complex and interconnected global ecology is lost to perceptions of individual plants as isolated sources of valuable genetics. Probably the folks most affected by these changing perceptions are those whose perceptions of plants have not changed in thousands of years. But if that way of thinking becomes obsolete for the West, it becomes obsolete for everyone.

Since beginning my IAD studies I have struggled with the painful process of sloughing off my idealism and accepting that perhaps no development initiative is sustainable – that is, it may not be possible to help anyone without hurting someone else. In fact it is impossible for anyone in the development arena to uphold a pure standard of justice and ethics now, and it may never have been. To believe that our tools for development are only increasing as our technology and ingenuity and capabilities grow is to be very naïve – if anything situations are becoming more complicated and more impervious to change. And if the handful of tools with which we can work is so limited, how can we be choosey? We can’t. Since deciding to devote my life to agricultural development, that’s a fact I’ve been trying to contend with.

I bring this up because the above question asks if the speakers changed my mind about things like plant breeding and the Green Revolution. I would definitely say yes. The speakers have added to my overwhelming suspicion that everything is a gazillion (yes gazillion) times more complicated than I could have ever imagined. I am very angry about the Green Revolution. I think it’s pretty irritating that it’s even called a “revolution.” But I’m kidding myself if I think that anyone could have predicted the negative impacts it would have for so many people, and even if someone could have, would that really have overpowered the voices proclaiming that this would feed the world? If there was any chance we could help people, we had to try, didn’t we? Not only that, but many, if not most, of the players in the Green Revolution had good intentions – it doesn’t help anyone or anything to vilify them. Most importantly, the Green Revolution did help people. It made things worse for a lot of folks, but it did help some.  And I’m not sure I can make a judgment about whether or not that was worth it. In development, sacrifices can and will be made because there just isn’t one right answer and it doesn’t matter how much we mess up, we have to keep trying. People are starving and sick and suffering and there’s not a soul out there who feels it’s okay to stand by idly and let that continue.

So for me IAD has been about coming to terms with a depressing truth. At the same time, I’ve never felt so empowered to tackle the daunting task that stands before us. The speakers in this seminar inspired me with the dichotomy of their cynicism and their optimism. What we’re trying to accomplish is impossible. But look how compassionate we are. Look at our drive and our ingenuity and our hunger to learn from each other. Look at the things we can come up with when we’re put in a room together. And look at the positive things that manifest from that, in the form of initiatives that are taking strides, no matter how small. That gives me so much hope to move forward.

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It almost never happens. A day this quiet. You are the last person on earth. There is no consequence.

Let go of the things that no longer serve you, no matter how familiar they are.

Breathe.

Outside it’s only a droning from a location in the sky that you can’t pinpoint, and it moves in an arc that follows the incline towards each horizon. This makes no sense because the sky isn’t anything because you live on a planet. The sky is actually the beginning of endless stuff you know nothing about. The traffic from I-80 that you don’t really even hear anymore, so it doesn’t really exist. Instead it rocks you to sleep lying in the grass in the sun, stomach flat against the earth, cheek on forearm. You hear nothing.

Root down into the earth. The earth is your strength.

Breathe.

The rest is the precise, clattering silent sounds of breathing, of typing. Bare feet on hardwood floors. A dry leaf scuffing across the sidewalk. You hear nothing.

Do a service to yourself so you can do service to others.

Breathe.

After a while the quiet amplifies these noises. You tread more lightly. You breathe more slowly. You arrive at a mindfulness of movement, of body, to not disturb it. It’s you. It surrounds you. The hairs on your arms stand up, it hovers a millimeter above your skin.

There is always someone here to bring you back.

Breathe.

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