[images] In 2004 I began a photoblog. (4) times I’ve deleted all of my posts and begun again. Each time, my purposes and goals have been different. Being a perfectionist, I’ve split my images into (2) basic categories; images & glimpses. The images section typically contains photos I’ve put some thought into or spent more time on, but as I’ve learned, spending time on an image doesn’t make it a quality image. However, if it’s posted in the image section, at the time of the post I thought I liked it. (insert smile)
[notes] Charles Eames said, “design is a plan for arranging elements in such a way as best to accomplish a particular purpose.”
If we could master the process one time and apply it for the rest of our lives, the design would be simple, but each design with its differing purpose must be imagined and then applied.
Ideas, applications, styles, individual likes and dislikes are constantly changing. This is why my mind, computer, and physical notes are full of tidbits of information as possible solutions for design applications. I share some of those ideas, tricks, and tips in the notes section of this site.
Remember those brightly colored, patterned diaries with the clasp and key?
I never had one.
At the recommendation of an acquaintance in the mid-1990’s, I began jotting my thoughts in journals. Through the end of the decade, I accumulated a half dozen partially filled books with random entries and then one morning before sunrise as I was leaving the house on my way to yet another hospital emergency room, I insisted my husband throw them in the trash. Because doctors had misdiagnosed my illness and proceeded with aggressive treatment, I thought I was dying.
I didn’t.
Some days I wish I had those journals so I could read the thoughts I no longer recall. Other days I’m glad they’re gone.
My mind doesn’t seem to have an off switch. Even in my sleep, I’m hampered with dreams; typically nightmares containing events that really happened or people who were in my life at one time. For reasons beyond my control, my life has been lived in a fishbowl surrounded by people from all walks of life. My own dreams and aspirations passed me by a long time ago and even the regret and anger that followed as I watched them slip through my fingers have faded.
I liken life in general to sage grass; the brown sage grass that thickly covers fields in the mid-west of the United States. It looks soft and inviting, but if you walk in a field where it grows you’ll be covered with a black oil indigenous to the plant.
Isn’t that just like life?
You want to go out there and do so many things, but as you attempt to live a dream, life just gets all over you like that oil and everything gets messy.
I’ve gone back to keeping a journal. My writing is abstract because I write about my life as it affected me. Feelings are a strange thing. They aren’t tangible, nor are they always accurate, but they are always the truth perceived.
sagegrass contains snapshots of certain events and like snapshots, they are a moment frozen in time with nothing to proceed it and nothing to conclude it. They are lying in the text as a snapshot lies in pixels for our viewing. I record snapshots in werds based on facts, tainted by memory.
I’m just like you. I love, I laugh, I cry, and I write about it.