Every time I sit down and start one of these journals I start to think of a great way to segue into whatever topic’s on my mind. Which is never the easiest thing, otherwise I’d take my wit to the stand up circuit. So instead I just have to begin where this journal starts. At the end of the last one.
Last time: I was telling you about how much of a failure I’ve been and how human it is to fail. How philosophical of me. Well my failures must be severely outweighed by successes because I’m still alive somehow. Keeping in mind the stupid things guys can do from their preteens all the way through their 20’s, I’m not discounting that I’m not going to. So I live to live and see to see.
Fuck, let’s get off of that train of thought, how about that? Let’s talk about something of substance, namely camping.
I had two posts set to auto publish this weekend while I’ve been away and I’ve been away at Alder Lake. We haven’t camped as a family since we’ve moved here, but we used to do it all the time in California at Silverwood Lake. Last year I had the opportunity to go with my then-girlfriend with the two different sides of her family on two separate occasions camping: once in Cle Elum (from which I got the Photographer Two shot and poem), and once in Yakima Valley. Both of those locales were incredible in their own ways.
In Photographer Two, the significance of the story behind the poem is what made this camping trip so cool this year. We were at Cooper Lake and I desperately wanted to get a photograph of the mountains, but there was no view clearer than the one from the water. I ended up borrowing a nearby camper’s kayak in order to get a photo with my iPhone 5s from its center. It was incredibly cool, and it ended up being the top post here on the site (still top at the time of writing).
So Alder Lake.
The backstory was significant in describing this year’s camping trip. Because as an impromptu purchase with a friend of the family, I am now a kayak owner. The R.R.C. Desire set off on her maiden voyage on 7/21/17, and with it I took much better photographs from the center of a lake. It’s mine, and so are the photos I took with it. Just something really neat to be prideful of.
This journal’s excerpt is from “Photographer Six”:
“Just want to
Capture actuality
In this
Lake of glass
Before
It passes
It’s taken some time
Since the
Second shot
To arrive”
In which I have particularly written it to follow the beats of Photographer Two. Coming to a poetry website near you in September.
There was a moment out there, drifting on the calm water with my notebook in my bag, my Canon in my lap, watching the sunset and waiting to get the perfect shots, I felt another one of those palpable moments that says “this moment is just fucking neat”. No matter what it means.
Out of everything I’ve done in this lifetime, I never thought I’d be a kayak owner. That’s just a strange thought. Rivers? I can travel on them. Going somewhere? I can bring it on my jeep. And who needs a gym membership?
I keep bitching about how my weekend has never ended, and I’m safe in saying I don’t want it to. I’m here to make memories and capture them. So I will catch what I can. I have a notebook and a camera and I don’t need much more than that. Music, probably, and that’s in no short supply.
Consume Reality! 