i got a call the other day...

... asking me when it would be a good time to pick out bridesmaids dresses with a good friend of mine.

A NEW PROJECT IS BORN.

i have never been one to take self-portraits but on the suggestion of someone i might give it another shot.

there were few things i was ever sure of when i was leaving high school except for the fact that i would be the last of my friends to marry. i was usually the butt of the joke... it was often discussed that i would be happily single and living in a foreign country. everyone assumed they'd have to fly me and my foreign companion in from some far-off land. (assuming also that i could return after being an ex-pat. of course.)

i was so okay with this. i'm still okay with this... i guess i just thought it would happen when i was 27. don't ask me why 27... it just seemed like the approriate age. like give me a chance to defect from the country and find a foreign companion first okay? i'll take care of it by the time i'm 27.

i have one ex-boyfriend that's married now, and another that's engaged. i'm 21. was thinking that this was going to happen at 27... so far off? really? was it?

i will attend 3 more weddings in the next two years, two of which i will be a bridesmaid in.

i need to document this because as my friends are worrying about houses and weddings and china and inlaws... and babies? and retirement funds, while they do that i spend 8-14 hours of my day taking/making/talking or thinking about pictures. i need to document this because sometimes i just watch my own life unfold from the perspective of an unattached third party. i just watch myself like i watch a sitcom. because i know this is going to pan out something like i expected... but i won't be 27, and i won't fly in from europe, and i'll still be thinking i'm too young for this to actually be happening.

the first invitation came two weeks ago.

i watch my life like a sitcom, when i'm on my way to the bridal shower and secretly kind of bummed i'm missing a toga party? i'm so fucking mature...

like when my friend in D.C. called me after she was proposed to kennedy style. same booth in the same resturant john proposed to jackie. it was a friday night and Sara B and i were scrubbing trays... and hoping there would be an opportunity to get wasted that night.

i'm happy. i'm fufilled. this is what i wanted.

andrea called me after valentine's day to tell me she was engaged.

i was broken up with acouple days before... she asked me what was new with me... nothing. pictures. darkroom. school.

i'm happy. i'm fufilled. this is what i wanted.

seriously.

but it's true, it is, i don't envy them, i'm just in awe of how immature i am? am i really? i can't balance my checkbook, can't keep my room clean, sometimes i can't bring myself to get out of bed in the morning, and i sure can't keep someone in my life for more than acouple months if i even manage that... because most of the time i'm much too much chickenshit to even do anything about any feelings i have for anyone... so most of the time i just watch the people i care about most walk out of my life from an unattached third party perspective... because i'm watching a sitcom and this isn't my life.

but it is. and i'm not 27 yet. and that's not stopping anyone from growing up much too quickly. so what can i do but take pictures of it? or not, and continue watching like it's not actually my life.

me seeing you through your polaroids with love.

nadine and i had a photo date. i came over to her amazing apartment and she was already working on our lingere shoot for fashion class. she was photographing the slips in these images with her sx-70 and they are the softest most luminous polaroids. just beautiful. i hope she puts them up on her website soon.







i wanted to take an image of her like her polaroids.

things i must do; prefferably before november twenty-ninth- in no particular order

. form coherant thoughts

. go to wisconsin

. twice

. articulate said thoughts

. grow third arm

. learn to print digitally... well

. not fall asleep for periods of 36- 48 consecutive hours

. repeat

. become fluent in Italian through osmosis

. stop being cold all of the time

. figure out how to erase someone from my life, mind and memory

. clean my room

. take thought provoking pictures

. unpack from portland

. do nine loads of laundry

. clone myself

. teach clone me to teleport

. pick up a drug habit

. speed

. aquire Profoto battery and strobes

. dream

. stop having nightmares about the darkroom

. take a shower

. cook food that doesn't involve water and a microwave

. remember friends that don't have cameras' permenantly attached to personage

. find friends that don't have camera's permenantly attached to personage?

. stop leaving phone in car

. stop texting while driving

. stop treating the people that love you like shit

. bake pumpkin bread

. stop loving people that treat you like shit

. stop being a bitch

. stop bitching.

mother of corn!

sometimes things happen in wisconsin. more often than not they don't.

so you play in cornfields.





there's this field in wisconsin...





kind of familiar? alittle brighter, life's in color again.




occasionally it's comforting to be home and still strange to see the things that never registered when you saw them everyday. then you realize that the environment you were so steeped in is actually a world of oddities to anyone else. maybe that's a poignant universal truth... or maybe my family is actually comprised of a bunch of nutjobs.

the drone from electrical towers...

minus any resulting productivity is the only thing echoing in my head right now.i cannot really articulate a coherant thought and haven't been able to for most of this past week. i keep trying to think of things to further narrow down my projects for this semester and i am continually coming up short.

i know what i want for my portrait class. i know it when i see it. and i know what i DO NOT want to do. i just need to isolate the instances in which the conditions are right so i can continue shooting in that fashion. that's all. it just needs to start happening. i have so much good energy about this semester so far. i have the energy and the basis for the ideas. why is this taking so long to get rolling?

^ I started that post 15 days ago. ^








Intercept that with a trip to wisconsin, a visit from an old friend, a realativly shocking kick in the pants, an entire week of sleeping an average of 3 hours a night and refreshingly clean apartment thanks to elsie. I'm now on some sort of manic creative high I have three projects going right now, and it's off to my portrait class today.

krasnal knocked over the garbage, and now he needs a bath. my wound from last weeks bath is finally starting to heal.


elise is not going to be happy when she reads this:















Sara B took some great polaroids from the weekend after I found him.

susan

Nali aka sweatpants.