A Brilliant Day Indoors

Originally Posted Monday, October 28, 3013

I didn't leave the house on Sunday but to get takeout Thai and beer.  I haven't showered for two and a half days.  Awesome. 

I thought I was feeling better Sunday morning, but I was wrong.  Sunday was the most beautiful of days, the light that incredibly intense brilliance you get here this time of year so direct and bright  you cannot quite open your eyes.  The tones and colors are mythic. 

I, however, was mostly indoors.  I am not sorry for it.  It is O.K.  Sometimes on days like these, I get depressed because I am not up to the weather and the light.  It is nothing you can plan for.  I've had it--the weather and the light and the circumstances--enough times in my life to fill me.  But this day, my energy waned, so I searched through old hard drives and old prints and old negatives trying to get organized.  It didn't happen, but it happened somewhat.  I labelled all the drives with stickers so that I might know what was on them.  I found that I have lost some files, the most awful and important being the scanned and cooked images from "A Few Days One Summer."  I can't find them anywhere.  WTF?!?  I've been through everything.  I dug behind cushions and through drawers and cabinets looking for hidden drives (I often do that when I am going on a trip), but I came up with bagel.  I still have all the negatives since I shot the whole thing on film, so there is that.  All I have to do is spend the million hours scanning and reprocessing the images.  No worries :(

On my digital journey, I came across all the stuff I've not looked at in years.  You know. . . since the digital age began (about 1999).  It was a magical mystery tour of former lives and old girlfriends (but nothing of my ex-wife who left before I went digital) and travel to distant lands.  And I looked at the incredible number of images I never processed after I began shooting in the studio.  It was longer ago than I thought.  I decided to begin to bring them to life/light, to process one or two a day while I am not shooting to see what I have missed.  If you don't mind images a few years old, I will have enough to get us through the decade.  Plus. . . I will be working on my new stuff, too.  I will be.  I promise.  I think. 

I must be getting better.  Today I coughed up all sorts of things, but tonight I am not ready for bed.  I didn't chance dinner with my mother.  I didn't want to get her sick which she would have gotten if she came into my house.  And I knew I could not manage to sit up in hers.  It was bad enough going to the liquor store with a scraggly beard and greasy hair to buy the beer.  They know me both there and at the Thai restaurant, and both asked me if I was under the weather.  I look worse than I thought. 

And though I may make it sound awful, I thought the day was grand.  I am fully aware, now, of what I have and what I haven't and where it all might be.  I have plans to buy two mega terabyte drives and to organize all my images on them.  Everything will be backed up.  Eventually, I will need a server.  The digital library will require space just like the analogue libraries did.  One day when Apple figures it out. . . looking through the library will be very fun. 

I must go back to work and see people again tomorrow.  It will be a chore.  But it must be done to pay the bills.  I will need to shower and shave and put on clothing.  Oy.  It will be terrible.  I'd rather be home sick, really, which is the very reason I missed 180 days of high school.  If only there were mom and dad to foot the bills.