Time with Tom

Accidental Patriotism

I’m not a person that follows his country right or wrong. That would be insane. Every person I know (myself included) has their faults and screws things up, so why shouldn’t a country – which is run by people – have the same problems, but magnified? I do like the US, more or less. It definitely has its advantages (like a Dunkin Donuts on every corner. Or is that just this area?). It also has plenty of disadvantages, which I’m sure you could list off at a moment’s notice (please don’t).

That said, I’m a sucker for a good picture. I think we both know how nuts I go with my cameras in an everyday situation – playgrounds and Octoberfest, for instance. Could you imagine me in a setting that was planned to be picturesque? A situation where everything around me was carefully crafted to be eye catching? A situation such as, oh, Washington DC?

I can.

I got to go down to DC and visit a friend this past weekend. It was a blast for a number of reasons, not the least of which because we got to go sight seeing, and I got to see the houses of some of the gears of government, such as the White House and the Capitol Building (home of the US House of Representatives and the Senate). These are picturesque in of themselves, but framed by things like the National Mall (home to the Smithsonian, the Lincoln Memorial, the Washington Memorial, and so on), they’re absolutely gorgeous. And being the photo-obsessed tourist I am, I couldn’t resist.

The first picture is probably the single most patriotic picture I’ve ever taken. I’ve included a couple more relatively patriotic ones, but don’t take that to mean I was looking specifically to do that. I wasn’t. I was looking for good pictures. Sometimes you have to be willing to admit that those can coincide. Feel free to follow those pictures back to the Flickr account I keep, where I have a bunch of pictures of DC (including interiors of the Air & Space Museum, which you should go see).

Tom

The Cremation of Sam McGee

While I was trying to think of what to talk about today, I did what I always do during moments of uncertainty: I goofed off online. I found my way to Facebook, and from there to a friend’s status, where she said she feels like Sam McGee (she’s buried in one of the snowstorms that’s been hitting the East Coast this week). I don’t know how many people know who Sam McGee is, but I do. And that name takes me back.

One thing I tend to joke about is my time in the Boy Scouts when I was younger. The reason I joke about it is because of how much fun I had – my troop did a lot of cool things, one of which was camping at Yawgoog Scout Reservation in the summers. Ultimately, I became a staff member there (where I got to teach kids how to use a compass, chop wood, make a shelter out of branches, and then set everything on fire), spending about three full summers working there, as well as the 5 weeks I camped there, scattered over 4 previous summers. Every week was a new batch (a thousand large) of campers, so every Monday was the Welcome Campfire.

The Welcome Campfire was a chance for the staff to make absolute asses out of themselves for the campers before going on to teach them in all manner of things necessary for survival (and, uh…camping). The shows were a combinations of skits and stand up, with some songs tossed in for variety. One very popular moment was the recitation of the poem The Cremation of Sam McGee. I can still remember it clearly.

The staff member would stand up, walking slowly and deliberately onto the dirt “stage.” The fires were always waning by this point, the shadows cast by them dark and harsh. He had a walking staff twice as tall as he was, and he would lean on it, swaying slightly but otherwise remaining still for nearly the entire poem. The laughter (or groans) from the last skit would slowly fade, until we could hear the happy chirping of crickets, the crackling of the fire, and the hooting of distant owls. Then he would begin. It wouldn’t be a loud voice. He didn’t need to yell. He spoke, and the feeling carried his voice, the words enveloping us all…

There are strange things done in the midnight sun

If you want to read the full poem – which I suggest you do -then go over here and read away. Give yourself a few minutes for it – it’s a relatively easy read, but it’s not haiku length, either. Please try to ignore the terrible illustrations near the bottom, too. I wish they weren’t there, but that’s not my website.

Nothing quite compares to hearing this recited in a low and powerful voice in the dying light of campfires, but reading it is still a wonderful trip down memory lane. I hope you enjoy it.

Tom

Never Leave Home Without It

I talked once before about always having a camera handy. That advice has come in very useful for me over and over again over the months, and this past weekend was no difference. I was walking to the Post Office near my apartment to pick up a package (the Ninja Turtles movie pack, to be specific – why yes, I am a nerd, what makes you ask?), and decided at the last second to take my new camera out for a full spin. Upon looking at the pictures later on, I’ve come to the conclusion that I need some more practice with it – the lens on this is a different animal than the one on the Canon Rebel I used to use.

Still, it was nice to take the camera out for a spin. All I’ve really done with it is taken some shots from my room, and truth be told that doing that with a new camera is like using a new sports car to just go to the grocery store (especially once you’ve adjusted for liberal amounts of embellishment). I may need to look into doing some more winter photography, if the weather is just willing to be on my side a bit more. Doesn’t have to be as clear as it was Saturday, but even mostly sunny days can be helpful. Hell, I’ll take an overcast day sometimes, so long as it’s not raining at me in the middle of January.

Enjoy some pictures of the playground, and let me know what you think.

Tom

We Apologize for the Delay

December and January have been unfortunately busy months. My previous attempts at frequent blogging apparently went well until November, and then began faltering all over the place. My novel is unfinished, I have been unfaithful to the spirit of this site, and I’ve been completely absent on ZSN. This is clearly a problem. It’s a problem I plan to rectify.

One of the things I’ve never liked about the new year is the way people go on and on about resolutions. Why choose the first of the year? There are obvious reasons, yes, but it’s all ceremonial. Let’s face it, a promise you make yourself on January 1 never carries the weight that a promise you make yourself a different time of the year carries. Unless you’re someone like Belynda, and remain absolutely dedicated to your cause, you will fail in it. This is not pessimism – I definitely prefer my glasses half-full – but it is the way of things. The promises I’ve made to myself that I’ve been most faithful in keeping are ones that I make mid-December, or at the beginning of November. They’re promises that appear on my lips in May or July. I make a promise to myself when I need to, and I follow through out of necessity. Need begets gravity.

In any case, I will not sit here and make resolutions about writing more, or taking more photos (which I need to do, especially since I have a new camera to do that with), or claim things about going to gyms or anything. I am simply just going to write more, and take pictures more. I plan on starting some new habits that could get me going in that direction, and so it’s going to boil down to staying on myself about them. Of course, I need to be creative. It’s an outlet for me, and a way to embrace life. There are a lot of hard things, a lot of stupid things, a lot of angry or mean people. But there are the good things like laughter over a beer, or sharing an umbrella with a friend. There could be new jobs, hopefully there are new friends. But I’m not going to stress myself out about it.

I guess what it all really comes down to is picturing oneself a year in the future. Who do you want to be? Where do you want to go? I’m not quite sure who I want to be in a year, but I have some good ideas on how to get there.

In the meantime, enjoy a few shots from a new photo set I’ve begun on Flickr that I call “Illumination.” I’ve always loved light – from the sun to street lamps to campfires – and I’m just now starting to collect images of light sources. Lamps and lights are simple tools for most people – things to push away the dark at the flip of a switch. But any writer can tell you there’s something much deeper going on with lights. Not just in the physical – there’s something psychologically important about having a way to push back the shadows. But I digress. Despite my ongoing (and growing) fascination, a true purveyor of craft knows that the craft will speak for itself. I don’t think I’m quite there yet, but I’m working on it.

So without further adieu, scenes from Illumination (the full set – which is expanding – can be seen on my Flickr):

Tom

On Writing

Consider, if you will, the following passage from Terry Pratchett’s Thief of Time:

Suppose you’d watched the slow accretion of snow over thousands of years as it was compressed and pushed over the deep rock until the glacier calved its icebergs into the sea, and you watched an iceberg drift out through the chilly waters, and you got to know its cargo of happy polar bears and seals as they looked forward to a brave new life in the other hemisphere where they say the ice floes are lined with crunchy penguins, and then wham – tragedy loomed in the shape of thousands of tons of unaccountably floating iron and an exciting soundtrack…

I like to hope I’m developing my own writing style as fun to read as that one. It’s not an easy thing for me to do, especially given how heavily influenced I am by the authors I’m reading at the time of any sort of writing. My last short story, for instance, sounded like Chuck Palahniuk at first, because I had been reading Snuff at the time.

When I started Late Fees back on November 1st (still not done, but close to the exciting finale!), I began reading Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series again, because I knew that his humor style was closest to what I wanted my story to sound like, and I would be able to think in my style more clearly if that was the influence I was receiving. Before you accuse me of cheating, though: it’s totally not. It’s really just knowing who I am and what I’m like, and adjusting my habits accordingly.

Plus, Discworld is awesome.

I wonder if this sort of thing affects all artists, or if it’s something more localized to writers? I have a sneaking suspicion, though, that one of the reasons bands start sounding like one another is because that’s exactly who they’re listening to. Same thing with art periods and whatnot. Okay, upon a barely closer inspection, it’s fairly obvious that artists influence each other like crazy.

I wonder who influenced my photography, then?

Tom