LaurieWrites

Let Me Take Your Picture for Charity Water

Some of you who know me in real life know that this is turning out to be quite the year of change and transition for me. I turned 40 last December, which means I'm staring down the crazy barrel of 41 in just a few short weeks. (Oh my hell.) I have a lot of different ideas and plans and goals taking shape, as well as a lot of obviously more challenging things to go through on a daily basis, as I wrote about earlier this week.

Speaking of that, I am so grateful to the people who came and read here this week -- for the support, for the feedback and for what felt like a hundred awesome hugs, I swear. Thank you. Thank you thank you thank you, if you are back again. I really didn't know what to do or where to go with a lot of stuff that was in my head, and I'm very happy that I chose to come here. The morning I wrote that post I woke up and I thought, immediately, that I'd said too much and felt too much and I was going to go put that baby back in draft where it belonged. But by the time I did that, Tracey had written me the kindest comment and a person I'd never met had shared a story of great pain in response, so I had to leave it alone. 

And thank God, really. I really believe that the responses deepened my own understanding of what I was writing about. How much I love my family and my friends -- how I'd gone to the edge of disposing of a friendship for absolutely no reason, how I hadn't considered anything good about myself in the context of all I had convinced myself was bad. I got dms and emails and comments telling me things that I don't think people had ever felt they had a place to share. And people, themselves, wrote in response to the post on their own sites. I couldn't believe it. Tracey expanded on her comment and so did Schmutzie and I swear I felt like maybe it made a lot of this worth it? (Although I never want to go through anything like that again, make no mistake.) 

My blog is a virtual place that's given me a lot and I guess that continues to be so. I guess no matter what I think I've got all figured out, life still has the remarkable capacity to surprise me, every day. 

Anyway! In the interest of all of these goals and dreams and new things, and the good people I've had the fortune to meet in my on and now offline travels, I am going to Camp Mighty, which is, oh goodness, next week. Time is getting short. 

I am part of a team for this event that has committed to raising a certain amount of money for a very worthy cause -- Charity Water. Their mission is to bring clean and drinkable water to places around the world where that is not a given. 

Easy cause to support, right? 

Well, as part of my contribution, I need to raise at least $200 to support water conservation efforts in the places where Charity Water is currently working. Here is Eden's list of what some other people are doing. 

There are a few ways I can do this. 

I can take your picture. I have taken the pictures of many people and they didn't hate it. In fact, I think it's kind of fun to have me take your pictures, because I'm sort of a fool for the whole process, especially if you're the type who doesn't like having her picture taken. I really enjoy working with you and making you laugh so you forget you're supposed to hate it. I shoot: 

Grown-ups. (This one doesn't mind having her picture taken at all, but I've still taken some pretty good ones of her, I'll just go ahead and say it.) 

Little people. (This is Meghan. We are buddies. She doesn't have a blog. Yet.) 

Musicians who have no idea what I was doing. I mean, how weird is it that I have a picture of John Taylor's hands in my possession and he has no idea who in the hell I am? 

RELATED: JOHN TAYLOR'S HANDS. I was that close. Yes. I was. 

Not-people who think they are people. (This is my niece. She is very photogenic.) 

I can do a headshot or more casual portrait session anywhere in the DC metro area -- this includes Baltimore, Northern Virginia and pretty much anywhere else I can drive within an hour. I will happily work with pets and children, and also John Taylor, if you can scrounge him up for me again. I'd ask for a $50 donation to the cause for this, and that includes post-processing of your portraits, a cd of all useable images, and three prints. 

I can also send you a picture that is not of yourself, but is instead a print of any image in my collection. I will share a nicely-printed and perhaps even frame-accentuated print in your choice of size, for a donation of $20. (I'd do $15 but I'm eating some printing costs there because I don't bother doing it at home. Because, the agony.) 

Maybe you love San Francisco. 

Or the sun and the ocean. 

Or maybe, baby, you're a firework. (Or a sparkler, like Tarrant and Rebecca.) 

Or more the Lewis Carroll type. I'm sure there are some of you out there. 

I am in the process of trying to put some things on Etsy, but the uploading feature isn't cooperating with me and I really want to get this out there before I leave on a short trip this weekend. So I can provide you with a Flickr gallery that may include something you'd like. (I'm new at selling my stuff, so bear with me. I'm pretty easy to work with, I think.) 

NOTE: Since I wrote this below I've since gotten a clue that there is a direct Charity: Water donation page here. Super easy. 

Other things I can do for you, if photos aren't your thing? Well, we've got this little NaBloPoMo deal going on. If you're doing it and running out of ideas, I'd be happy to write a guest post on yours, also for a $20 donation. Sound cool? I think so. Writing this November is reminding me again how much better this blogging place is when we all hang out and write and read together. If that's something you'd be interested in, let me know and I'll work out a theme with you. 

With whatever I send you, you're guaranteed some surprises in the package -- a mix cd, most likely, or maybe...oh, I don't know. I guess you'll have to give it a shot. 

Sound cool? Great. Drop me a line at lauriesays@gmail.com, and we'll work out the details. 

From the Flickr Archives

I miss Flickr. I miss when people commented and posted their own stuff and I commented on it, which now I rarely do, I admit, because I'm part of the problem. sure. I'm all up in Instagram, honestly, yes, and since I lost my conversational grip on Flickr I've been much less apt to comment on photos, knowing I probably won't hear anything back. But I have faithfully uploaded my photos there for six years and I do miss it,  yes. It's been an excellent backup drive and filing system for my photos, among other things, because it's so easy to find the stuff I've taken the time to tag. 

Anyway, this one made me laugh tonight, mostly the caption. It's for everyone who thinks that self-portraits are exercises in self-love and narcissism. Nah.

I was at a counseling conference in Amish country, where just up the road I found just about the best sushi restaurant I've ever eaten at in my life. 

First night keynote. She was allegedly there to help us weave humor into our work. Why this ALWAYS involves a clown nose at counseling conferences is one of the mysteries of the ages. Case in point: I despise clowns. I don't think clowns are funny. I think they're creepy. Like, in this nose? I only look funny in that I look stupid, and marginally humiliated. Weak. Also this nose does not stay on easily.

Some Saturdays Are Better

The weather is way better than average for your weirdo weather town. 

Lunch is good. 

You, uh, have a few conversations with cats. 

And try out your new iPhone camera toys on them. (Because really, what are they going to do about it?) 

Sarah wore lion glasses for a minute. 

Kids. 

Everything doesn't work for days, DAYS, in the worst kinds of ways, but then you take your story back again (because you can, because you have to) and the not working part doesn't matter anymore. That's the best part. That's the part that makes it work. 

Green

The theme for this month of NaBloPoMo is "green." Green is one of my favorite colors -- the color I started jokingly calling my power color several years ago until I actually realized it was true. 

 

I'm going to try to post every day. We'll see how it goes. 

Insane and Rising

When you wake up sort of agitated in a spot like this, among people and places that you love almost the most, that is when it becomes most clear that there is something wrong. 

It's not wrong in a way I even really want to blurt out to the internet, even in this space that still after all these years feels oddly personal, where comments remain a minor shock. I'm sure someone doing their Ph.D in the communal nature of online journaling can explain to me why this is so, but I don't want to talk about it on that level right now. It's not wrong in a foot-stomping, door-slamming sort of way either, because no one listens to that shit anymore anyway. 

It's just inherently not-right in a way that I seem to suddenly feel compelled to document in order to listen more closely to the call of how to fix it, maybe? I don't know. I don't know how to move forward if I don't do something different in this space or anywhere else. My writing muscles are as tight as my shoulders. I'm not currently using them to serve my own needs at all, not my real ones anyway, and I don't know that I'm using them for anyone else either. 

**************

I went out in the water yesterday, the most gorgeous day of this trip by far which is usually how it is on the last one, and I looked southward praying the tar balls would never make it here and then I felt guilty. We're as connected to Louisiana and Florida and Mississippi waters here as we are to all of the rest of them. This isn't my ocean any more than it is that guy's, and in that sense it's everyone's who cares to love the water. 

Except it is my ocean, or at least that's how I feel, as I feel as myself in it as I feel anywhere, even though who that is is somehow maddeningly no more clear than it's ever been. It's fuzzy in general. There are motions to be gone through and racing thoughts to think, daily shifting priorities and never more of a sense of instability. 

I don't give a crap about SEO in this context. I think that's clear. 

Anyway, I was bobbing around and singing "Santa Monica" to myself like I tend to in the ocean, the best song ever recorded by a band named after grain alcohol. 

We can live beside the ocean

Leave the fire behind

Swim out past the breakers 

Watch the world die.

Yes, you could. 

There were some beautiful moments this week and there were some tense ones. It's tough to watch human fragility and the passage of time when it's right in your face, especially when it involves people by whom you've set your watch for decades. 

It's difficult to sit next to a young person you love and want to make the way smoother even though that's not at all what he's asking for and you have no direct responsibility for him anyway. And more to the point, you can still barely take care of yourself. So you just turn up the music and derive some satisfaction when he says that he thinks it's cool that you have the same taste and can you go watch a band sometime? 

And how to tell him that you would move heaven and earth to do that because he asked, without sounding weird? So I don't, I just nod. 

It is still really hard, the missing of people who aren't here anymore, by choice or death. 

I just want to feel some sunshine. 

I just want to find some place to be alone. 

Right? It shouldn't be that difficult. If it doesn't happen here I don't think that it can happen anywhere. 

There is something to be said for swimming past the breakers metaphorically speaking although taking it to that level on this sunny Carolina morning kind of makes me want to punch myself in the face, especially since I'm looking at the ocean from a 12th floor balcony as I type. 

When my uncle -- a man diametrically opposed to me, ideologically speaking, in so many ways but who nonetheless shares the passion for life and people that is in my DNA -- walked out the door the other night to drive back to North Carolina he stubbed out his cigarette. He looked at me sitting there at the table, thinking the jumbled thoughts that he couldn't identify specifically but nonetheless knows full well that I think.

"Take it easy, Laurie," he said. "No matter what happens, take it easy. Because you can't change a goddamned thing." 

You don't choose your true south, as I take the liberty of calling it --  not your people or your places. At least I didn't. And of all the things I know that I can't change I know that I can't change those the most, not when it's beautiful or when it breaks my heart. 

On forgetting whether or not I ever told my blog that I danced to I'm Every Woman with Jane Fonda.

Seriously. 

I'm going through my photo archives for another day in a row, putting together some images for a friend of mine, and wow. The things you don't really forget but don't actively remember. Like this: 

That's my mother on the far right in this one. She looks like we all felt.

 

This is what happens when you follow Dylan McDermott into the W hotel in New Orleans because you figure that's where the party is because his stepmother just happens to be throwing it. And then somehow you end up in the party yourself (**coughpresspasscough**) standing a few feet away from an open bar and Rosario Dawson. 

 

 Dudes this is still funny, almost two years later.

 

That will never not be funny to me. That ain't no On Golden Pond. 

I have no idea what I said exactly to get us in those doors but I will never be sorry. Like Ferris said, life moves pretty fast. You don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it. 

Whole set here. Fabulous trip. 

Old December Views

I am so far behind, I can't even explain what's been keeping me away. 

This was on the table at a media dinner I attended a few years ago. I entered it into a Flickr Advent Calendar group that I was pretty dedicated too in December, 2006 (2006 - wow, eons) because I thought it was pretty then and I still like it now. 

I had no idea what bokeh meant then. It's been a long, informative three years. 

Biscuit eater.

I am just about there, just about caught up. December 5, yes? I promise this makes sense in my head.

I grew up in a household where "son of a biscuit eater' was an acceptable euphemism for the more profane iteration of that term. You know, like "fudge" and "mother of pearl" and the like.

What, you don't do that? You probably don't say "Jesus, Mary and Joseph" either. Whatever.  

I am not a son at all, but I do eat biscuits. And also fudge, and I even bought some of that on this trip, too, but that's another story. This is about biscuits. This is one of the best ones I've ever had, perhaps the very best one. And whereas a very good friend of mine made me some in her own kitchen on my way home a few days later, I don't have a picture of it to share with you.

If you're going to have friends, it's nice to have the kinds of friends who will feed you biscuits they make from scratch in their very own kitchens, I'm serious.

This one was from Blackstone's in Beaufort, South Carolina, where the nice people let me sit down even though the kitchen was about to close and I had the most delicious shrimp & grits and this biscuit. And it occurred to me that I really ought to ask for one to stick in my pocket and take for the road, and I'm still really sorry I didn't. I had these insane thoughts like, "Oh, sometimes it's good to just eat one of something when it's really good, so you can remember it and savor it," and "Two would just make me really sick" and "There will be other biscuits."

Sometimes I am really not very smart. I am, however and in general, quite well fed. This is one of my favorite things about my life.

Walking in Charleston.

And still catching up on December Views. December 4, now, I guess? I should really get with the program here.

178 1/2 , Charleston

Used.

Harborwatch Books, Beaufort, South Carolina, upstairs in the used book room. 

I love bookstores more than most places. After a few days solid with a bunch of people it was really nice to spend too much time in this space with shelves and shelves of old books.