#1 Son turns 13 on December 20th. We’re sitting together at the breakfast table the other day, and I’m reading this letter to the Spouse Unit written by this guy who happened to be around at a certain car dealership the day she decided to purchase her car, and who has apparently believed himself to be God’s Gift to Carbuyers for roughly the last two years. Anyway, it’s a one-page handwritten letter (very thoughtful and personal, of course), that in four sentences contains more spelling and grammatical errors than typically exist in one semester of assignments in a second-grade classroom. So, I read it over, hand it to #1 Son, and ask, “Okay, kiddo. What’s wrong with this letter?”

He reads through it, chuckling several times, thinks for a moment, then answers, “He didn’t have someone else type it for him so he wouldn’t look so stupid.”

Deadpan.

Yep, the boy annoys me sometimes, as all kids occasionally do, but Gawd I love ‘im.

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this looks like a screwed-up photograph, but it isn’t. although i will admit it was difficult to keep the wind off the camera during the thirty seconds it took to take this photo at night. i don’t get to do as much late-night photography as i’d like (and i’ll readily admit that Nikon DSLR’s aren’t really the best tools for dark shots), but the color here is completely unretouched, taken at ISO 800, f/5.6, 30″ in the light of a nearly full moon. the camera is pointing roughly west, about 2.5 hours after sunset. even that long after sunset, there is still a noticeable gradient to the light falloff. i just kinda thought that was neat. sadly, the rest of that night shoot was pretty poopy, because i had to use longer lenses and the wind was such that it was impossible to keep them from shaking over such a long period. this one and a couple of others are all that are going to make it.

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well, i guess that’s about it today. best be shoving off to work, work, work!

but not on a jet-plane. and i DO know when we’ll be back again, even. it’ll be sometime after i leave. i promise!

but yes, we’re going to bail for a bit up to the in-laws place. in the meantime, visit the folks i just link-loved from here. gah. i need to update this blog’s blogroll. yeah, yeah. i have time for that. really. pfft.

oh yeah. it’s thanksgiving. supposedly we should give thanks for all the shit in our lives. so, at this time, i’d like to give thanks for all the shit in my life. and for all the non-shit. and maybe for all the people, but probably not for their shit. wow, i just used the word ’shit’ in one paragraph four times. i must be the shit.

okay, maybe six.

anyway, i’m rambling because i have this tooth that desperately needs to be extracted and i have to wait all the way until the freakin’ 29th. it’s fun, let me tell you. especially when i’m about to go stuff my face all weekend. mmmmmm……i just can’t wait to go love me some dentist. eight days. shoot me.

okay, well, the last proof site i was trying to get uploaded finally uploaded so i’ll see you later. have fun!

{actually, as a side note, having just typed the title, the thought comes to mind that the English language, without punctuation, is a nefarious beast. because at this point, you don’t know if that statement is an imperative, or one of those second-person rhetoricals. for the record, it’s one of those second-person rhetoricals. i’m sure Bing or Morse would be able to supply the proper label to ’second-person’ rhetorical, but i don’t even know if they read this blog, and i’ve been horrendously crappy about posting on otherwhirled.com lately. sigh.}

but yeah, anyway, you just never know how people are going to take things. i’ve had some trouble uploading files to my business site, which trouble came somewhat ironically (and mostly unrelatedly) in the midst of getting synthaetica.com launched. and since i’m done with getting synthaetica.com up and running, it was time to refocus my development efforts on the new version of the business website. out of convenience, i had my ISP point my old domain name shadowart.com at this new developmental site, and as a result, since i’ve had some trouble uploading files to shadowmoon.com, i went ahead and used shadowart.com for the online proofs of a couple of recent engagement sessions.

since shadowart.com is in development, i have it “invisible” to search engines, and the only people who know about it are those whom i’ve told (which i guess now includes you, who incidentally constitute the vast majority of “those whom i’ve told”) about it, the clients whose proof sites are up there, and a couple of wordpress developers whom i’ve asked for some assistance on beefing up some plugins so that the site could handle the selection of images for purchase—something we’ve been needing to have embedded in our business site for about a decade now.

so in the meantime, i’m building up the site, adding page, tweaking the site header image and other little things with the template, and realize that the site has begun to become rather slow for no apparent reason. out of curiosity, i go look at the stats, and was shocked to discover that there were (at the time) about 250 visits on one particular client’s proof site (over 300 now) .

now, i really don’t know (read,”bother to look”) how many people normally come look at an engagement proof site, but since the site is invisible and closed, it was obvious that those visits were by no means random. so, i called the client to ask how many people she had shared the site with, and it turns out that the number of visits is roughly equatable to the number of people she and her fiancé have shared the site with. go figure. the other engagement proof site on there, for what it’s worth, has totaled 24 visits. mine, of course, are not counted.

i have a suspicion that the latter number is the more expected one.

anyway, like i said, you just never know how some people are going to take things. i guess it means i did i good job?

maybe.

but since it beats the shit out of daily visits to my more established blogs, it does make you think {although by “you”, i probably just mean “me”. what a silly language we have….}

the new fine-art site is officially live.

(and since i’m tied here running photoshop batches for another hour or so….)

forgiven

in the palm of my hand
lies the crystal shield
of compassion
it glimmers and glows
with a light of its own
caught recklessly
between the lights
of two worlds
it satiates the primal urge
to run and fly away

what nought but this
that seeks suppression
what further drawn
alleviates the burn

come closer now
and the thought shall linger
chill mansions rose
where no one dwelled
before

~ December 18, 1992

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recalescence

those days . . . .
vitality and strength
and the will to continue on
how much else then rectifies
the waste of an eternity
so many days now long forgotten
unattended in the graveyards
of my mind
some shadowless subdivision
of the thoughtless reclamation
of the emotion of a starry night
. . . so long now passed
that like eternity reconciles
the pasted glimmer
of a thousand stars
that fade like water pours
from between my fingers

i would live again
if only in this allowance
could the tokens be recalled
i am paled by the significance of others
their flows surround me
their auras imprison me
and without escape
i must sequester myself
behind the walls of solace

silence is a form of compassion
have i lost myself
or is this glowing spark of regeneration
only now coming before my eyes
i would be dead without these things
but alive
sometimes they stifle me

and those days . . . .
once remembered
. . . remind that i have grown
into what i do not know
but in this
i find i flow again
with the will to live

~December 3, 1992

You know, I had kind of thought that with soccer season being over, I would have a weekend at home for once. However, with the wedding schedule still going, and then with this weekend’s trip out to Rapid City, there is still apparently no rest for the wicked. Er…wicker. No…um…weary. Yeah, that’s the ticket.

I’m heading off across the state with several other of our referees for a clinic on getting certified as referee assessors. Whee! Why do we call it “Rapid” City, when it takes so damn long to get there? Anyway, I’m writing this while finishing up a set of wedding proofs so I can go clean the mini-van up because guess who’s driving? Don’t take that the wrong way, I actually prefer to drive on trips like this.

I’m looking forward to the clinic. Almost since we moved out here and I put myself into the local program, our SRA has been having me mentor with younger and less-experienced referees, and I have greatly enjoyed doing so. Just as with instructing, I find I learn more when I’m mentoring. Obviously, as I get older and have to eventually consider tapering back how many games I do each season, assessing is a viable and beneficial way in which I can serve our referee development programs, and I’m excited about the formal training on the subject. Our instructor already had us do pre-clinic “homework”, so it promises to be a class I can sink my teeth into.

Unfortunately, though, it means another weekend away from the family, plus I miss out on belt testing for TaeKwonDo, so #1 Son is going to out-rank me once again for another week or so, because I’ll have to test next weekend. Bah. Humbug. But, of course, it’s good for him.

Hrm….I must be multitasking or something. My concentration keeps wandering. Heh.

The real reason I’m going—and probably the motivation for most of us as students—is that there aren’t enough referee assessors here in South Dakota right now. As well, I thought I’d get started on this track now so that I have plenty of time to upgrade later on and be able to assess State referees as well. There’s plenty of time for me to do so, especially if I get this initial certification and training requirement done in the near term. All part of our endeavors to accelerate our referee development out here and do more to incentivize referees to upgrade. The Game is, after all, growing out here, and more of us masochists are needed.

I’ll see you on the other side of the weekend. And if something good comes up in the meantime, I’ll try to get it posted while I’m gone.

my next-to-the-last wedding of the year is today. i’ve got a BAD sore throat. thus far in my career, i’ve managed not to have to work a wedding sick, so this will be first for me.

but i thought of this because of what my daughter said about staying away from guys right now and not getting married EVER. i SO felt the same way about women from time to time. several times, even. but in fact, i met the Spouse Unit just three weeks after i had TOTALLY given up on women. our meeting was completely unexpected, and our getting together was more than a surprise. so every time i shoot a wedding, i’m reminded of all the things that were pouring through my head ‘back then’ (positive and negative), and i’m still somewhat amazed that people actually want to get married, despite being happily married myself.

i was engaged three times in my life. sometimes when i look back, the acts of engagement were almost more significant than the acts of marriage that i’ve partaken in. they were emotional promissory notes that seemed to me to have more significant as a promise held in trust as opposed to the exercising of that trust. and if it weren’t for the exercising of Will, which is what a marriage ceremony is about, one of those earlier promises would still have been in effect.

which is not to belittle marriage in any way. there is something grand and inspirational about any marriage, as two people commit before witnesses to join their lives together, even when that joining is only a formality. i normally allow myself to get somewhat caught up in those emotions while i’m capturing wedding scenes, but with the way i feel today, i believe i’ll be more of an impartial observer. perhaps i’ll see some things today that alter my perception of this process.

regardless, every wedding i serve reminds me of my own wedding to the Spouse Unit and as such, during every wedding i serve, i silently renew my vows to her. it’s the least i can do, i suppose, since the weddings are part of what keeps me from spending more time with her and our children.