A PHOTO EXPEDITION LED BY QUIET WORDS.

Saturday, December 6, 2008

Words without wings.

The flowers, like voices, shift with your mood. Each bursting bloom raises questions of when the color will run out. When the path is covered by branches, leaves, twigs, dust, vines, spiders and everything else that ever fell, the light my eyes leave will lead the way.

Find yourself, before anyone else has a chance to.
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Song of the second: Weekend by The Sea & Cake
Book of the moment:
End of Food by Paul Roberts
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Location: Chicago, Illinois
Date:
Summer 2008
Notes:
Two sets of arms raised in the air, neither knowing which expiring second would catapult the knuckles forward like an army protecting its king. Sweat poured, as quick as a rivers current, from the ghost white fists that found an inescapable jaw. The punch threw rivets of spit and blood into the air as quickly as it was thrown. In hindsight, the fighter now wishes he would have moved a single second earlier in any other direction.

The worst part of the whole evening was the car ride home, seconds slipped into minutes slipped into hours slipped into eternity. Flashes that were both bright and blinding tried sneaking past the tinted glass of his car door. The sunken fighter could only sit there, chest moving outward then inward, eyes twitching then blinking, heart pumping and then beating. There was nothing that could make him feel anything but defeated; which, in actuality, he had just become. He wasn't broken, he was just bruised, and another day he thought would eventually come and with it, another chance.



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Location: Chicago, Illinois
Date:
Summer 2008
Notes:
It seems surprising when you can look into the bottomless sky and see beauty where no one else does. When you see it, like a child spelling words in his alphabet soup, there is that moment of clarity and exactness. Others try, but you can tell it simply does not hit them like it does you, straight in the face with no jokes.



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Location: Chicago, Illinois
Date:
Summer 2008
Notes:
Take the guitar strings of your life and bend them until they scream and howl.




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"What is one to think of those fools who tell one that the artist is always subordinate to nature? Art is in harmony parallel with nature."
~ Paul Cezenne

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Wednesday, May 28, 2008

Broken Rubber Bands

This seems like the perfect spot for absolute silence.
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Song of the second: Galaxies by Laura Veirs
Book of the moment:
Reefer Madness by Eric Schlosser
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Location: Nashville, Tennessee
Date:
May 2008
Notes:
Jacob buried his eyelids and fell into his dreams. He listened and softly words knocked at his ears...

"This way to the light that is shining beyond those walls. If you run straight, legs like bicycles, you'll never be caught. Leave smoke filled paths that hide your shine like candles melting into wood."



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Location: Nashville, Tennessee
Date:
May 2008
Notes:
The sky, is there anything greater?



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Location: Nashville, Tennessee
Date:
May 2008
Notes:
As she raised the receiver to her ear, she could hear my lips parting and sensed my words slipping out . Then, for no explainable reason, the signal cut and my words fell to the ground, buried upon a dusty dream. She stood still, a vicious wind circling her water colored eyes. The receiver clicked, a sound so familiar, leaving her frozen until the next ring.



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Location: Nashville, Tennessee
Date:
May 2008
Notes:
"But with the throttle screwed on, there is only the barest margin, and no room at all for mistakes. It has to be done right... and that's when the strange music starts, when you stretch your luck so far that fear becomes exhilaration and vibrates along your arms. You can barely see at a hundred; the tears blow back so fast that they vaporize before they get to your ears. The only sounds are the wind and a dull roar floating back from the mufflers. You watch the white line and try to lean with it... howling through a turn to the right, then to the left, and down the long hill to Pacifica..."

- taken from Hell's Angels by Hunter S. Thompson



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"After silence that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music." - Aldous Huxley
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Friday, May 2, 2008

I pounded, for what seemed like hours, on a door that wasn't locked.

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At times, for some of us, we just need release. The feeling of being let go, without warning, at the most unexpected second. Finding a breath at the bottom of your stomach that you can pull up like a sunken anchor. Your eyes open and you just walk.

I will sit here, listlessly, as the sun shuffles across the sky, slowly falling to aide the moons rise.

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Song of the second: Geography by Thao Nguyen
Book of the moment:
You Will Know Our Velocity by Dave Eggers
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Location: Portland, Oregon
Date:
April 2008
Notes:
A fence with sharp teeth should not be provoked. You never know when it might reach out and bite you.




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Location: Portland, Oregon
Date:
April 2008
Notes:
While inside, all we saw was the brick. We were not allowed to look past the blades of grass that led to exploding wildflowers. Our lives seemed black and white, left to live in shadows of moonless nights. It serves perfect reason as to why these now covered windows are only fragments of days I no longer remember.

As the sheet drifts over my face, pictures of ocean edged cliffs rush past my eyelids. I will soon be there, on the beach, toes tapping the glass blue water.



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Location: Portland, Oregon
Date:
April 2008
Notes:
If not for this arrow, I would have never found relief.




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Location: Portland, Oregon
Date:
April 2008
Notes:
What two things do Portland residents love?
1) umbrellas

2) volkswagons



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The man that hath no music in himself,
Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds,
Is fit for treasons, stratagems and spoils;
The motions of his spirit are dull as night,
And his affections dark as Erebus
Let no such man be trusted. Mark the music.
~ William Shakespeare from, "The Merchant of Venice"
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Monday, April 28, 2008

Stand here, beyond the light.

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This palette of silhouettes we have is nearly impossible to lift. Sometimes, during certain songs and infrequent frames, I begin to see why. While the shape of each color drowns in water, I walk forward, eyes fastened like bridge bolts to the sky.
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Song of the second: Red and Purple by Dodos
Book of the moment: You Shall Know Our Velocity by Dave Eggers
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Location: Chicago, Illinois
Date: April 2008
Notes: Wrigley Field never seemed so bright.



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Location: Chicago, Illinois
Date: April 2008
Notes: At certain times, the letters start to feel like words.



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Location: Chicago, Illinois
Date: April 2008
Notes: If I can not hear you speak. If I can not feel your words. Then surely I will never know what your voice sounds like.



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And the night shall be filled with music,
And the cares that infest the day
Shall fold their tents like the Arabs
And as silently steal away.
~
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow from, The Day Is Done
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Monday, April 14, 2008

It is much easier to go the opposite direction.

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Without sight we need ears.
Without ears we need sight.

Without speech we need faith.

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Song of the second: In the Dark by Josh Ritter
Book of the moment: A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
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Location: Chicago, Illinois
Date: New Years Eve 2006
Notes: My camera is asking you politely, "just stop acting like you're not looking, we can all see through you."



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Location: Chicago, Illinois
Date: April 2008
Notes: Inside, he wondered, did everything still look the same? After so many years you just expect things will shift, even if you wish them not to. This was it, the dust dropped and he could see. He was quiet with wide eyes. He said absolutely nothing and was fine living within this moment of time.



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Location: Chicago, Illinois
Date: April 2008
Notes: I hope this says, "you rock", but I doubt it does.



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"
It is cruel, you know, that music should be so beautiful. It has the beauty of loneliness and of pain: of strength and freedom. The beauty of disappointment and never-satisfied love. The cruel beauty of nature, and everlasting beauty of monotony." - Benjamin Britten
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Saturday, April 12, 2008

Yesterday I saw today.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ The following pictures contain hidden secrets of what can be found out west.
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song of the second: Skinny Love by Bon Iver
book of the moment: IV by Chuck Klosterman
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Location: Portland, Oregon
Date: April 2008
Notes: I guess, sometimes, even the power of God can not stop the power of money.



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Location: Portland, Oregon
Date: April 2008
Notes: What stands out to me most in this picture is the color yellow. Subtlety has always earned my respect.



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Location: Cannon Beach, Oregon
Date: April 2008
Notes: If you've ever seen the movie, The Goonies, then you've seen haystack rock (for you confused people haystack rock, the middle rock, is featured in the movie I just mentioned).



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Location: Portland, Oregon
Date: April 2008
Notes: eat meat.



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"The more one studies the harmony of music, and then studies human nature,how people agree and how they disagree, how there is attraction and repulsion, the more one will see that it is all music." - Hazrat Inayat Khan
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