A Few Good Memes

Here I stand with this poem I wrote you my true love. All sealed up in a glassine envelope with a stamp. Now if I only knew which box would ensure you will receive my missive…

We got dumped on a couple nights ago. I went to take the compost out and the snow was SUPER FLUFFY. So I had to take a few moments and shoot it. It’s a 30 second exposure at F8.0.

I think it’s a wooden submarine submerged under the snow in my
backyard and this is its wooden periscope, keeping watch for some sign of spring.

Got my family tree tattoo filled in. Much less painful this time, probably because of the location. He only had to do the greens and blues of the leaves. So it was only 2 hours vs. 4 the first time. I’m pretty happy with it, but not thrilled. I think the green transitions to the blue a bit abruptly. He wants me to come back in after it heals (about 3 weeks) and he said we can tweak it a bit then. I’m going to have him add some yellow to the lower part of the blue to make more of a green transition area and see if he can put a bit of blue somehow in the top of the green on the next level of leaves below. Overall, it’s been a very positive experience and overall I’m very, very happy with my tattoo.

My artist, Mike, said he’d always wanted to play the harmonica. He’s a guitar player. So I gave him a nice harmonica (in addition to a few bucks) for a tip this time. I think he was pretty pleased about that.

You can see it’s peeling a bit right now. More pics when it’s totally healed.

Opinions of any sort are welcome. Don’t hold back.

My Emma

Originally uploaded by Jason Dufair.

Playing with my new camera - a Canon PowerShot SD750. So small. Mmmmm.

Straight Down

We are vacationing in the Smoky Mountains with my sister-in-law (Anna’s sister). We hiked the Rainbow Falls Trail today and had a blast. Even Emma hiked the better part of a couple miles. I decided to shoot a bunch of pics looking straight down. Click the pic to see the whole set. It came out fairly interestingly.

(edited: forgot to actually link to the first post about the tree)

In this post, I wrote about the tree that grows by Anna’s grave. I got a likeness of that tree tattooed on my leg today. I’ve always wanted a tattoo as far back as I can remember as an adult. I just never had an image that I felt so strongly about that I wanted it on my skin for the rest of my life. I woke up 5 weeks ago today and as I became conscious, the idea of this tree on my body was already committed to my skin. It was just a matter of finding the right artist at that point. I told my dad it was divine intervention and he (the devout Catholic) totally cracked up.

I’m so incredibly thrilled with it. There are still about 2 hours of shading work to do, but I wanted to post pics so far. I had it done by Mike Prickett at The Tattooed Heart in Lafayette, Indiana. I can not say enough about how professional and talented the guy is. The shop was clean and well-maintained. The atmosphere was friendly. Mike did the design and the ink. Did it hurt? Yeah. Like hell. Especially on the top of my foot. The pain was exquisite at times. I felt like passing out. But it was totally worth it. I can’t wait to go back (3 weeks) to get it finished. I just want to sit and look at my leg all night.

This thing turned out to be cooler than I expected:

Alyssa was on our local news today as part of a quilting project done at our church. Anna took up quilting when she got sick and made a quilt for each of us with a hand-written note on a square in the middle. Alyssa started working on the quilt in the video at our church retreat this past summer, a week or two after Anna died. She stayed up until 2am working on it. I’m really proud of her. And I think she interviewed really well this morning at church.

 

 UU Quilt Project [1:51m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

• Sin City - you couldn’t do a better comic-book-as-movie.
• Wild at Heart - Great characters, good music.  My first of many Nick Cage faves.
• A.I. - When the kid imprinted on the mom, I think I imprinted on the kid.  That movie totally triggered my parental instincts and then messed with them bigtime.  I loved that robotic kid
• Vanilla Sky - I really can’t stand Tom Cruise, but this was a good movie in spite of him.  I’m thinking I’m just a sucker for a psychological thriller at this point.

Guess I like them a bit dark and mind-bending.  It also seems 1999 was a good year for movies.  The Matrix, Fight Club, Being John Malkovich, The Sixth Sense (which I also liked, but really can’t watch again because the whole Munchausen’s thing just freaks me out), even Office Space.

I watched Fight Club this weekend. The West Lafayette school district sent email to parents that kids are starting up fight clubs around town. I had heard lots of good buzz about Fight Club over the years, but never got to watching it. It was an outstanding movie. I read it as the protagonist becoming enlightened through study and practice of the Dharma. It had a bit of of a Zen sense, in terms of Tyler’s nihilism. Turns out I wasn’t too far off the mark, based on re-watching it with the commentary from the directory and Brad Pitt and Edward Norton.

It was really well shot and the script, dialog and acting were outstanding. You could just tell that everyone was doing more than cashing checks in this movie. And Tyler reminded me of Scott Crabtree, my roommate freshman year.

Some of the other movies on my favorites list:

• The Matrix (only the first one). I enjoyed the explicit sense of a meta-reality. Too bad they never took it further to a meta-meta reality, even converging on Godel’s Incompleteness theorem.
• Moulin Rouge! I hated this movie the first hour or so of it. If I wasn’t sick as a dog while watching, I would have turned it off. But then something clicked, and I saw a gorgeous, stylized love story.
• Memento (perhaps my all-time favorite). This movie made me realize that we really have no idea what we know. Memory is so tenuous, that being here now is about all there is.

I tend to like quirky movies that at least give some sort of nod to deeper philosophical and religious issues. I also didn’t like Fight Club so much initially. I found it hard to identify with the narrator as a real yuppie. And I was starting to get into this “people would never really punch the shit out of each other for fun.” I let go of these reservations and was glad to have done so. This movie actually had a lot to say.