I want to catch capture your soul! For your sake as much as mine, I think.

In this day and age, where every other person has a camera and every third of those people consider themselves an amateur photographer, you won't be able to walk down the street or go to a party without someone snapping a picture of you.
It's stunning, how powerful even the thought of getting caught on the tiny receptor of those cameras is.

Photographees react differently depending on the circumstances. Variables of the situation can include whether it's a friend taking your photos, or a stranger.
If it's a close friend, I suspect Facebook's existance pretty much dictates the photographee's attitute towards the picture-taking; knowing that there is a remote possibility that the pictures will end up on Facebook, photographees think about how they look, where they are, what they're drinking, where they're looking (at the camera, or not at the camera), how "aware" they decide to be of the camera, etc. Even the photographee's feelings about the photographer can make an impact - For me, if my mom takes my picture, I sort of don't care what I look like. If my friend the artist is taking a picture of me with her super hi-tech camera, I want the picture to be to the photographer's liking, so that maybe, that person will try to make the photo look good, show it off, and I will have a second of celebrity when someone else sees it.

Photography by strangers can be intoxicating, but probably because there's still a chance, albeit a smaller one, that someone will see the photographee in the picture, giving the photographee brief celebrity, even though the photographee might never know it. This feeling of unknown celebrity, it's very driving.

Has Facebook made all of us mini-celebrities? Oh yeah. Every single one of us.
How do I feel when I see other people's photos, and when they see my photos? I lo ve looking at pictures of people I know, and I like the thought of them looking at pictures of me. It feels similar to people looking at me in real life, and I like attention as much as the next person.

How do I feel about photos that are kept in people's private collections, never to be seen by the light of the laptop screen? It's inevitable that some photos are lost forever - there's just too much memory available, and taking a billion pictures is too easy.

Do people ever actually never want to have their photo taken? I think I would never not want my photo taken (unless I look terrible, of course). I don't understand when people refuse to have their photos taken.
So what if I have an image of you?
What do you care?
Is it invasive?
If so, why?
Is it just facebook?
Is it me?
Are you worried that I'll perform vodoo rituals on your photo?
Do you not want to be the center of my attention?
If so, why?
Are you not enough of a celebrity for me to be snapping photos of you in front of your friends?
Do you think you look bad?

Photographees are weird.

(next: why do I want to take pictures of people?)

Update

I saw "And God Created Women/Et Dieu... créa la femme" (Roger Vadim 1956.) Brigitte Bardot is in it.



Bardot plays a carefree hotpot that is satisfied by the sun, the surf, the beach, the breeze,the everdayness of life.
As I was watching this movie, I fell easily into relating to the character's desires; to live life day to day, in a carefree manner, with no responsibilities, no goals, no hardships, no worries, no feelings of dread of what the next day will bring.

I have to actively remind myself that this goes hand in hand with a world where you have no grand aspirations, no creation, no contribution, no self-worth, no distinction as an individual, and maybe death by skin cancer (the movie takes place on a beach town).

Inactivity never prevails in cinema, and there must be a solid, time tested reason for this. I just hope, really really hard, that actively doing things and pushing myself will bring me the best possible life I can possibly live. It would suck if it was otherwise. I don't want to wake up one day, and find that everyone does things on a mistaken whim/assumption/brainwash-resulting thought that keeping non-human entities alive is a goal in itself.

Arrow

Housemate Mike's "ex"-wife dropped of their ex-mutual dog a few days ago. Her name is Arrow. The poor dear. She's allergic to summer, and her patchy skin is due to grow back any month now. I leave my door open for her to go in and out.

She sits at the entrance of my room and scratches herself persistently.
She follows me with earnestness, like she wants to be in company.
When I walk past her to go to the kitchen, she follows me and continues to scratch at the entrance of the kitchen.
(The 'pedes go pattering off, hopefully to look for food in the darker corners)
When I go back to my room she follows me, and continues to scratch.
When I go to the bathroom, she scratches by the door.
When I go back to my room…well, you know.

I would cry over her

Some people live for their dogs
Some people don't have anyone to live for.

Digital

I wonder if people who grew up before the digital age are sad, not having a full a digital record of themselves, as most kids these days do.

Jogged Memory of My Grandpa's death.

I was reading a torts case about intentional affliction of emotional distress. An issue that was discussed in the case was possibility to acquire physical injury from emotional distress. A bunch of tough guys in an association threatened and scared another so much that after two to three hours of threats, the guy went home, threw up, and had to remain home from work for the next few days. The court stated that he suffered extreme fear.

This case dislodged a memory about my grandfather in my head. My mother's father, a distinguished engineer, a good husband, an amazing father, a handsome fellow, an academic bookie, died the day after he was put antagonized by the USSR influenced Georgia. All I remember of the story was that he was taken aside at a shindig, held by both arms, and made to stand still as some motherfucker interviewed him and ran a knife up and down his chest.My grandmother found him in bed the next morning with no heartbeat, cold to the touch. No one ever doubted that fear and apprehension forced him to leave his loving family.

I've known this story for a really long time. Even though I only caught snatches of the story as a very young kid in adult conversations, I can't think of my grandpa without imagining a bloody tear in his shirt running down his chest.

Thinking back, there was probably nothing that anyone in my family could do to have justice done on this act. I can't hold my excitement how happy I am that U.S. law accounts for these types of mental suffering crimes. My previous tenuous thoughts about the malleability of the U.S. legal system have officially strengthened.

Wordplay

My first year at law school. When I made the decision to look into, and possibly study the law, I approached it thinking in ideals. I thought, justice, righteousness, morality, society, LAW, the American Way. I thought, truth. I thought it was all beyond those that practiced it. I thought the lawyers, the judges, the bailiffs, the jury, the coppers, were all very much the cogs in the ultimate peacemaking machine. I thought that if you keep righting wrongs, protect the innocent, and keep putting your foot further and further into that door that leads to perfect justice, the law will have the right to exist.

That was innocent me, two years ago. That was innocent me, before I read into the topics concerning the legal profession. I read "The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court" by Jeffrey Toobin, and I was shocked. How was it possible that these individuals, though intelligent, practiced, shockingly human, could dictate so much about what was "right"? How was it that as the proclaimed authority over the interpretation of how our society should function? For that is what the law does. It tells us what to do by telling us what we can get in trouble for.

The power of these individuals is stunning. A guy can go out, get a Juris Doctorate, one thing can lead to another, and bam, suddenly you're a judge and you've just decided that people can't take back certain promises, or that that kid can't go back to their mother's, or that crazy people and young people have the ability, despite their questionable state, to determine with substantial certainty that harm will be done on account of their actions.

The workings of the system are not the cogs. They are the system. The lawyers, the judges, they all just play games. Especially the lawyers. They're given broad rules, procedure, history, and with these tools in hand, they have to go out there and win the game; you jump over the other player's obstacles. You squirm your way through the gauntlet of wordplay, you pick up as many facts as you can for the many headed monster called the jury, and you feed it, hoping that the monster digests.
The key to all this is to be really really good at playing the game.
You can't rely on truth, you can't expect it to exist. You can only count on yourself, really. A life choice that's challenging, that will put meat on your bones.

Is there contempt to be felt for this profession? I believe that the break in thought about my younger and older self is the main reason for contempt and disgust to exist about this profession. People thing ideally, and don't imagine that a lawyer lawyers because they're good at it. But it must be something, to be good at it.

Albany seems alright

Wowow. Albany Law School!
Today, I took my first official tour of Albany via my house-hunting route.
The city is peculiar. The Village Voice stand-in, Metroland, promotes a lot of art and culture. Parks and lakes are oft-encountered. The Hudson is a familiar presence, a a symbolic and direct route to New York City. Internships are promised to be numerous.

The city was quiet on this hot summer day. Every now and then, I saw a jogger or a biker. Men sitting on stoops, cars traversing deserted streets. Many buildings are ancient and grand, others more contemporary, but just as gigantic. The suits walking around downtown remind me of the importance of the city center.Everything is neat, and tidy, and beautiful, and regal, and well-maintained. And the more I see of it, the more I suspect that the whole of Albany is a mask: a firm, trimmed and airbrushed face, posing in its role as the capital of New York. I will have to pay close attention to this phenomena. What exactly is this city?

I have a room now. It's extremely roomy. It has a balcony. It's probably the best room in the house. However, it's on a second floor of a second rate house, 'lorded by what appears to be a second rate politician/chatterbox/gossip-monger. The only other room occupied on my floor is our "floor team leader", the designated utility bill collector. Out of the four neighbors living on the first floor, two are married, two might be illegal immigrants, one is a computer genius and one has a baby cat who is "her life", according to gossip.* And of course, according to the same source, we have a physician's assistant as our neighbor, just "in case you want to marry a doctor" or something.

My landlord gave me my room at a discount of over $100. However, I can see that he is going to use me get other hard-working, bill-paying, "charming", non-drug addicts. Just like he touted the horn on my neighbor, the future doctor, I can see the words "ah, yes, future lawyer, always at the library, quiet, blah blah blah" forming on the tip of his lips.

He also would love for me to have my girlfriends and study buddies over in our little "community within a community". I have to check in with him and the house when I want my boyfriend to sleep over though.

This place might be nuts.
The rent is month to month, thank the lord.


*Groups can be mutually inclusive.

Painting

Oh yeah, I painted with Nino yesterday. It was great.

Here's my piece. I started with the face, but I like the blue part right above more than the face. The face has got to go.




This one's Nino's. I like hers so much! It will hang in my bedroom next semester.

My self

I feel refreshed.

I've found that the best way to the self is through others.

Traveling with Chris allowed me to get to know him like I've never known him before. I experienced his characteristics and makeup like I never have; my experience with him was longer diluted by the flux of other people, or by the separation of hours/days/weeks that were common throughout our relationship. His ability to control himself mentally and physically hit me like a pile of bricks, whereas before, it was a constant but light hailstorm. His idea of self-contest has never been more present in my mind than in the last few weeks.

Looking at him, I've learned to gauge myself better. I, like everyone else, have the potential to be the best I can be blah blah blah, but, figuring out what I want and how I want to be has never as clear or obvious.

Rob, joining us on the second leg of the journey, was a part of the catharsis. In him, I saw a lot of myself. I saw, most distinctly, the me that wants to please everyone. Often, I cannot help but think at my happiness lies in the happiness of others. Now am vividly aware that that contradiction is probably not the best thing I've ever come up with.

"The key to failure is trying to please everybody"
-some guy on the radio that was quoting some other guy.

An excerpt from Cool Hand Luke

Anything so innocent and built like that just gotta be named Lucille.

A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy

Some people want to cleanse their souls right before death by revealing the secrets that haunted them the most.

Tony Roberts: "I slept with your wife"


Woody Allen: -"How could you?"
Tony Roberts: "Please accept my apology."



Woody Allen: "...I don't except it."


I think there's a lesson in this, especially if you don't end up dying.

Man vs. Nature, or Our Throne Over Mother

Without a doubt, we Homo sapiens have achieved wonders in our brief existence on Earth.

We have turned gold to coal, and back again.
We have erected far-reaching monoliths that tear the planet's skies.
We have built machines that let us travel hundreds of times faster than the fastest animal on the planet.
We have turned Earth into our personal playground. We have demanded great services from this planet, and sit high and mighty on our self-appointed throne as the deserving recipients.

This boisterous and unreserved claim, and the consequences of our contention with the "former" ruler, Nature, have been a topic of discussion and commentary through many movies through the years. As much as we admire our abilities as humans, we have to be aware that the wrath and retaliation of Nature can be close at hand.

A time might come when we might end up smothered in our sleep by the very hand that gave us life.

Here are some great movies that touch upon the Man vs. Nature genre.

The Birds - 1963, Alfred Hitchcock
Where the most numerous tetrapod vertebrates start to murder.

Aguirre: The Wrath of God - 1972, Werner Herzog
Where a deranged and unwavering conquistador leads a search for El Dorado.

Fitzcarraldo - 1982, Werner Herzog
Where a determined man decides to carry a ship across a mountain in order to avoid rapids and build an opera-house in the jungle.



Princess Mononoke - 1997, Hayao Miyazaki
Where a kindhearted warrior is caught in a battle between a mystical forest and a mining colony.

Jaws - 1975, Steven Speilberg
Where a gigantic great white shark becomes a threat to a seaside community, motivating various members to destroy it.

Other movies I have not seen, but might be worth checking out:

Koyaanisqatsi - 1983, Godfrey Reggio

Lord of the Flies - 1963, Peter Brook

The Flesh and the Screen

Movies and television, the moving media have many similarities with sex. The lights are turned off, intimate and comfortable placement is achieved between fellow viewers, and attention is focused on the task at hand. However, the attention is too often between the screen and the viewer, not between the viewers themselves. Watching moving images can become an isolated and self-involved experience, and the option of intimacy is ignored and devalued.

One may say that moving media can easily replace sex. Why have sex, when you can fall asleep with a good episode of Twin Peaks? If anything, sex easily becomes a placeholder for television in television's absence. Blackouts and back-wood cabins can act as examples for the ideal occurrences of this phenomena.

It is up to the viewer to realize that the sense of touch can be as fulfilling and satisfying as the sense of sight and sound.

But forget porn. Forget pot. Forget the lights. A quality movie can have the ability to give the viewer an amazing videosexual experience, as long as the viewer makes themselves available to get physicall involved in the movie. We give too much of our mental selves to moving images, and we use too few of our senses to get involved with the screen. We need to bring the mentality of what is on the screen outside of it, in our physical world instead.

Here are some neat movies I would recommend. Some are absurd and twisted, but all are worth feeling into.


Antichrist - 2009, Lars Von Trier


Y Tu Mama Tambien - 2001, Alfonso Cuarón


Dead Ringers - 1988, David Cronenberg


Videodrome - 1983 David Cronenberg


Crash - 1996 David Cronenberg


Repulsion - 1965 Roman Polanski