Sunday's wedding pickies... Alas, no show :(

Wish I could publish more of these, but the client asked me not to. I'll just sneak in the one. It's my favorite. One of the bridesmaids being made up.

Watching Blazing Saddles,
reading Divergent,
listening to Madame Butterfly
and writing witty porn fiction.

It's just one of those days.

I'm thinking (reading and writing stuff around this) that even though  truth is absolute and cannot be bent, cannot be hidden for long and cannot ever be tame, order, on the other hand, always has to fail. Whatever rule, whatever system, whatever frame, regardless of its benevolent intent – it always has to fall for the organic, natural piety to change to grow up from it. Truth and order for some odd reason cannot coexist in nature.

Off to the field again...

Gonna be a hard, loooong day. I'm still in my underwear and in a few minutes I'll be fully geared in an eastbound ride to the trenches. LoL. 
I think it did me good to be in the army. Or I am a natural born soldier. Either way, the feeling is powerful, into the field again :D
Big gig today. Big money. Nothing can really go wrong and everything can go wrong at any time. I've Tinka as an assistant right by me, which is always half the victory. Lots of driving. Dense time table. Any number of variables. Heuristics and impro all the way.
Best kind :D

I'm in a mood for a Cappuccino Flapjack and The Boxer by Simon and Garfunkel. Especially the last, desperate bit with the screaming bass horns. Feels like such last-decision-making music.My mindset is in a love story - you can't have a good love story without some sense of loss and defeat at some point.

Tai ji saturday

 Tinka is unbelievably hot shit :D She looks and moves like a ninja! her center is impressive. Ahh, to have the patience of such composure.

Unlike yesterday, shooting the riot-support concert, shooting a Chenjiagou Taijiquan session today is a Zen state of karma. Yesterday's nervous buzz, constant fussing and loud arguments and music are replaced, like turning a new page, by a completely wordless (I love wordless!), completely timeless exercise of atonement of the body with the Lifestream. Or something. I dunno what they are trying to find, I just know it looks awfully peaceful and purposeful within a moment, within a muscle.

This suits me ideally. I am catching up on eight months without a period, bleeding like a pig and cramping like a hedgehog in labor, bent almost double from tension and that terrible knowing you're leaking gallons of acidic red paint. So all I have to do today is sit in silence and take photos of people doing elaborate forms with their limbs. It looks real gentle. But it can take your esophagus out if you underestimate it, smoother than a whisper. A tiny Chinese master of something is doing bizarre contortions and the rest of normal humans are trying to mimic him. The hall is bright and there's just the sound of clothes, parquet and outside traffic. Nobody really expresses anything. Compared to yesterday, this is serenity.

Minus the leaking bit and minus the part I am so busy and tired I actually can't sleep, the night was lovely, hot and humid, there was some kissing and some sleeping entanglement and a fresh new dawn. Saturday mornings, if they're sunny, have a certain kind of empowerment to it. General and I made a small tour of the town to purchase some food for me in case the weekend doesn't offer any and some batteries. My bag is really getting annoyingly heavy to have to carry and maneuver with on a hot day. I need to find a way to liberate my back without sacrificing agility of the gadgets.. Or maybe I should just enchant them to be feather light. I really am going to have to invest in something with wheels eventually. Small school children, old ladies and me. 

Haha, tiny Chinese guy is so bendy that any kind of combat move made against him is a no-win. He is fast as a snake and unlike Caucasians, who hate to bend and squat, is always doing just that. You really have to pin him down to hit him, but of course by the time you stop hitting air, he's putting his foot in your ear and having a moment. Really makes me want to wonder how guys like that have sex. Do they have sex? There’s just something too adorable about Asians. The age well. May we keep him? :P

Couple pickies form the strike fest yestereve... text to follow...

I'm having weird dreams and now I am almost positively certain, I hate anchors.There's just something incredibly freaky about snorkling and running into a chain and anchor in the dark waters. O.o

Hay-stacking season..

I've picked a prime time to quit my job at the movie theater: I have forgotten how magical late afternoon hikes can be.... :D

Past few days the hot, hot sun (summer is finally here, it seems!) beat up the tempo on everything and my schedule is packed back-to-back with meetings, shooting, designing, consulting, writing, editing and everything in between and menial labor on top. I got up at five today to assist day in the vineyard, worked until noon, drove to town and then walked a few extra miles home, in dire need of a shower and something to drink.. A gap in the timetable enabled me to take a small nap, but I was so tired when I woke up after an hour, I was nigh nauseated. But the next meeting followed, which was lovely and then the next, which was a strain and I found myself in the middle of the evening city with two bucks in my pocket and a heavy bag of gear on my back, thinking, what next. Tomorrow I will spend the day helping to organize a concert, the Saturday will be spent in another city, shooting and exploring and Sunday I have a wedding shoot, from early morning to... probably early morning next day. Tired doesn't even begin to describe it. So, what do I do?

It just so happened that the General was at his parents' farm in St. George and a train was leaving in that direction in ten minutes. So, half an hour later, seven or so p.m., my fat little feet are flippidy flopping through towns and villages, past ice-cream stands and old churches, pass cemeteries and endless fields of emerald green wheat. Takes about an hour to get from the station in the valley to the farm in the upper knolls. It's hay-gathering season in St. George, so all the meadows were either in stripes or dotted with the hay rolls. Everything smelled sweetly of freshly dried grass and tractors were going everywhere like green bumblebees. It was magic. The hot southern wind, the tiny bugs in my hair, the tired, tired, endlessly surreal ending of the day. I haven't felt this good since we were going climbing in the evenings - but that is a winter's hobby. Summer is... for walking. I am as good a walker as some people are swimmers or drivers. You wind me and release me in a general direction and I don't ever have to stop. Just for the fun of it, I kept raising my thumb at passing cars, but I honestly doubt those (otherwise friendly) people knew what exactly I was asking of them. Looks like I will have to single-handedly - pun intended - teach the good people of this county what a raised thumb of a happy country-road hiker means :P

Oh, and I saw some really cool bees swarm, taking a rest on a small apple tree for the night. Silly buggers. They were bigger than the tree :D