Taking a break from photography…

But only for a little while. I’m learning Objective-C and application development for iOS devices, so photography updates will be sparse for a while. Never fear, when summer comes the shooting will begin again, and after that I might even get time to edit some, if my groaning old iMac can still bear the strain. Gotta go for now, the weasels are closing in…

An Atheist in America

One would think that an Atheist wouldn’t spend much time thinking about religion.

In fact, it’s something that many outside the community of religious faith, including myself, spend an inordinate amount of time pondering. Especially those living in the United States, where religion permeates our national discourse so pervasively. In this country, though we supposedly try to avoid this, our faith is heavily entwined in our politics, as well as the other way around. So much so that people of faith become unaware of its presence. This leads to the belief among many that their personal religious doctrine is responsible for all human good and happiness, since such values are central to their own beliefs.

But as I was raised in a home without any religious dogma being introduced into my young, impressionable and accepting mind, and living happily as a lifelong Atheist, I have a substantially different perspective.

Though I was never exposed to much religion around the house, I had every opportunity to join in religious exercises beginning in my Christian pre-school – I was raised in a small Protestant / Mormon / Jehovah’s Witness town where most of my classmates practiced faith of one of those varieties openly. I was invited by some, and tried various methods of practicing faith, but despite my efforts, I always came back to a simple truth: Whenever I prayed, I knew in every inch of my being that I was talking to myself. I never felt the presence of a higher power. I never heard the whisper of God. I was encouraged (by many, surprisingly) to ‘fake it’ until it happened. I found this disingenuous and frankly against what religions were supposedly trying to teach me in the first place. Any attempt at religious belief, to me I realized, was a lie. I didn’t feel it, and I had no desire to.

Then at age 7 I saw Cosmos and never prayed again.

But while my love of galaxies and fusion gave me a solid sense of wonder and awe at the vastness of the universe, it also left me, I was increasingly told, with a morality deficit. Without a moral foundation, rooted solidly in religion, I supposedly had no hope of functioning in a civilized society.

But I never thought this about myself. Frankly, the concept of basic human decency seemed much less of a mystery than black holes and dark matter. The idea that kindness given was, more often than not, returned, struck me as obvious and natural when my non-religious parents taught it to me by their own kind and generous examples. But as I grew older, I saw that this philosophy was regarded as the exclusive domain of religious law. Fast forward to the present day, and one needs only to turn on the nightly news, or talk to a church group, to see the fully-embedded Truth that all morality comes from the religious experience and faith in God.

But I reject the idea that human morality must come from dogmatic constructs which enforce such morality under threat of punishment. This, in my view, is a cheap and meaningless morality. If you can honestly tell me that you would walk into the next room and murder your child if it were not for the warnings and punishments in the Bible, it does not mean you are a good religious adherent. It means you are a sociopath. Compassion and empathy are hard-wired into every mammalian species (some more than others, granted) and it’s evident enough by our existence today that we could not have survived through the long eons of our evolution without a deeper moral compass than that of a few confusing, conflicting volumes written (we think) in the last couple of millennia.

Religious adherents co-opt these ideas as if we never would have thought of ‘be nice to one another’ if the son of God hand’t told us. This is ridiculous. Communities of humans have existed (and still do exist) in various degrees of harmony having no knowledge of the Ten Commandments or of Christ. Our country was founded by both religious, and non-religious people who wanted the freedom to be the way they were, and to ensure those freedoms were never jeopardized. They did not seek to have any one religious ideology regarded as ‘the default choice’. But in this country, that is exactly what has happened, as modern politicians, particularly those like Ken Buck and Christine O’Donnell, clearly demonstrate.

One detail of religious freedom in America that comes under periodic scrutiny are the words “In God We Trust”. This phrase has not, by any stretch of the imagination, been our motto since America’s birth. It appeared on our coinage in 1864, but was not the official US motto until 1956, due in part to a desire to separate our nation ideologically from Soviet Russia. Atheist Americans, however, find it to be a very plain and blatant affront to a true and meaningful “Freedom of Religion”, because if that freedom is to be absolute, it must include the freedom to choose no religion at all. I don’t trust in God. Not one bit. And I certainly don’t trust the institutions that promote the idea of God. My country’s acceptance of this motto allows my fellow Americans to use it as a cudgel to defend their own particular religious worldview as being superior not only to my own, but to those of their convenient choosing. At the moment, that choice is of course Islam.

One must live outside of religious communities in the country to appreciate their level of control and influence on daily life. Many on the right, and in the Tea Party in particular, complain that secular forces on the left want God to be declared illegal, but no one will try to stop them from going to church this Sunday. Yet I know that as an Atheist I have no hope of ever being elected to public office, and this is a fact. This religious persecution complex is almost comical from my perspective, as I see a government run by elected officials who trade heavily on their faith at every opportunity, and media outlets like Fox News who deride those they deem not Christian enough, as they have shamefully and incessantly done with our president. This is probably invisible to them because they see it as a natural part of their life. But remember how quickly we as Americans turn our righteous religious acceptance off when the religion in question is not Christianity or (to a slightly lesser extent) Judaism, but Islam. I’ll bet they didn’t stand up and defend the rights of Muslims when Muslims wanted to build a community center.

Freedom of religion in this country often means nothing of the sort – it means, foremost, freedom of Christ. So please, don’t ask me to fight for your right to express your faith the way you want, and then turn around and expect me to support your war against another faith. In my mind, there is no difference between the two.

The Barnes & Noble ‘Nook’: A User’s Experience

I tried to warn her. I really tried.

My mom loves books. She has a room full of them stacked to the ceiling. She also loves shiny things and cool toys, but she is not a technical person, by any stretch. So when eBook readers like the Amazon Kindle and Barnes & Noble Nook began to hit the market, it seemed that these cool toys were simple enough for a non-technical person like herself to get a grip on. She imagined a world of reading pleasure, free of bulky dead-tree leaves and lovingly rendered in easy-on-the-eyes, black & white E-ink. For her, there would be no lugging piles of books back and forth to the snow-bird pad in Arizona. This device would be hers, at all costs. Nothing would stand in her way.

Not even this reporter’s impassioned plea, to wait – wait just a few weeks and go put your hands on a soon-to-be-released Apple iPad before you make a decision. Get an idea of what you get, on top of those eBooks, like access to your email, and the internet.

And, ya know, colors. Plus, my folks don’t have a laptop between them, so when they go south, or on one of their long RV trips, there is no internet. So, the iPad solves another problem and saves some money (since my father was about to buy a more-expensive laptop anyway).

And speaking of my father, he had (on his own) discovered and educated himself about the iPad, and already decided he wanted one. This was part of his cunning plan, which was this: Buy a Nook for my Mom, then buy an iPad for himself. That way it would be ‘fair’. Well, now that I’ve experienced the Nook, ‘fair’ is exactly what it was not. Of course, I only suspected this at the time I was trying in vain to get Mom to wait just a bit longer, but nevertheless, I pled with her to hold off on buying the Nook.

But she was having none of this ridiculous stalling. She had her mind made up, and there was no standing in her way. She ordered, and took delivery of her Nook a few weeks back.

And that’s when the trouble began.

At first, all was well. The Nook had a few books pre-installed, and they were… accessible. But the actual book-reading experience wasn’t particularly great. Pages load GLACIALLY slowly. They scroll down choppily from the top with lots of ugly artifacts. Actually getting to the book and generally navigating the UI caused this reporter to keep trying to touch the main screen (blame my iPhone indoctrination for that) but the buttons and lower screen never quite gelled for me as an interface. I’m sure with more than an hour of use it would be fine, but this device wasn’t mine. Watching my mother navigate the system, it seems it never gelled for her either.

Then there was the battery. I asked if the Nook was getting fantastically long battery life, as the promotional copy claimed. Could you really use it for 10 days? “No,” she said. “It doesn’t last that long.”

Well, how much life do you get out of a charge?

“About 3 hours.”

Uh. What?

It was true. After some diagnosis and a trip to support, it was suggested that she would get longer battery life if she “turned on the airplane.” (Editor’s Note – it bears mentioning here that non-technical users may be confused by Airplane Mode, and my mother is the canonical example of a user victimized by a poorly conceived UI. She doesn’t know that she’s turning off the 3g network interface to conserve battery power. All she knows is she’s “Turning on the airplane.” She has no idea why the airplane being on makes her battery last longer, in fact, she’s a bit confounded by it until I explain it. -c)

So, her airplane safely turned on, my mother was able to eke out ONE MORE HOUR of battery life – nothing like the 10 days promised. She used this newfound power to read her eBooks for a few more days.

Then the battery died.

Another trip to the local Barnes & Noble store followed, and the prognosis was not good. She would need a new battery, and to get a new battery, she would have to wait two weeks. “Fine, order the damn thing,” I can hear my father say. There would be no charge, of course, but she would be without a fully functioning reader for a while. In the mean time, she could plug the device into the wall (how retro!) and read to her heart’s content… as long as that happened before she ran out of books. Because, using AC power alone, the Nook user is unable to buy more books via 3G – if she wanted more, she’d have to go in to the store to get them. So for a while, she’d have to put up with reduced functionality.

Until yesterday. That was to be the glorious day when her new battery would come, and finally her eBook reading odyssey could commence. She tore hungrily through the shipping container to find: A power adapter.

Not a battery.

I didn’t get an adequate explanation of the details at this stage. Frustration had driven my poor mother to channel her anger into a sarcastic and darkly humorous rant, delivered through the telephone to a hysterically laughing me. Now (for some reason) Barnes & Noble has informed her that battery orders have been delayed. Getting another battery, they say, will take “about 2 months”. Because “we are very busy.”

I see.

Cut to one day later – Barnes and Noble have graciously offered to send a replacement Nook, overnight, to my ailing mother. They’ve also allowed my father 2 weeks to return the old one, so they don’t have to wait. Tomorrow (April 1, no less) is the day that the new Nook should arrive. My fingers are crossed, and I hope for the best. But I’ve stopped short at holding my breath.

Here we are, just 3 days from the iPad launch, and my mom hasn’t had a lot of good things to say about her Nook. My father has expressed his desire to go back to Barnes & Noble, summon a Customer Service employee, and insert the device into one of their darker orifices. (Editor’s Note – in the interest of taste, we cannot print his actual quote. -c)

My advice to them, of course, is to just return the damn thing, and go to an Apple store next week, and put a real iPad in your hands. Play with it for a little while. Then see if you still want a Nook.

…and if you DO still want a Nook, that’s great!

I hope you find one that works.

-c

New Photos: In The Tree rock Manette & The Them lay waste to Winterland.

Partying with friends, In The Tree…

The night started off with a couch stop at the Manette tavern to see In The Tree. 25% of the band is composed entirely of my friend Rob, who I learned likes Stevie Ray Vaughn as much as I do. But he can actually play it, and a lot more. My first impression of the band is somewhere between Stevie and… Fishbone? Maybe. Leon brought a funky bass groove to Rob’s texas blues licks, and it totally worked. Leon III’s vocals were totally energetic, and I admired his commitment to drinking at the mic. The crowd eventually warmed up and hit the floor, and everybody had a great time, and another drink. I took a break from photos and went back to the couch for some serious booze. I didn’t know it yet, but the liver abuse this night had only just begun.

After Rob and Co.’s set was over, some of the crowd dispersed with me to Winterland in east Bremerton. We had no idea what was going on there, but Eric likes the place, so we go. I initially left my flash in the car, being mostly intent on finding nothing beyond strong drink, but something in the scene seemed sinister from the moment we leave that car.

 

…there they were. THE THEM

We stumble through a wall of acrid, choking fog, to the nearly unhinged front door. Pushing our way in, our minds are immediately assaulted by grim echoes coming from the adjoining room. Something violent was happening in there. Something savage. I skip the bar initially (but I’ll be back) and venture into the gloom to see what horrible fate awaited my brave but doomed friends.

And there they were. The Them.

At first they’re a little hard to make out in the morbid green glow of the stage lights, but their effect cannot be ignored. The mind imagines ravenous carnivores circling the fresh corpse of some poor unfortunate animal that wandered too close. Christmas lights hang mockingly over the stage, a futile reminder of an innocence you are about to lose. Instruments of doom flail wildly, sweat and God knows what else spatter the walls. The room is being Punished. My first instinct is to flee, but after a moment of weakness I collect my wits just long enough to frantically gather my equipment and try to Tell The Story.

I bravely re-enter the brutal din, camera in hand this time, stopping for a moment to consider how it might be used as a weapon. But there will be no hope against these brutes with martial force. They’re in complete control here, all I can hope to do is try to avoid provoking them.

The spectacle comes to a crashing end as suffering guitars collide in a screeching avalanche of jagged decibels. The room is overcome and bodies fall lifelessly to the floor. To this day, no one knows exactly what took place. Just that something… some evil, has happened here. Through the waves of fear and dark memories, hazy images float just out of reach. Only the thundering roar in my ears remains mercilessly clear.

Authorities have surely been alerted to this nightmarish scene by now, they can’t be far away. Nothing this depraved and atavistic can go undetected for long. At least not in this town.

After the carnage, I had drinks with the survivors until the fear subsided. I also got a sticker.

-c

 

Recall

The whole Toyota Death Car scare stinks like the public face of some wider move at freaking the shit out of us for fun and profit.

And of course that means mostly profit. So who’s paying the bills on this one?  CNN and other scavangers have taken what sounds like a few freak misshaps and tortured it into The Fall Of The Import Car Maker. Breathless reports of cars driving off by themselves, with your credit cards, running up massive bills at seedy hotels and implicating you in federal crimes…  It’s Troubling, we’re assured.

The main evidence of the New Troubling news is a rumor that a Prius in Japan had maybe once lost a little breaking power. No other details are given. Just. Troubling.

Now here in the US, we’re likely to ignore any hint of a rumor of bad news about our own cars, until some asshole actually sets one on fire.  But it looks like the the press is really excited about humping this one, without a lot of meat to show. No real problem, as the whole mess is the doing of those treacherous Japanese, who violently persist in remaining foreign. Talking heads bravely betray only a hint of glee in thier Deep Concern.

That’s what’s causing the foul reek of this story, the stink of enthusiasm I see in the reporters going after dribbles of facts, with the kind of energy that only comes from upstairs.

Nah, it’s probably nothing. I’m sure we won’t hear any more about terrifying defects turning Rill Americans into burnt toast, and I’m positive it won’t be blamed on (… let’s see, who’s next, Hyundai?) car companies with ethnic names. But seriously, who’d want one anyway? Why, just looking at the News Box right now, I can plainly see the virtues of buying a Cadillac. They must be safe, and the honest folks at CNN must agree, if they show so many of those darn GM ads.

So forget it, I say. Keep driving that Toyota.

If you dare.

-c

The Tyranny of Typewriters

An internal combustion engine is a hideous thing.

It’s basically a container for an explosion of toxic fuel that produces a noxious gas, the energy of which is converted into torsional motion.  We created it to power, among other things, personal conveyances known as automobiles.

To hide the ugly, noisy business that a motor does, we begin by burying it deep in the body work of cars.  There, it can remain ugly or be covered by a piece of plastic, but generally we don’t care.  If we get a little more creative, we give the motor a good coat of paint and cover it with pretty chrome bits.  Take it a little further, and we might create a smaller conveyance to showcase the beauty of the artful job we think we’ve done at hiding that violent process.  This is called a motorcycle, and it might be the pinnacle expression of our cunning skill at prettying-up and taming that oily, filthy combustion process.  Some may even revel in the loud ugliness and create a totemistic temple for it.  This is called a dragster.

But in the end, all of this is done to accomplish one simple thing – move a human from here to there. We may tack on all kinds of ornament and flair, but only because we have to and we can, and it’s our nature as a creative, expressive species.  We do this to make the intrusion of technology into our lives more palatable and compatible with our minds and bodies.

Cars have evolved to solve these problems in as many ways as are practically and financially possible, but we haven’t quite figured out how to move each other around without brining hundreds or thousands of pounds of metal, plastic, and oil along with us.

Computers have had a similar evolutionary process in terms of interface design. The Reason for a computer is to help us organize and work with data.  The motor is the CPU, and it does hideously complex calculations at mind bending speeds in order to serve, store and manipulate that data based on our input, but it’s still just another bit of machinery in the chain that connects our minds with our data.  Most of us can’t talk directly to a CPU, so we create code and pictures to help us translate 1’s and 0’s into things we can cope with.  On top of that processor and software, there is a chain of machines that get that data to our eyes and hands.  The state of the modern desktop computer is a study in the tradeoffs we have had to make within the limitations of those machines.

So what’s the best kind of computer?  Well, the simplest kind.  The kind that makes the route from my brain to my interaction with data as short as it can possibly be, and stays out of my way as it does so.

Up until now, the ways in which we’ve had to reach that data have been largely mechanical, with mice and keyboards adding a layer of abstraction between the user and the actual application data.  The problem with computer design has been that these interface problems have been solved indirectly, with more and more complicated pieces of machinery inserted between the user and their data to cover up the ugliness of the technology.  A mouse sits on your desk, but it really represents a pointer that is floating in space in front of you.  This is a convenience over trying to place a pointer with a keyboard, but its still an abstraction that physically divides the user from the work being done.  The keyboard/mouse barrier is inherited from the typewriter paradigm that has largely shaped our conception of how we should communicate with computers since computers were invented.

But now this model is changing, and it’s changing fast.  Suddenly we’ve found a new kind of interface in our lives – touchscreen technology, and more specifically, multi-touch interfaces.  This is a major shift away from the gadget-chain, and one that has the ability to revolutionize how we talk to our machines.

Take photography for instance. I learned photography long before digital cameras existed in any consumer sense, and in my many years of working with film, enlargers, light tables, matte cutters, etc, I never once thought that it might be fun to edit my photos on a typewriter.  Yet that’s what we all do now.  We do everything on a typewriter every single day, and we do it because the problem of human interface has been stuck on the typewriter-gadget-chain concept for everything.  Computers may come in many shapes and sizes, but they follow the same paradigm of a typewriter with a big bit that we look at and a little critter that we push around to point at things.

Why should this paradigm apply to photography?  Or graphic design or painting?  Or 3D modeling or engineering?

It doesn’t have to, and it looks like it might be ending very soon.  When data is sprung from the shackles of the desktop typewriter model it will be free to be used in more direct, efficient ways, instead of forcing us to carry around something as ergonomically nightmarish as, for instance, a laptop.

The iPad isn’t the answer to all this, but it’s the next step on the right road to an answer. It remains to be seen how big of a step, but the road itself is clear – data will be moving closer to our fingers and our minds, and the mechanical barriers will continue to diminish until they no longer force us to adapt to uncomfortable, inefficient, repetitive motions.

Imagine what we’ll be able to do when those barriers are gone.

-c

The Next iMac…

…might look like this. (artist’s concept)

That is, if Apple’s recent patent drawings are any indication.  But I don’t think it will.  More on that later.

What makes this artist’s concept interesting is that it appeared in a MacLife article back in May of 2008, more than a year and a half before anyone officially saw Apple’s new tablet.  Which looks not entirely unlike this:

…which is the other artist’s concept that appeared in that MacLife article a year and a half ago.
Sure, the iPad doesn’t run desktop Mac OS X like that, but otherwise I find it hauntingly familiar.  This seems to lead some people to believe the first image may be equally prescient.  Maybe…


But hang on here – let’s look at that first image again.  So.. you’re saying I’d have this big iMac monitor on my desk, and I’m going to tuck away half-again that much potential display by stashing my iPad inside?  That seems like an idiotic waste of screen real-estate.  If I’ve got a perfectly good 10″ LCD, I dont want to waste it like that. I have access to plenty of space and power, so there is no reason to hide my touchy* just so you can make it look like a Decepticon.

Just give me…

A BIG IPAD WITH A HORIZONTAL DOCK.

I think there’s more of a chance we’ll see something like this – a big tablet on an easel, with maybe a base like a Mac Mini.  The screen lifts off and essentially becomes a 20″ iPad.  When docked in the cradle, it acts just like any other desktop Mac, and runs full OS X.  When lifted fro the cradle, the UI changes into something more task-oriented like the iPhone OS.  Mobile versions of apps take over.
Instead of hiding the tablet inside, It’ll dock right on my keyboard so I can still use it.
That is my prediction.  Keep in mind, I have been drinking.

-c
(*see Computer Lexicon)

Puerto Vallarta, Jalisco, Mexico

1.16.10 — These are my notes from the Mexico trip with Jenn, Patty, and Shane in December of 2008.  They’re very lightly edited for clarity and comedy, but they’re essentially my raw daily iPhone notes.  I had some grand idea of writing a short book based on them, and I still might.  More likely I’ll just add some raving nonsense.  The trip wasn’t the lost weekend I’d fantasized about.  There was more fear and little loathing, but I’d brought a lot of that with me.  There was tons of love and crazy fun.  The overhead was a nightmare thanks to the snow and pet factors.
I’ve been sitting on this for over a year because I wanted to get the images done.  Which I have not done.  Because I hate them.  Trying to plow through them anyway.  Publishing my notes was an exercise to illicit interest and motivation from the rest of my brain.  It remains to be proven a success.  -c

*  *  *

Sabado – arrived after 9, very tired, got room service and crashed.

Domingo – presentation, Josh was an asshole, villa del palmar flamingo was beautiful but small, spent the day on the beach drinking, bought a fishee and got earrings, sleepy time on bus.  Had a marginal dinner at the hotel and bought groceries, then hot tub and pool.

Lunes – breakfast buffet at hotel, took Centro to downtown, flea market. Looked at junk and was encouraged to buy it. Repeat. Bought tequila and got roped into another presentation, Had wonderful lunch and then more shopping on island, I’m getting tired by now. Back to the hotel for cold pool and hot tub.

Martes – presentation at Grand Mayan – glorious plastic place, great buffet breakfast, spent the day negotiating with Patty and the adorable Paola. Returned to hotel and laid on the beach until it got chilly just before sunset, sandwiches, then more pool/tub, Jenn is tired, up late drinking Damiana with P,S.

Miercoles – up early for city tour from La Leche (the milk.  it looks exactly like you think it does). Cavino was our sherpa. Warned us about all the tourist traps in town, then took us to see them all. We wisely stopped for street food (ceviche- I went back for two times) while Cavino sold jewelry. Saw the church of Guadalupe’s plastic Jesus, The Malecon, old town, and the fucking flea market. Again. Shane learned about deposits. Lost J&P, ran like a giant Celt and eventually found same. Continued on to the ass end of PV, for Tourist Trap drinks. It’s where they filmed Predator.  Well, no, it’s actually right *next* to that in the seriously swankier part.  No 160 peso lunch, thank you, we crave drink and levity. Saw a burro, and a seed fail. Had an Authentic Mexican Experience•. On to Don Crispin tourist distillery for tequilas and another burro. Bought booze that was almost not booze. There are no words to describe the smell of an agave pineapple decomposing in the tropical sun. Back to town for supper at Andale where we gave Jacinto’s ingles a workout with our picky americonish. We didn’t stay for the drag show, but there was a hell of a one.  Some of the stronger production value in old town, frankly.
After dinner, we walked norte thru gay town to a few more outdoor shops, out to the beach along Malecon, back up the island for one last round of mock haggling before jumping on a very full Centro. On board we met a Neew Yokur ra’ two, via “cwawfee”. Note to self-“cruises ah’ sow rushed”. Back to the hotel for pool, only J & S this time as P and I had the task of killing the Cafe. Grilled cheese followed, then a bit of reading and off to bed.

Jueves – we woke later and spent a lazy day drinking in the sun. With nothing to eat. At all. Got burned and dehydrated. What next? How about a booze cruise on the pirate party boat?! What should have been an irritatingly good time became The Voyage From Hell as I managed to toss my non-alcoholic drink into the festive plastic skull toilet early on. Seated in front of The Backstreet Boys, the party kicked up a notch with dinner below decks which, while excellent (cordon bleu for me) was too hot and cramped to stick with – in fact I was vommitty sweaty ill almost immediately. The madness drives me and Jenn back to the deck. Jenn took some time out to take the reins of sea sickness, and recovered just in time for the Aztec fuego ceremony. This inspired me to pay another visit to the skull god and offer what little chicken and noodles I’d managed to digest.  Things were getting good now.  The swashbuckleing finale went on (loudly.  god.  so loudly in my eyestem) without my participation – but it was damned impressive. The Backstreet Boys loved it. Then a bit more dancing. I’m fading fast. Jenn and I cannot wait to get off this boat. Bus the few blocks home with drunk amercans singing Feliz Navidad to tired, unimpressed Mexicans.  Open, but very polite and weirdly amusing, mockery.  Just icing on the cake of the day. Back to the room, ordered quesadillas (they know us now in room service.  we enjoy beans) and managed to keep them down. This day is finally over.

Viernes – I am tired of this vacation. Up late, light breakfast, took bus to Nuevo, Grand Mayan. Okay… now things are turning around.
The Grand Mayan is where rich Americans stay when they really want to feel like they’re in Mexico. The place is palacial, which is something considering the setting around it. We first hit the lazy river, a sushi boat buffet Made of People. The wave section was clearly a crowd favorite, but only from 1-3.  Fun level at break-even. I think this was where I got so totally sick of the word “mojito”. We perfected our high-speed landing techniques on the Mayan water slide. I wonder if they would have given up human sacrifice if they could have slid wildly down the sides of their pyramids on inner tubes.  Had a reasonable lunch at Samba. Shane’s burger pretty much put the ceviche to shame. I knew I’d ordered the wrong thing – by now I’m bloody sick of tortillas. After lunch, it was back to the river for another float, then on to the  beach in hopes of catching big waves and the eye of the parasail hombres. Sadly it was not to be, as that ship had only sailed until 3 and we were well into the 5 o’clock hour. The one damn thing I’d come to do… Fuck. So the kids played in the World Wide Wavepool for a bit while I moped on the playa and spent some time with my camera. Nice sunsets. but no clouds to speak of.  Kind of a dull scene.  Talked to a D300 shooter, nice guy. Collected the kids, who have been cavorting with foam like fish for many waves.  Changed, settled the bill and hit the streets looking for our bus home. Had a talk with Jenn about culture. Off the bus,  made a side trip to the (much nicer – remember this) Soriana Market for supplies, then S&P stopped for Gellato. Jenn and I talk more about culture, and the bits of it we can hardly stand much longer.  Breathe.  Back to Villa del Palmar for one last night. Jenn lays on the puzzlingly made-up couch, and I come out to the pool to write this.
Out on the beach, drunken Americans are boozing it up one more time before checking out of our plastic paradiso, shamefully hammered. They slur the words to Let It Snow. The pool is full of newcomers and tired veterans alike, trying to milk that last drop of decadence before the bell rings them back to their other fake realities back home. Will any of us truly wake from this dream? I have one more night to pretend I don’t care.  The kids go to bed, but I’m up.  I borrow Jenn’s brown dress and go to the beach.  I walk north about a mile.  I am exquisitely alone in a gigantic landscape of mountains and city lights.  No shoes.  Warm water.  Have a very intense meta moment.  I feel what it feels like to be in this skin in this world.

Sabado – up early after a sleepless night. Had grilled cheese for breaky and it gave me a tummy. I finally killed that blasted toilet. Take that! We packed up and stowed the gear, parked our bundas on the beach and waited for the parachute man to come.

*  *  *

*  *  *

Puerto Vallarta is glistening below me in the mid day sun. The sounds of the noontime crowd and the waves fade as I climb into a light haze.  The Sierra Madres are my only other companion, stretching their arms around in every direction but west, where the sea meets the sky at a foggy line so far away. I can see groups of rays in the swirlls of turquoise and blue and green. The resorts below team with visible life, except for one.  The one I’m interested in.  An empty hull of an abandoned, or more likely never even finished, tropical paradise.  The slow, slender birds that cruise the shore are nesting there – life after people.  I’m alone here, with the city and the mountains and the sky.  And 600 vertical feet from the nearest human.

*  *  *

The boat turns west and then north again, towing me back to Villa del Palmar, to earth, to my friends, to the last leg of our Journey of Discovery.
Aeropuerto, I’m impatient and it shows when I snap at Jenn. I apologize.  Luckily the line at AA was short and we got an earlier flight. We try to resist 86 peso per slice pizza even though the smell has us aching for home.
On the plane we strike gold – emergency exit row with plenty of leg room and an empty third seat. I know at that moment that this is the most comfortable plane ride I will ever have. The sky is clear and bright, the mountains are beautiful, and there is plenty of interesting geography to study across northern Mexico. Learn more about rock formations near Monterey.  Astounding.  Sadly, the Rio Grande is under clouds so I don’t get to see the moment we repatriate. I get lots of pictures. Our layover in Dallas is unexpectedly short, so there is no time for the liesurely dinner I’d planned.  We rush to the one place that welcomes all Americans home with open McArms. Double Quarter Pounders have never tasted so good, but we won’t be loving them for long. Sadly our connecting flight was not so fortunate with row selection, as we were once again given the seats that would have caused Rosa Parks to start a movement. This was made worse by a strong headwind that added 40 minutes to the flight.
(Jenn – this flight is taking forever. Candy-apple-red is reflecting like the moon in front of me. Young and old Mexico sitting next to us. Guess which one is acting uncomfortable?! As we talk about home I feel the comfort of a relationship with a history.  And a story. Remember these tiny moments. There is much love tonight.)

EPILOGUE

The plane circles for an hour, and lands in a foot of snow.  The airframe lurches laterally in small jerks.  Not much, but deathly alarming enough.  The mind can easily conjure the plane sideways.  We stabilize, and the crowd goes wild. LOUD applause from all on board.  Jenn and I have a Moment.  Relief.  Almost off this damn plane.
It is December 20th, 2008.  Seattle is under many, many inches of snow.  As is the Jetta.  I’m wearing a hoodie and jeans and thin tennies.  Jennifer heroically de-snows the car, using only a towel.  DNA was right!  I warm up car.  We have a long, slow drive home over snow packed highways.  No troubles.

We arrive home to over a foot of snow.  Exhausted.  It takes an hour to get the car out of the road and up the driveway, with a lot of digging and heaving – leaving it in the road isn’t a safe option.  I cannot wait to get in bed.  It’s really early in the morning.

Jack is desperate.  Ivan looks irritated.  Something smells wrong.  Jack has urinated heavily on the bed. My side. Both cats are utterly miserable.  Everything must be stripped and washed.  The mattress has to dry out.  We can’t sleep in here tonight.  I begin crying.  Out to the couch.  Which has also been soaked.  Fuck. Everything.  I stay up all night doing laundry, Jenn sleeps on futon.  Begin to hallucinate.

The snow is falling heavily again.

Happy Christmas – Mexico post-mortem.

Happy Christmas everyone.  I’m back from sunny Mexico to snowed-in Seattle, and I have many pictures and a bit of a story in production.  It was educational.

More soon,

-c

Prop 8, The Musical!

Everyone much watch this right now!!!!