My dear few (very few) blog followers,
During our last class, the weather outside was doing the most peculiar things. It had been raining all day and right when we seemed to have finished talking about Abrams and his book which is casting spells on my mind by blowing it, the sun illuminated the clouds to reveal one of the most beautiful golden hours I have ever been witness to. Its as if all the sudden, the damp, dank grayness of the rain that had characterized the entire day ceased to exist and everything turned golden and majestic. Following my routine, I took a shot of the big tree looking straight up. However, I wasn't very content with it, so I took a video instead which I believe is much more effective to show how cool the rain was.
Large raindrops like these were falling all around me as the large trees above group smaller ones together and then fell. Stumbling around the woods, I came across a tree vagina and butt hole combo. Check it out!
Pretty cool right? So..I lied. I actually did take another picture of the big tree but I had forgotten about it. It's below. I think this picture is cool because it emphasizes how complex and old the bark of this tree is.
Pretty sunsets in every direction. I was completely overwhelmed. This is one of my sunset pictures below though it does not even come close to defining how freakin awesome the light was. There are some things that are just impossible to encompass in a photograph.
Booger Fungi below. (Also could have better depth of field)
The fungi is taking over!! Fungi for everyone!
So many droplets of water hanging from so many tree limbs and leaves, suspended for moments on end until they gain enough mass that the limb cannot support it any longer and it falls to the ground.
This is my most stunning sunset picture because it truly captures the different shades of color in the sky.
Last week after our phantasmagoric show in the sky, we had two guest speakers, one a Fabio (I am kinda disappointed cause I was expecting the real Fabio) and San Fuchess. They both talked about strategies that they used to get employed and their businesses started after they had graduated. However, while they put on a front that what they considered success to be was other things like a wife and kids and a house (Sam Fuchess) it was obvious what they really thought made success was how much money you could make. They both emphasized the horrible condition that the economy was in and stressed this point to us (it was kinda depressing). Both are "successful" businessmen in common terms (as in they made a good amount of money) as Sam is a businessman with a few businesses and Fabio is a successful photographer mostly of furniture.
There are certainly a few things that I took away from their talk after reflecting on what they had said to me. Sam, coming from a lower class family, had almost flunked out of high school and had a kid before he entered Guilford College. Therefore, he was living in pretty rough conditions before he became what he is today, and that part of his life surely motivated him to pursue making more money. Fabio came to America from Brazil as a student. He did not mention much else about his past before Guilford but I believe I could make a fair assumption that, like Sam, he was not in a very good condition financially before he attended Guilford College.
Throughout their speech, they certainly embraced and had high hopes for achieving the "American Dream" and they even referenced this a few times.
Comparing this to myself I find many differences. I have divorced parents but both of them have remarried and are certainly upper middle class status. Therefore, things have come much easier for me in my life before Guilford College than it did come for Sam or Fabio. Due to this and some other of my beliefs, I still will not be taking a sales position at some mall for experience in the real world as Sam has suggested.
First off, I don't believe in the American Dream. Not only that, I don't believe in America or much of what it stands for. I embrace the way that America has allowed me to live my life but also look at how America has put my fellow people in much worse conditions, much for my well being as a middle upper class white heterosexual male. As Van Jones said, people have blind spots or rough spots. In my case I have blind spots all around me. So embracing this, I like to think in the big picture of things.
I would rather die of hunger on the streets in rags, vomit and my own feces, than take any position as an employee in any large-ish corporation as a salesman. This comes from my hatred of capitalism in our modern day world. I don't think that Capitalism was always a bad thing but it has long since reared its ugly head and needs much reform in our modern day world.
Therefore, picking a job for myself, I don't give a flying fuck what I will be making salary wise. Rather, I care about what I will be doing in my job and how that effects the world around me. If I was a salesman at Dick's Sporting Goods as a random example (don't mean to pick on Dick's but as a manly man I ain't gonna be workin at no Belk's). As a salesman, I would be selling products most likely that were manufactured by places such as maquiladoras or sweat shops around the world where Dick's or other companies send the materials and then pays super cheap wages to the labor that goes into making them and then sends them back to America where they put them on the racks for a much higher cost than what went into actually making them, inflated by the costs that it took big Dick's (no pun intended) to ship them there to the sweatshops and back to the states. Furthermore, it is these maquiladoras and sweat shops that end up taking over small cities and villages outside of the U.S. where no other income or sustainable way of living is possible and forces the people that live their into poverty.
Therefore Mr. Funchess, I'm sorry, but I will not participate in the business world so that I can continue the exploitation of millions of people not as privileged as us white heterosexual Americans.
While that was quite a bashing rant, I do not mean to sound like I absolutely hated Sam and Fabio and everything they said to me. Quite the contrary, I respect where they are coming from and what they have done in their lives. I actually took an important lesson away that they both emphasized during the speech. This was the will to be assertive in whatever you do as a career. This is SUCH a huge lesson that I have already learned about through some mistakes I have made in my life. Calling someone is the hardest step to take but the step that will get you the most exposure. Therefore Mr. Fab and Funchess, I will not be a shy person in the "real world".
As for my future in the "real world" I foresee myself pursuing a career via social work and capturing my experiences through my love of photography. Whether that means joining the Peace Corps, doing another year of AmeriCorps, both, or becoming a teacher, I will certainly be helping disadvantaged people and documenting it all with my Rebel Xti SLR.
Looking back on all this, I hope I am not being naive as I have been a middle upper class citizen my whole life and do not know what it is like to not have that. However, shouldn't that empower me more to be more sustainable and happy with what I have through the rest of my life? Especially since I notice the bigger picture of being a businessman in a major corporation here in America.
...As a side note, I still haven't talked about Spell of the Sensuous but I will be sure to reference it more in my next journal entry...
But for the time being...More visual candy!
For my photoshop picture of the week, I couldn't decide between three different ones. I am finding the strangest and most gorgeous things in nature and turning them around in order to see them in a completely different way/ 4 different ways. I hope you all enjoy!
NICE photos
ReplyDeleteThanks Matt!
ReplyDelete