Visual Journal week 6

Visual Journal Week 5 (Holy shit it's week 5 already?!?!?!)

To start off the week, the rope swings are dead...

If you can't quite see them in this picture, the Guilford College administration has once again cut down the rope swings thus ceasing the natural endorphin releases in the brains of many Guilford College students.  While the lament I feel for the loss of these two swings is indescribable through words, I do not solely blame the Guilford College administration for snipping my two favorite ropes in the world.  Instead I also place blame on America for its silly liability lawsuits.  

When I was in Mexico, I would frequently visit a park called Los Colomos.  The park was humongous and in the very center you could pay 60 pesos (roughly $5) to ride a horse for an hour.  Never having ridden a full grown horse to my memory, I eagerly wanted to try so I approached an hombre about it and he gave me one of his horses to ride.  He told me to hop on up (which I struggled mightily in doing) and he asked for 60 pesos and told me to go on my way.  "Well excuse me"I told him, "I have no idea how to ride this thing."  He gave me a brief instruction and said to scram.  There I was riding a horse without a helmet, not having to sign any paperwork, just simply hop on gimme 60 pesos and hasta luego!  

I believe that in simply living your life you have to know that there is a chance that random bad things may happen to you that hurt you or kill you.  If you do something like swing on a rope swing or ride a horse, you have to naturally keep in mind that you are putting your life at risk because there is a small chance that the rope could snap or that bronco might go loco.  Do I need to sign a waiver just to simply walk outside knowing that theres a chance that an asteroid might pummel me in the nogin?  Hell no!  Liability laws not only allow people to unjustly take money from others but take the fun out of simple things.  No wonder we have such a thing like liability in America.  

So basically, as most of my long rants end up, Fuck America, Cause I want my damn rope swings back.  

Visual Journal Week 4

This week in Maia's wonderful class, we got super lucky and Wednesday happened to be the one day that was in the 60's!  We had our class by the big tree as usual and we talked about the speakers.  I conveyed my feelings about them (mostly what I shared in my journal the previous week) and that really got the class into the topic and we all had a good conversation.  Afterwards, the almighty Maia granted us a whole whopping hour to do our Visual Journals.  Good thing I remembered my tripod! I took advantage of this time to wander a different way than I had done so before.  The previous times I had gone south/south west from the big tree.  This time I mixed it up by going North and then North East.  Because the day was so lovely, the moss was really booming so I focused on that for a lot of my pictures.  

Within this one picture, there is an entire Amazon Rainforest.  If you were a small insect or organism, this one picture could capture the entire space in which you travel for your entire life.  There are jungles upon jungles of moss growing around the forest and these Jungles are the homes to many tiny organisms and they only know their little crop of moss.  

Stumbling around some more...OUCH! I ran into a huge briar patch!  Look at the size of that thorn!

I wonder why this plant felt the need to have so many thorns.  Like what does it have that is so precious that it feels the need to do that?  That's all I got about these thorns.  

Once again, this dead tree that I found on the ground was now covered in moss.  I like thinking about what if one of those strands of moss were three times my size?  This thing would be as epic as the grand canyon! Like a jungle grand canyon.  

So after I thinking about how cool moss would be as a tiny organism and getting stuck by some thorns, I stumbled upon one of the most peculiar things I have ever seen in the Guilford woods.  It's shown in the picture below.  I will let you all take a guess about what it is first.  

This a dead cat in mid decomposition.  There were 4 similar cages to this one with cats in different stages of their return to the earth.  Turns out it's an experiment being conducted by the forensic science department at Guilford.  This cat was the one that most still looked like a cat.  Being in the presence of these decomposing cats and considering my undying love for felines, it was hard to stomach.  (not just the smell but the fact that they were dead and they are kitties)  The tag on the top of one of the cages assured that these cats were found dead and then used for the project.  Looking at this picture now and reflecting on this experience, I can't help but think back to two books I have been reading.  One, for this class, (which I actually should have mentioned a long time ago but haven't had the room to include it quite yet) is called the "Spell of the Sensuous" by David Abram.  However, I would like to reference the other book first which is called "the Miracle of Mindfullness" by Thich Nhat Hanh.  In his book he talks about the way we should view death....Well it seems I left that book at home.  I am still gonna leave this here as a reminder because I will put this in here eventually.  BUT, anyhoo, I do have "Spell of the Sensuous"!!!  In Abram's book he philosophizes about perception and other things and of these things he mentions death.  After referring to the way that some tribal cultures view death he explains that "at death the body's decomposition into soil, worms, and dust can only signify the gradual reintegration of one's ancestors and elders into the living landscape, from which all, too, are born." (15) He then talks about the many different forms that peoples bodies, when dead, rejoin the earth and nature.  Of these forms he mentions cremation and burial but also that some tribes dismember the body and leave the parts in certain locations where animals will find them and eventually eat them.  He writes: "Such examples illustrate simply that death, in tribal cultures, initiates a metamorphosis wherein the person's presence does not "vanish" from the sensible world (where would it go?) but rather remains as an animating force within the vastness of the landscape, whether subtly, in the wind, or more visibly, in animal form, or even as the eruptive ever to be appeased, wrath of the volcano. 'Ancestor worship,' in its myriad forms, then, is ultimately another mode of attentiveness to nonhuman nature; it signifies not so much an awe or reverence of human powers, but rather a reverence for those forms that awareness takes when it is not in  human form, when the familiar human embodiment dies and decays to become part of the encompassing cosmos." (16)  Reading all this has made me think about death and nature in a completely different manner, pondering upon this cycle of death and then reintegration back into nature where life then becomes possible for something else.   Hypothetically speaking, when my great great great great great great grandfather died and was buried into the ground, his body decomposed and helped give nutrients to a berry bush.  That berry bush was a really healthy berry bush and it fed 4 bears, 24 squirrels, 9 rabbits, and 24 birds.  After all these animals at my supergreatgrandfathers berry bush, they all had to go poop and so there was a lot of poop because so many animals had eaten those berries.  Therefore, that poop helped 34 oak trees grow, 4 apples trees, 2 more berry bushes, and 45 maple trees.  On top of that, 6 of those rabbits eventually got eaten by coyotes, 19 of those squirrels were food for cats, and one of those bears got shot down by some old ass redneck that was able to feed his family all winter with that bear.  So, without getting even more elaborate, all the energy of every human being that has ever existed on this planet has contributed to the nutrients and growth of many other organisms.  While this stuff all seems kinda obvious, I now realize that life and death are of the same coin: just as I eat and get nutrients from nature, I will soon become the nutrients for some other organism.  Therefore, when we cut down a tree to make into non recyclable paper, burn fossil fuel into CO2, or do any other  irreversible harm to nature, we are killing the last remnants of our ancestors.  Thinking about all this, I now feel honored that one day I will die and my body will be sucked back into the earth (whether through animals eating my body or the decomposition of my body, etc.) to give energy to other living organisms, so that my bodies energy will live through nature forever.  

That's all I want to say about this for now.  

Stumbling around the woods for a while longer, I came across a fallen cedar tree.  Mmmmmm I love the smell of that cedar! I cracked a branch off just so I could take a big ol' whiff!  I love the red shade of the insides.

A good friend of mine and a fellow photographer once said to me that "I am so over taking mediocre pictures of the Guilford woods.  There's just nothing that compelling out there anymore." At the time, I agreed with her, but recently I have been finding the hidden pennies within the woods.  You can stumble through the woods taking pictures of random things, or you can consciously and carefully take each step and examine every little thing around you till you find something that just blows your mind away if you capture it at a certain angle.  I'm glad I have found those pennies again.  

Dis' is da headies!   Purple moss.  

Each week I have been trying to get one shot of at least one of my fellow IDSer's.  This week, I stumbled across Molly Spadone, an art major, who was drawing in her visual journal.  

Facing Molly was a tire swing that I had never seen before in my whole 5 years at Guilford.  She told me that she and the famous Yuri Woodstock had created it.  Though it wasn't that big, it was really cool to see and got me thinking that maybe I will start to pursue tire swings instead of rope swings (since the rope swings recently got cut down...more on that later)

Like I said earlier, there are infinite gems in the Guilford woods.  You just need to know where to look. This is the side of a fallen tree.   

I came across this stream and, while it was already pretty dark, I took this shot with the intention of letting the moving parts of it be blurred (with a long shutter speed) and letting the other still water parts show up clear.

After doing this, I realized what made this scene so beautiful couldn't be captured within a picture because it was the sound effect that added to its majestic-ness.  So I took a video of it.  Towards the beginning and the end you may hear some distracting sounds (of me walking to and from the camera) but the middle should convey some of the serene qualities of this scene.  

Is that a centipede? 

Nope it's just a really cool vine.

As I began to walk back (as I was already running late) I looked up in the sky and noticed one of the most beautiful sunsets I had ever seen.  Not bringing my bike with me this time, I ran my ass off to try and capture the lake and sunset at the same time.  It was pretty hard carrying my back pack and tripod while running full sprint but I managed to do it and was rewarded with these amazing pictures.  

This week I have gone to many talks.  One was on Monday night by a lady whose name I can't remember and I can't seem to find it in any of the emails Maia sent me.  However, she was an artist and a curator for a Bank.  She basically was given a bunch of money to buy art with for the bank (pretty cool job).  I didn't really find much of what she said interesting, however, one thing did stick with me.  She said the first thing we should do right out of college is start a 401K or some other type of account.  After Spending a week with my dear friends Michael and Irene Stoll who I consider successful in every definition of the word, this is also something they stressed to me.  Since I am a mere college student working for AmeriCorps, I don't have any direct income that I can put into a 401K.  However, I did make $100 form my mom doing some financial work this winter break.  While I am now using it as surviving money I am hoping my wonderful Papa will reimburse me for it and start a 401K account for me with the mere $100.  (hint, hint)

I've ran out of steam this week despite the fact that I still have much more to say.  Below are my photoshop pictures of the week.  Hope you enjoy them!

Visual Journal Week 3

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.  

The moss was out of control.  Literally.  I put this picture in for a couple reasons.  The first is to emphasize the moss.  Because the woods had been so damp from the rain over the last couple days, the green stuff was everywhere.  The second reason I put this picture here is to hate on myself for a second because this picture has shitty field of view.  This pic would be much better if I had been able to increase my aperture, something that was impossible for me to do unless I had brought my tripod.  I am now convinced that my tripod is ESSENTIAL to my next visual journal.

So, if you have been keeping up with my weekly blog entries (which I am pretty sure only my stepdad, Ross and my teacher Maia do) you will remember me saying that fungus is actually not a plant or an animal but something completely different altogether.  Many plants, animals, and especially humans are unable to share living spaces with each other and constantly resort to conflict and violence as a result.  However, here is three organisms: moss, fungus, and tree, all living together in the very same space.  Us humans could learn a lot from these simple creatures.

I love Fungi Period.

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.

My fellow IDSers Grace Lee and Amy.  They are good at drawing.

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!