Not to harp or anything, but I actually poached eggs! Okay, so I totally cheated and used these…

We ate them for a quick weeknight dinner over sauteed mushrooms, garlic and spinach with (fake) sausage, a rustic baguette from La Farine and a glass of wine and they. were. perfect.

YUM!

If you’re having a rough day week month, might I recommend sleeping in late on a Saturday, pouring coffee into a thermos, grabbing your darling husband and spending the day winding through small towns on backcountry roads, tasting red zinfindels & syrahs straight out of the barrel and chatting with winemakers at tiny wineries before climbing up a hill to a round red barn, sitting on the edge and watching the sun set over the hills?

It worked for me.

Subject: blog

Just in case you were wondering, your last post was January 19th.

Whoops! Sorry about that. Let’s check in on my 26 before 26 progress, shall we? I’ve done quite a bit, but have much more to do…

1. Launch an online portfolio

DONE!  It has lots of newer work I haven’t shown here (bad blogger!). Take a look, tell me what you think.

2. Take a Spanish class with Steve
3. Write 10 9 8 love letters longhand, snail-mail them

Got delayed with this at the beginning because of course I decided I needed to make my own personalized stationary to write on. Then decided I needed to make personalized stationary for F to go with the love letter that I was writing her. This paragraph pretty much sums up why everything takes me forever.  But I am absolutely loving this. Maybe you’re next!

4. Find an old card catalog, alter it

I think I may have changed this to an old record table, which I found on craigslist for $20 and plan to convert into the world’s most awesome record table/bar. Is there a better combination of functions for a piece of furniture? I think not (blame Mad Men).

5. Conceive/create a ttv photography series

See: Portfolio!

6. Read Infinite Jest

Talked G into doing this with me.  He’s been “setting up a reading schedule” for a month now. Maybe some public shaming will move the whole thing along? AHEM.

7. Set up an Etsy shop
8. Plan a camping trip with friends

Waiting to snag a spot at the Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park. I missed the last opening of the schedule, but I am ready for the next one.

9. Set up automatic charity contributions

DONE! We have monthly, automatic donations set up with  Doctors Without Borders and the Alameda County Community Food Bank.

10. Begin an artistic collaboration

Shoot, I forgot about this one and haven’t made any progress. Anyone want to collaborate with me on something awesome? Seriously?

11. Learn to properly poach an egg

I am doomed to fail at this over and over. Yes, I have tried some vinegar in the water (result: still-a-mess eggs, now with not-so-subtle vinegar flavor!). Yes, I have tried the whirlpool method (result: much hilarity! no poached eggs). Am considering giving up and purchasing these silicon egg poachers. Will that make me a sellout? Please say no! Life is too short for vinegar-y eggs.

12. See an active volcano

DONE! On our honeymoon. Last August. Where we stayed at the base of an active volcano and saw lava flowing. Where we also hiked to the top of a (mercifully non-active) volcano, and spent a whole day at the hot springs COMPLETELY BY OURSELVES. I have no idea why I haven’t written about Costa Rica… I will do so soon, promise.

14. Drinks at the Den, show at the Fox

DONE!

15. Walk across the Golden Gate Bridge, alone
16. Visit Vancouver with girlfriends

I think this might actually become Portland this year. Yes? Ladies?

17. Create a mixed-media piece

DONE! Absolutely loved it and am planning more. Maybe I’ll share some here if they ever get non-terrible.

18. Go see the Raiders play
19. Host a monthly Sunday potluck dinner

Our first Sunday potluck will happen this month and will be brunch. It will involve many of my favorite things, including, but not limited to: coffee, bloody marys, stinking bishop cheese, acme bread, the Sunday Times and probably this. If you live near me, your invitation is coming shortly. Please come, I promise not to serve you vinegar-y eggs.

20. Pickle something
21. Go to Nightlife at the California Academy of Science

DONE! It was the perfect date. Martinis + planetarium show + aquarium + rainforest + sharks = nerdtastic genius.

22. Wreck a journal
23. Join the darkroom studio
24. Say marriage vows

DONE!

25. Do 10 real push-ups in a row

Am thinking I should’ve made this a life goal, not a 26 before 26….

26. Submit work to a gallery/show

1) I’ve been reading a lot of Madeleine L’Engle’s non-fiction lately. And by a lot, I mean I think I’ve read two of her books in the last 10 days or so and I’ve started on a third (obsessive personality + kindred spirit, what can I say?) I came across this passage on Sunday and it was just exactly what I needed to hear. (Does this ever happen to you? You’re inexplicably drawn to something and it makes no sense and then later it hits you square between the eyes and then you wonder why you can’t ever learn to just trust that your heart pulls in the right direction?)(Just me, then?)

From Circle of Quiet, by Madeleine L’Engle. “My husband is my most ruthless critic. Tallis runs him a close second. Sometimes he will say, ‘It’s been said better before.’  Of course. It’s all been said better before. If I thought I had to say it better than anybody else, I’d never start. Better or worse is immaterial. The thing is that it has to be said; by me; ontologically. We each have to say it, to say it our own way. Not of our own will, but as it comes out through us. Good or bad, great or little: that isn’t what human creation is about. It is that we have to try; to put it down in pigment, or words, or musical notations, or we die.”

2) Chimamanda Adichie: The danger of a single story  I listened to this TED talk yesterday (another of my obsessions! TED talks!)(yes, it appears I’ve become one of those people who reads non-fiction and listens to talks on the weekend aka my past self’s definition of a horribly boring grown-up)(Dear past self, if it helps soothe your disappointment, I also went to Cirque du Soleil! And made hot cocoa on the stove for movie night with the neighbors! And ate a lot of raw cookie dough, salmonella be damned!)  

Anyways, this was the perfect andidote to what I was feeling in the face of the very singluar ”Looters with Machetes” story currently coming out of Haiti. You should listen to it.

My one heirloom sat in the living room of my childhood home – a hope chest (for my dowry!)(actual dowry Steve received from my mother: endless supply of worries about if his coat is warm enough for the weather) that has been passed down to the first woman in each generation in my family. When I was younger, it always looked like just another old thing in a house full of old things, and I was 13 before I discovered that it held much more exciting treasures – my mother’s old vinyl collection.

My mama and I opened the chest one rainy day, pulling out John Denver and Joni Mitchell and the Moody Blues, her waxing poetic about parties in her apartment in Boston, where they sat on pillows for lack of furniture and drank bottles of wine and played loud games of Pit and listened to record after record late into the night.

We kept some of the records out and many of my Saturday afternoon sleep-ins were interrupted by the first hisses of Ladies of the Canyon cranked all the way up. I’d stumble out and give my mom a bleary-eyed glare and she’d chirp Oh, is it too loud? Sorry about that, well now that you’re up….

I loved the depth and rawness of the music that came out of our speakers, the range of tone, but most of all I loved that it sounded so real, like actual people were singing and playing instruments – tiny gaffes and all. You can laugh, but as a child of the auto-tune generation, this was a revelation.

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All I want to do is shoot with old cameras. I’m obsessed. I triptumble around – head shoved down into patchworked black tubes, strangers peering discreetly, trying to figure out if I’m crazy…Is that some sort of metal detector? Why are you taking pictures of the ground?

Even photographers often don’t understand – there’s so much great technology out there, why would I tie my own hands by working with equipment that was last hot in 1950 and a method that is unwieldy at best and impossible at worst? Where everything is backwards, and I have to stand on a chair to get a straight on shot and where light leaks in and getting perfect exposure is a comedy of errors?

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This Christmas while back in the Midwest, I sat cross-legged at my hope chest again. My Mom hadn’t been through her records in years and each one made her gasp as she remembered where she got it, where she listened to it, who it reminded her of. We sat with piles strewn about the floor and she sighed and said, you don’t understand, this is my LIFE.

Steve and I boxed them up greedily.

At my in-laws, we sat in the basement, going through box after box. My father-in-law has been a collector for most of his life and we didn’t even make it through all of his boxes — it was too much for one trip — and he said, take whatever you want, take them all, I just want them listened to.

We found a map to his old girlfriend’s house drawn on the White Album.

Steve kept freaking out about the music – oh, THIS album, ohmygod, I cannot wait to listen to this. And I was excited too, but mostly I just could not get over the photographs on the album covers. This Mason Proffit album, in particular. This photo really struck me (I can’t find the back, but you’ll have to trust me, it makes it even more awesome) and man, if you put that photo on flickr now and asked for feedback, you would hear things looks like some of the faces are blacked out – maybe use a fill light next time? and this is really nice, but could use some sharpening and why is there so much noise, try running noiseware? The people who give this kind of feedback mean well – they’re telling you the things that are wrong with the photo and trying to make it better, trying to help you perfect your art.

And that’s what I was doing for so long, listening to that feedback (both internal and external), striving to take more perfect photographs – sharper, more saturated, composition lined up right along the grid of threes.

I did this despite all evidence that everything I truly love is deeply flawed.

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Our new turntable arrived yesterday. Our neighbor rescued it from the FedEx guy and hollered over our fence. She came over and I connected cords and we drank wine and there was a knock at the door from another neighbor who had wandered over after hearing rumors that we had records and then another and we finally got it all set up and put on the Moody Blues.

We sat around until late into the night, opening albums, discovering hilarious line notes and other treasures, listening to the pops and hisses of record after record.

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I’ve thought a lot over the last year about the kind of art that I love, the kind that I want to create, the kind I want to leave with the world. And here’s what I’ve realized – the art that speaks to me often does so through its flaws. I love the blurred faces and the hard grain and the faded coloring of that Mason Proffit photograph. They are technical imperfections, but they are also what make it interesting.

This is a rather difficult revelation to have in the age when HDR and hyper-saturation and unnatural sharpness and other means of perfecting nature are what a lot of people think make a photograph good.

But I’ve slowly stopped caring so much about how things will be perceived, stopped trying so hard to make my photographs perfect and focusing on making them more interesting, and started seeing their flaws as my stamp – proof that a human participated in the creation of this art, that this is what makes it mine.

And I’ve finally started making art that I’m proud of.

Did you have Happy Holidays, Internet? I hope yours were as full of family, friends and insane amounts of mashed potatoes as mine were.

I’ve never been a huge New Year’s person. I tend to do my soul-searching and goal-making on my birthday (which reminds me, I owe you an update on my 26 before 26 progress, yes?)

But for the first time, I’m a bit sad to see a year go. This year will of course always be the year I married that one dude – part of our anniversary date forevermore. But it was also our first full year in Oakland. The first year I really started liking the photographs I was creating. The first year I started calling myself an artist, no buts or qualifiers.

The first year I felt like I was really, truly home in so many ways.

And yet? 2010 is poised to be even better. I’m feeling settled, and happy – the perfect position from which to take on the world.

Happy New Year!