Sporadic, Aimless

Friday, November 3, 2006

Approaching Dust Storm - Flickr Connected


Approaching Dust Storm
Originally uploaded by Matthew Jolly.

As you can see, I've got the link to Flikr working. I've had a great deal of fun today uploading photos, tagging them, titling them, describing them. It will be wonderful to have this public archive--I hope that the current trend in free tools continues, and that we (as a group of people) continue to critically evaluate the roll and worth of such incredibly open appraoches to digital (intellectual) property.

Anyway (enough philosoblabba), the photo to the right was taken during an approaching dust storm, and what was particularly incredible about the experience was the amazing and complex contrast between the blue sky beyond the mountain and the darkness sweeping in on top of us. Lauren and I were at IKEA when the storm came up, and I remember walking through the parking lot with the wind pushing the carts around, and my hair.

Dust storms during monsoon are pretty common (July - late August) and people tend to shrug their shoulders, but on this particular day there were a number of neighbors out in the street, pointing at the sky, smiling, and in awe. Phoenix is an indoor culture--too hot most of the year to be where it is not air-conditioned--and so it's nice to see neighbors out of their houses, approximating 'community' more completely than simply being a cluster of houses next to a mountain.

Tuesday, October 31, 2006

Old Friends and I Never Call

I have old friends that I miss often, and that I never call (out of some strangeness). But I often look them up online and find out what they’re doing. Adam Golaski was published in McSweeney’s, I bought a copy and I’m incredibly happy for him--the work is beautiful and I feel honored to have seen early versions of the series from which the poems are taken. Sam Chuparkoff has added a couple more posts to some programmers’ message boards in a language that I don’t understand. Mary Speaker is back in New York after graduating from Indiana, and she’s a curator for the reading series called reading between a and b, which I’d attend if I lived anywhere near it. Gregory Alkaitis Carafelli has returned from Iceland, where he took some incredibly beautiful pictures that will be in a gallery in Philadelphia in less than a week. I don’t know where Andy Brown is—his name is too common to search for on Google. This is some very strange behavior, I know, but perhaps by posting to these places, some of my old friends have discovered me and are content to know I’m still here, breathing and thinking about them.