mt. aspiration

Little goals or just goals:

Take a picture of someone who is dying.
Buy an orginial photograph by a well known photographer.
Watch the sunrise on the East coast and the sunset on the West coast in the sameday.
Run up a hill and roll down it.
Understand what it means to love fearlessly.
Learn to bake yummy cake.
Cry when I want to.
Carry a backpack on a trail with my bleongings for more than a week.
Smile and laugh more.
Learn about loving and living.
Eat strawberries under a tree.
Create more goals.

These are my aspirations, this is where I am, on mt. aspiration.

Stepping Into the Dark

My hands are still soaked with the smell of developer, stop and fix. For some the smell is awful and hard to live with but for me it is a simple reminder of the joy of being in the darkroom. Yesterday I spent 7 hours printing my favorite photographs and although my feet hurt from standing for so long, I walked away with the joy of living my passion.

The darkroom is saturated with analogies that help me understand photography as a way to experience life. You need to go into the dark in order to produce something. You need time and patience to see anything develop. Printing takes an almost scary amount of perfection, yet no matter how hard you try you can always do better. Moments you thought could not be experienced again come back to life. It is a sanctuary from the loud and bright world.

I am still learning a ton about how to develop and print. I am learning to care about my work enough to spend hours on one image. Being in the dark room is humbling, you throw away more prints than you keep and every time I am in there I question every desire I have had to follow my passion. I think I need a passion that will continue to humble me for the rest of my life; I need to love something that will push me to discover more. I love being in the darkroom and knowing that I am at least trying to create, trying to discover and trying to understand more about this beauty called photography.

Ypomoni

"Our prayer this morning is for those tempted to yield to defeat: PRESS ON
Grant them strength to press on.
When our cherished dreams begin to burst
like the children's bubbles blown to the air,
when people of common sense and clear sight,
when doctors and lawyers, specialists, friends and neighbors all cry:
'A good try, but you're through.'
Lord, give us strength to keep on persisting.
Light the fire to press n.

And when the forces are overwhelming-
as in illness or death-
keep our goal ever before us-
defiantly - past every discouragement,
past every surrender of those we love and respect,
give us the mighty power of God to press on
and on
and on.
Through Jesus Christ our Lord, Amen"
-Robert James St. Clair

I am beginning to realize the power of endurance, that God loves us so much He lets us endure. A parent has to let their little guy endure the awkwardness of learning to walk in ski boots, the loneliness of ski bus, they have to let them endure the cold and the falls all for the greater hope that one day they can enjoy the mountain together. Thank you for letting me endure, for giving me this chance to press on, to practice the art of understanding ypomoni.

My Drink

I am addicted to coffee, or maybe just the culture. I think everyone I know has either been a barista, a shareholder in Starbucks or thinks they have their own personal drink that no one else orders. I feel like in Seattle you no longer sit down to a meal to share in conversation, but you sit down to the cup of coffee of your choice. I prefer to share meals, actual meals, not a coffee and a scone. For some reason the concept of coffee just seems to protray a short period of time, rather than a salad, entree and dessert. But for some reason, I still love coffee.

The type of coffee you order also seems to somehow say something about you. You are not going to find a teenager walking into Starbucks and ordering a tall drip with no room. You are also not going to find a corporate business man ordering a grande, half-shot, non-fat, no sugar orange mocha.

My drink is a tall non-fat latte. It pretty muchs says I am boring but it is good. I like them because I don't get tongue tied when I order it, and the plain taste is somehow comforting. But my real point is, we claim identifying marks in order to symbloize we belong. Maybe I am taking this too far, but the other day a barista called my drink as reduced fat instead of non-fat. I didn't respond, that was not my drink. Eventually she told me it was mine and I went on my way with cup in hand, but I laughed to myself and thought "is this really so ingrained in me?" Who really knows, maybe a new culture will come along and sweep us up, but until then, I must admit I am just a member of this culture, loving my drink.

Slow Passion

I am not really sure if passion is a good word to describe what pushes me to wake up every morning and seek more. It is the closest I can get. I have also come to realize that my relationship with my passions, is just that, a relationship. It needs work, communication, fun times, sacrifice and tears. In my relationships I sometimes say "I still love you, but I don't like you right now." That is how I am feeling with my passions. But how do I get through those parts of my life when it is hard to like but love still exists? I try to put my passions right in front of me all the time, I do not let myself forget that I love it.

I put these two pictures up because they represent so much of what drives me. All those photographs tell me that I am capable of capturing moments that are valuable but they also ask for more. I just have to look at them and the desire to grab my camera creeps up and I am off to go shoot. They also represent the power of a passion, what happens when you share it and how someone else can accept it.

My other passion is Mt. Rainier. This has been a harder one to accept, but it has been so persistent, always there and always beautiful. The mountain has been the backdrop for our family conversations out on the deck. It taught my mom that faith is real, it built a bond between my father and grandfather, and someday it will be humble me and my brother as we have been asked to carry our grandpa's ashes to the summit. To me this mountain is more than an addition to the beautiful Northwest, it is a continual reminder that relationships are solid, hard and humbling.

I still have so much to discover about what a passion is and how to follow it, but for now I realize that they are sometimes hard to like, but my love it always there. They need to be in front of me all the time, to remind me that there is a desire in my heart to seek more life. I am slow to understand this relationship but as it grows, I am beginning to see its beauty.