Phoctober the one hundred sixth

We're a week away from getting our new President, the one we ordered back in November from the catalog. This will be the seventh peaceful transfer of power in my lifetime, as I was born in the vaporous remnants of the Nixon administration, around the time Butterfield admitted before Congress that tapes were made of conversations within the Oval Office.

Good times.

And if there is one thing our nation took away as a lesson from all that, it was never to re-elect a seemingly shifty Republican who has clearly misled the American people.

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What's that? Not a political blog?
Quite right. I apologize.

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What's that? Not really a blog at all anymore, since the word perpetrator who once filled these pages with his thought(s) disappeared under mysterious circumstances quite some time ago?
A bit wordy, but I can see your point. Again, I apologize.

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While we're on disappearances, did you know that the US government built a Liberty Ship in 1942 and christened her the SS Amelia Earhart? Seems a little strange to me to name a sea vessel after someone lost and presumed dead at sea, but I was not consulted.

I am almost never consulted.

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When last we saw one another, Phoctober was in full flush. For abandoning my post in the middle of a communal project, I truly do apologize.

I recently had occasion to look through my discarded photography and try to find some beauty in the shots that were total misfires for one reason or another. I found a few that worked in the same sort of way that some abstract art does: they just sort of appealed to my eye. I'll close this post with a few of those.

Phoctober the fifteenth

Frog and Toad are friends (Blog and toad...?)

What I was supposed to be shooting, when I was gazing moonily at the weeds from my previous post, were a small frog and a toad who I am told is his friend. Both had been constructed by my friend, who is designing the poster for a production of "A Year With Frog and Toad" in one of the suburbs with a grain in the name.

When he first asked me to shoot these, he did not know that Frog and Toad are Friends was the first book I bought from the Schoolastic Book Club when I was in Kindergarten. When it arrived, as the only kid in my class who could read, I was obliged to read it aloud in front of the class. Looking back, I may have had a really lazy Kindergarten teacher, making me read stories all the time as she did. No doubt she was envious of our naptime. On the one hand, making me read aloud when I had crippling shyness issues was sort of mean. On the other, I did spend a fair chunk of my adolescent and adult lives as an actor, so maybe it wasn't so much mean as incredibly early career training.

My friend did a nice job on the figures. I hadn't seen the book or its characters for ages, but they still struck a chord of recognition for me. We walked out into the little wilderness behind his house, posed them, furrowed our brows, moved them, moved the props, rotated things and generally did the things you do when taking pictures of tiny frog statues in a muddy field. I had a thick blanket to lie upon while I got down close to the ground to shoot our tiny subjects, but still managed to get a fair amount of mud on my shoes and pants. It was wet enough that if I stood still for longer than a few seconds, i could feel myself slowly sinking into the earth. Probably not a great day to have worn canvas shoes.

I was not, frankly, completely happy with the results of the shoot. Too many of the shots had focus issues caused by my crappy unfocused eye or from trusting the autofocus to not select a single blade of grass as my subject. Still, there were some I thought were nice, and at least one that my friend liked enough to make into a poster, which is kinda the main goal.

I told him that I would do a better job photographing them for the sequel. When I was told there isn't one, I sat down and came up with several. Whoever owns these characters, let me know if I should proceed with any of the following:

Frog and Toad are Coworkers and Nothing More.

Frog and Toad are Sisters AND Mother and Daughter
"Forget it, Jake. It's Amphibiantown."

Frog and Toad are Friends Until They Meet A Salamander and Each Decides to Vie for Her Affections, Which Causes an Irreparable Breach in their Relations, Despite the Fact that the Salamander is Not Remotely Interested in Either of Them

Frog and Toad are Dead
by Tom Stoppard

Frog and Toad are Two Personalities Housed in a Single Body

Frog and Toad are Metaphors

Frog and Toad are a Dual-Income Family Earning a Combined Total of $170,000 Per Year. Under Which Candidate's Tax Plan are they Better Off?

Snail Goes to Jamaica

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This was more for me than an actual part of the shoot. I wish I'd gone back and taken one like this once we had the kite set up. I really like having to look for them a bit.




This is the one that got selected. We cleaned out the wires, and fiddled with it a bit for the final poster.



More or less the same as the select, except in this one their friend the snail has arrived to deliver a letter.


The final shot, wires removed, in poster form. From this I learned that tickets to something like this are far more expensive than I would have guessed. And that a photo credit is a gratifying thing.

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Other Phoctobering:

All 2008 Phoctober posts from this site.

Minx finds poetry in a statue.

It isn't too late to join the fun. Just do a photo post, mention Phoctober, and come and tell me about it in the comments.

Phoctober the thirteenth

Yes, I am behind in my Phoctoberly duties. Apologies. Illness and other things wedged between me and you, Blogreader, but I am returned. And many Phoctober links adorn the bottom of this post. I hope it catches me up. At least it's all of those who came and said to link them, plus one I went and found, from the very talented Jefferson Davis.

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Weeds and soft houses

Saturday, I drove out to the suburbs for a couple of reasons. One was to take some pictures of clay amphibians which I will show you in a later post. While wandering around behind my friend's house to see where we might shoot, I came across what seemed to be a man-made lake surrounded by lush plant life, mud and the flesh and blood analogues to the amphibians I was there to shoot.

I kept walking toward the water. I was technically walking through someone's yard. I heard children playing. It was unseasonably warm. I made my way closer, until I stood on a concrete drainpipe at the mouth of the water. I crouched down upon it, bringing myself close to the water, listening to the staccato ploppings of startled frogs seeking sanctuary in the depths.

I never saw an actual frog, but I did see lilypads. And I snapped a few pictures as well. Today, I give you two weeds, and a house behind them fading off in soft focus.

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Other Phoctobering:

All 2008 Phoctober posts from this site.

Minx on a pond, with lilypads much better than the ones I saw.

Taffiny's ode to summer.

Baino joins in with rocks and sea and a lighthouse.

That's So Pants on birds and...well, mainly birds.

Jefferson Davis finds beauty at Furman University.

It isn't too late to join the fun. Just do a photo post, mention Phoctober, and come and tell me about it in the comments.

Chicago fog

I'm not sure if it's actually fog, when the visible swarms of water molecules do not really reach the ground. It may be more accurate to call it haze or mist. But I'm not gonna go look it up.

The last couple of days have brought it, though, whatever it is. The place I am working at the moment is on the 24th floor of a building right on the river, and all of the windows have grown completely opaque in the afternoons.

From the ground, it combines with the large scale of the buildings downtown to create something eerily pretty. I think in a place without tall buildings, it might just look cloudy, but here the mist swallows things. Depending on your angle, the street you are on can appear to gradually fade into nothing at all.

Looking upward, I kept thinking of the origin of the word "skyscraper."

Some pictures of the fog. More pics of this, and other things, have been added to Flickr. Bigger on Flickr, too.

Groundhog

Once again, woodland mammals had no effect whatsoever on the tilt of the Earth in relation to the Sun. Imagine me slackjawed in stunned disbelief.

Winter continues. It always does.

Snow fell here over the last few days and nights. I had heard the word "blizzard" bandied about a few times in the days and hours before the actual snow arrived, but it was merely a snowstorm. The difference between the two is an important one for those of us who live in areas prone to either phenomenon.

Thursday night I bundled myself warmly and stepped outside around midnight. So I guess it was Friday morning. I was out hoping to take pictures, but mostly, I think I just wanted to soak in the bright hush a big snowfall brings to Chicago.

I walked around for maybe 15 minutes, and in that time I noticed only one lone automobile shushing by me. It was nearly as quiet out as if I did not live in a city at all. What sounds there were were absorbed nicely by the layer of snow. It was easy to feel like the only soul in the city.

It is never dark in Chicago, not even deep in the night, but a fresh snow makes the whole place glow with refracted light. It's like the light cannot escape. I absorbed as many lumens into my eyes as I could, but it had no effect that I could discern on the overall brightness.

My sluggish camera found enough light bouncing off all the new white to hold focus in the night, even if all the resultant images were heavily tinged in yellows and golds. They were nearly sepias already, so it was not a giant leap for me to finish the job myself when I processed the results.

Here are a few shots from my midnight creeping:




While it crunched satisfyingly under my boots, the snowfall was a little disappointing in terms of actual accumulation.

In the shots, the lights are all severely blown out, which I guess is technically bad photography, but I love how they turned out nonetheless.

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And I guess, if you are a bad blogger and stop posting regularly, Blogger will take away the stripey backdrop of your banner at the top of your page. Just another thing to be wary of, Blogwriters. Hope you guys can still enjoy the site without the friendly stripes until I can remember where that thing was in my code and fix it.

Maybe it's a punishment not for the lack of posts so much as that I think it may have been longer than six months since I posted about children or animals, in clear violation of the Blogger terms of service. I think my last post that counts was probably "Sphinx," in which I recounted my difficulties in teaching my cat to quiz me with riddles in our idle time.

The cat, of course, has nearly nothing but idle time. His schedule is clear. I left out the classifieds not long ago, in hopes that he would show some interest once more in computer programming, as he did when he was young. To show his contempt for my plan to get him to start contributing to the household, he or his sister urinated on the pages.

Does this qualify as a cat post now? Can I have my stripes back?

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I think this blog is open again, Blogreader. Soon enough, you might find Monday Morning Haiku (often before Tuesday afternoon) and buzzing about a fiction contest sometime in the future. Maybe even the reinstatement of the ill-fated "Ask the Moon" advice column.

But smaller steps are necessary. I feel unreasonably skittish about blogging lately, and I don't want to spook myself right back into the darkness.

In the meantime, as I find my feet again, feel free to drop me a comment, tag me with a meme.

Phoctober the Halloweenth

Ah, the final day of Phoctobery fun. I'll be honest, there were times this month where I thought that I had bitten off too much, but the participation of others helped me to continue. Now, I suppose, I have much the same problem with NaNoWriMo and NaBloPoMo. I'll be counting on you, Blogreader, to help me through.

I expect I'll do a "Phoctober the Epilogueth" tomorrow, or maybe "Phoctober the thirty-second," so if I missed any links, please let me know so I can add them to that post.

First up today is the pumpkin that Micah made sinister via Sharpie® as we sat by the fire on Saturday.


To keep the Halloween theme going, here is a shot that Rich (when he was still known here as Dirk) emailed to me last year as "proof" of his theory that I am a werewolf. You can read my refutation of these charges here. True to the promise I made in that post, I still have never done a entry for this site entitled "I am not a disturbing looking weirdo."


And, lastly, here is a shot of me at work on Halloween a few years ago. My costume was "The Angel of Death on Casual Friday," (a hooded sweatshirt instead of the traditional business robes) but people ignored or didn't get the joke and found me terrifying instead. Ah, corporate America: how relentlessly you misunderstand me.

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Other Phoctobering:

All Phoctober posts from this site.

Absolute Vanilla on the end of Phoctober and a beautiful countryside.

Taffiny gets spooky.

Matthew and his loved ones.

Basest has...uh, the same shot seven times, but with a reason.

It isn't too late to join the fun. Just do a photo post, mention Phoctober, and come and tell me about it in the comments.

Phoctober the thirtieth

The Riverwalk in downtown Naperville makes the cut for the penultimate Phoctober post. I have my issues with the suburbs, but they really do this sort of thing quite well out there.

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Other Phoctobering:

All Phoctober posts from this site.

Verilion catches up on her window shopping.

Absolute Vanilla is bubbly when she's in the bottle.

Taffiny and the deer that crossed the road.

Kyklops has a little bit of Seoul.

Matthew and a spooky tree.

Gayé on the less arduous side of the Dublin marathon.

Jefferson Davis gets close to music.

It isn't too late to join the fun. Just do a photo post, mention Phoctober, and come and tell me about it in the comments.

Phoctober the twenty-ninth

It's kind of hard to get a post in by midnight when I don't get home from rehearsal until 11:52 pm. So, I have to cheat the time stamp for the second day in a row. Still, after this post, I have only two Phoctober installments to complete, and then the pressure to post by a certain time will subside. Or it would, if I hadn't signed up for NaBloPoMo as well. Phoctober posts take me a lot longer than a normal post to get together, though, what with all the linking and uploading and what-not.

Wow. Rambly. Looks like the coffee I consumed at the onset of rehearsal has finally kicked in, just when I no longer need it. Hooray!

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On Sunday, we got a look at the place where the performances will be for the upcoming show. It was disheartening. The room is very small, and the audience will likely be on the same level as we are, which complicates the sightlines and the blocking somewhat. When one of us sits in a chair, for instance, it may be that we are not visible to everyone in the room.

The lobby is one of the gaudiest things I have ever seen. Every available surface is festooned with memorabilia from comedy of all types. I vacillate between finding it kind of sweet and kind of creepy. There's a level on which I don't understand people who find all comedy funny, just in the same way I am confused by people who find all music worthwhile.

Even weirder was finding out that all of the stuff they have was originally part of a single private collection, kept by one of the owners of the place in his home until the place opened. My first thought was how pleased his spouse must have been to have this stuff out of the house.

Anyway, I grabbed a couple of shots of the walls and such for today's Phoctober. And I'm hitting "publish" at 12:20, which is better than yesterday...

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Other Phoctobering:

All Phoctober posts from this site.

Absolute Vanilla on open doorways.

Kyklops with an assortment of random Japan.

Taffiny and wet pebbles.

Matthew on paths and mist and mountains.

It isn't too late to join the fun. Just do a photo post, mention Phoctober, and come and tell me about it in the comments.

Phoctober the twenty-eighth

A bit late getting this in. Had to cheat the time stamp. Apologies.


I attended a small gathering out at my friend Ian's place Saturday night. You may recall Ian's backyard from this post, in which I announced the whole Phoctober concept in the first place.

Campfire, cocoa (regular or spicy, each homemade), cider, s'mores: there was a general sugar overload among all the participants. It was a perfect night for a fire, crisp and legitimately cool enough that it felt purposeful, even necessary as we perched on our wooden stumps in the darkness. Micah, who drew my "maht-in-the-moon" logo for the banner atop this page, doodled a rather sinister jack o'lantern which I have a feeling you'll be seeing before Phoctober is through. There was plenty of laughter and conversation, and it was a nice counter to some of the lengthy rehearsals I've been in lately. Those are frequently frustrating right now.

At Saturday's frust-fest, we were sort of forced to perform scenes in front of an audience at the retirement home where we rehearse. The scene which myself and my scene partner had to do begins with my entering and handing her some water, which is followed by gazing moonily into one another's eyes and then an intimate kiss. As I handed her the water and leaned in for the kiss, a woman in the audience cried out "He's tall!". It went downhill from there, if you can believe that.

So the gathering at Ian's was a good opportunity to relax and just enjoy the company of friends, to clear my head.

Just in time for a marathon rehearsal on Sunday to go and recloud it for me. Less than two weeks until we open, so one way or another the truly agonizing parts end soon...

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I've never tried to photograph a fire before. It was fun to try. Fun right up until I found myself leaning closer and closer in order to try to get a shot of the wriggling embers at the bottom of the pit, and the heat was so intense I had to pull back for fear of igniting.

Sometimes, I should be tethered by a leash to something immovable, to prevent me from seriously hurting myself.



Ian prodding the fire. Not nearly as crazy dangerous as it looks.





Putting it out at the end of the evening...

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Other Phoctobering:

All Phoctober posts from this site.

Absolute Vanilla frolics in Franschhoek, Part 2.

Taffiny and birds, part 2. Birds now 30% more disturbing!

Matthew really ups the ante for shooting leaves.

Gayé hits the pub, falls in love.

Sameera with verse and hand-drawn art.

It isn't too late to join the fun. Just do a photo post, mention Phoctober, and come and tell me about it in the comments.

Phoctober the twenty-seventh

Some pretty mistakes today. When I caught sight of these trees displaying so much vibrant color against the brown building with the golden windows, I actually gasped. I couldn't get the final shots anywhere near the beauty of the original. So while these are nice enough, I look at them and know I really missed something here.

A good day, a bad day, a long day, Blogreader. The good outweighed the bad by a fair margin. And at least a long day tomorrow. But perhaps I shall have pictures of a friendly fire for you.

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Other Phoctobering:

All Phoctober posts from this site.

Absolute Vanilla in Franschhoek, part 1.

Taffiny on Halloween in the rain.

Jefferson Davis and some artful bottles.

Sameera and a pink ribbon.

L.M. Noonan and a beautiful garden.

It isn't too late to join the fun. Just do a photo post, mention Phoctober, and come and tell me about it in the comments.

Phoctober the twenty-sixth

Not a lot to say today. I've mostly been sequestered with my scripts trying to get off book on everything for tomorrow's rehearsal.

I am at liberty to disclose that I might cheerfully murder someone for a huge slice of sweet potato pie right now. And a nice cup of coffee. And the complete mastery of all the characters I have to portray in the show. While I am at it, I might continue to wish for things for myself, but I suspect I have rambled on long enough.

And so, Phoctober! This was also taken in the courtyard at my former learning institution where the (creepy to some) trees from a few days ago live.

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Other Phoctobering:

All Phoctober posts from this site.

Taffiny channels Tippi Hedren.

Gayé goes to the park, frolics in leaves.

Matthew brings an image of a tree down from the mountain.

It isn't too late to join the fun. Just do a photo post, mention Phoctober, and come and tell me about it in the comments.

Phoctober the twenty-fifth

Only one for you today. Is one not enough? Greedy Blogreader!



Still mostly mired in the play: the learning of lines, running of scenes, the design of the printed materials. Sadly, the last is the most time-consuming. There are an awful lot of cooks peering into that particular pot, and the emails seem to be nearly constant.

Somewhere in there I am also trying to plan my NaNo piece. I think I know what I intend to write (although a weirdly intriguing young adult novel [of all things] popped into my head last night and may warrant consideration). The trouble I am having is with the outline. I've never outlined anything in my life. I'm not even sure I think outlining is a good idea for me personally, but I wanted to give it a stab so that I don't have to improvise the whole month as I did last year.

I'm registered and ready to go. I'm here, if any of you have signed up and would like to befriend (or, possibly more accurately, embuddy) me. Last year, I really got a motivational boost from seeing where everyone else was throughout the month. At one point, I realized that if one of my friends crossed the finish line, then I would as well. So the buddy thing is a nice aspect of the month-long struggle that is NaNoWriMo. Sort of allows you to share the pain, or at least to know that you are not alone in your folly.

I think I'm also going to sign up for NaBloPoMo (a blog post each day in November) because I figure I don't have enough on my plate with the play, writing a novel, looking for work, and attempting to have a social life. After the Phoctober experience, I am really looking forward to using words again. You may have sensed from the posts the last few days, where I've become more wordy in my Phoctobering.

Fact is, I love words. First love, head-over-heels, dizzying, distracting love. And next month is all about words, so I'm pretty excited about that.

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Other Phoctobering:

All Phoctober posts from this site.

Absolute Vanilla by any other name...

Kyklops really loves vending machines.

Roberta on the finery of autumn.

"Sognatrice" is possibly Italian for "puppies."

Taffiny gives us a portal, a path, and a generous helping of green. (Three different posts)

Jefferson Davis gives us a book, some abstracts from a power outage, the lights of a city, and brings back some misty goodness. (Four different posts)

It isn't too late to join the fun. Just do a photo post, mention Phoctober, and come and tell me about it in the comments.

Phoctober the twenty-fourth

I suppose these shots have more in common with last week's arches than anything else. They're all about texture.

The tree stands in the courtyard behind the Arts Center at my former college. I was in the area the other day, and thought I'd stop by.

Everything looked pretty much the same. I found the sameness slightly spooky. Things are supposed to change, aren't they. I drifted through the corridors of the place where I once performed in nine different shows in the span of a single year, roamed the backstage areas where the tech crew still build the sets, where the dressing rooms are.

In the courtyard, I was a part of two consecutive summers ('93 and '94) of outdoor Moliére plays, presented in a big and bawdy modern style, except with the Commedia dell'arte masks. I think I had to run around like a madman in black robes and a paper mâché mask in the summer heat both years. There may have been sweat involved. The shows were directed by the man at the helm of my current show.

Standing there, I felt a little like Billy Pilgrim, tripping through my own life at random.

The day was cloudy and prone to fits of rain. I was sleep-deprived and going with it, allowing the clouds and the weird sensation of fled youth I got walking the familiar halls to shift me into a shade of melancholy. Not a "boo-hoo" melancholy, something else. Something electric and almost good.

Our "portable" stage for the Moliére (we wanted it to look like we were a traveling troupe, and our set was an enormous wagon) was right in front of one of these extraordinary trees. There were occasions on which I had to use the tree to catch me as I leapt from the second level of the stage to get to the ground in time to pretend to be someone else in a blink of an eye.

Leaping off of things to become someone else in the blink of an eye. Anything, of course, is possible when you are 20. Lately, I find myself at a place where anything seems possible again. Perhaps my youth has not fled so far as I'd feared.

Anyway, on with the pictures...

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Other Phoctobering:

All Phoctober posts from this site.

Minx in Strange Town.

Absolute Vanilla finds beauty at the harbor.

Gaye gets meta.

Taffiny on wet flowers.

Meloney Lemon captures a homemade musical instrument and its creator.

Basest discovers new life while parking.

It isn't too late to join the fun. Just do a photo post, mention Phoctober, and come and tell me about it in the comments.

Phoctober the twenty-third

Play rehearsals are strange things for this actor. Too fun to be work, but sometimes too frustrating to be anything else. Rehearsals are where we begin our tentative passes at the scripts we are preparing for the world. We nourish our eventual performances in the hopes that one day the script which currently wobbles on fawn's legs will become something bigger, something greater.

We run our lines a lot, talk about the abstract concepts we hope are hidden beneath them. There is usually quite a lot of joking around, of good-natured ribbing. The energy is frenetic and strange and unlike any other thing I have yet encountered.

It can be difficult personally, as actors can sometimes be incredibly friendly during the entire run of a show and then disappear without a trace. This isn't really the character flaw I might have implied. They simply move on to the next show, which is as time-consuming and intensive as the last, and the cycle starts anew. I imagine it is much the same in any career where landing a job only means a few weeks or months before the hunt for a new gig must begin. One learns not too form too strong an attachment to most of the people one meets at a rehearsal. Except, of course, that sometimes one finds a lifelong friend from among a cast. It's a weird thing.

And sometimes, amid all of the time and the chaos and the line-running, sometimes a single line or a scene just happens and it's better than it was in your head, different from what you imagined when you first read the script. The other actor is giving you something different, and you respond to it, and all of a sudden it's right.

I've been thinking a lot about acting lately, spending a lot of time with scripts and at rehearsals. I surprised myself yesterday by saying to someone that I thought I might want to continue acting again after the curtain falls for the final time on the current show.

This show has been more chaotic than any other I have ever worked on, and still I have found some remnant of the things that I loved about this kind of work. So that is something.

Anyway, here's a shot I took at rehearsal on Sunday. Two actors discussing a scene with the director.

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Other Phoctobering:

All Phoctober posts from this site.

Roberta gets the Phoctober spirit.

Absolute Vanilla catches some African music.

Taffiny and sleepy bees.

Matthew on contemporary Woodstock.

Sameera retrofits some Phoctober in four installments. One. Two. Three. Four.

It isn't too late to join the fun. Just do a photo post, mention Phoctober, and come and tell me about it in the comments.

Phoctober the twenty-second

Another image-only post. Curl, dusk, distance. I promise some words tomorrow.

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Other Phoctobering:

All Phoctober posts from this site.

Absolute Vanilla plays with poppies.

Verilion takes on the night.

Taffiny and a stream

Scarlett makes friends in high places.

Jefferson Davis gets a headache.

Kyklops buys the world a Coke®.

It isn't too late to join the fun. Just do a photo post, mention Phoctober, and come and tell me about it in the comments.

Phoctober the twenty-first

No words today. Just pictures.

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Other Phoctobering:

All Phoctober posts from this site.

Gayé joins the fray.

Verilion gives us a weekly review.

Sognatrice shows us puppies!

Absolute Vanilla at an outdoor market.

Minx goes for a stroll.

Kyklops gets petally.

Taffiny goes costume shopping.

Scarlett goes white.

It isn't too late to join the fun. Just do a photo post, mention Phoctober, and come and tell me about it in the comments.

Phoctober the twentieth

Very late getting this in. My day just flew away from me in some unexpected ways. Apologies.

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Being tired—as one gets—of conventional, old-style pornography, I went last night to see the New Pornographers. My initial disappointment over such a misleading name quickly faded. Turns out that they are musicians. Pretty good ones, too. A fine time was had by all, except I did spend more than a few moments wishing I had a legitimate camera on my person...

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Other Phoctobering:

All Phoctober posts from this site.

Absolute Vanilla and a, uh, brew of all sorts.

Jefferson Davis on water molecules in the air and other things.

Kyklops goes for a walk.

Taffiny shoots leaves in water.

It isn't too late to join the fun. Just do a photo post, mention Phoctober, and come and tell me about it in the comments.