The lucky folks on my Christmas list this year got journals with either collages or photographs on the front and back covers. Here is my favorite collage out of the whole bunch. The front cover had a photo of sea lions, and this was on the back:

Chuck and Bev (the grandparents) pitched in with me to buy a fancy furnished Green Dollhouse for Jasper. Here we are assembling it. Jasper does know how to use a screwdriver, but he kind of lost interest in helping us once we got everything out of the box.

Here are a few shots from outside, where Jasper and Achoo (that’s what he calls Esther) were doing something entertaining with a hula hoop. Later, Jasper commanded me to take pictures of the moon.

Not pictured: the Christmas spa experience in Sundari’s lovely woodstove-heated room, in which Jasper took off his clothes and insisted we rub him down with nice-smelling lotions and salves before he ran around singing, dancing, collapsing tragically like an opera star, and mourning his own fictional death.

Here’s a preview:

I’ve been posting cellphone pics over at Red Bat Photography for a while, and I’ve been thinking about moving the whole cellphone pics concept over here to my personal site. That seems like an especially good idea now that I’m using this resurrected phone. The cellphone pics aren’t really indicative of anything about my work with Red Bat. They’re more of a personal hobby/addiction.

As Red Bat takes on a life of its own, I’m becoming more aware of the fact that I am not synonymous with my photography business. Red Bat is way more professional and sane than I am, uses better equipment, wears the right clothes for the occasion. Red Bat wants to make that photo of you come out perfectly exposed and in focus, whereas I personally might have other priorities.

Two years of hard labor have gone into getting Red Bat Photography up and running. This moment, the one happening right now, seems like a perfect time to detach from all of that frantic laboring and remember who I am outside the boundaries of commerce. I’ve been aided in this recollection by some recent highly productive journaling sessions (and by the way, in case you’re wondering, the Earl Grey iced tea at Caffe Pergolesi will kick your diary-scribbling into high gear). It stuns me to realize that ever since Red Bat started, up until these last few weeks, I’ve spent most of my journal-writing time making notes for Red Bat, planning slideshows, thinking up shoots. It was an obsession. Meanwhile, my poor journal has cried out for me to bring back the confessional drivel that makes writing so satisfying.

Actually, it’s only about 50 percent confessional drivel. The other 50 percent is bizarro philosophizing. I’ve got a huge stack of these notebooks. My sister is supposed to burn them all if I get kidnapped by aliens.

What’s that? You didn’t? Hm. Well, this isn’t about you, is it? Is today YOUR birthday? Is YOUR name Rebecca? Are YOU posting in your personal blog for the first time in a year? I didn’t THINK so.

If you don’t know about “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird,” I suggest you do some research. It’s a freaking wonderful poem, people. It had a powerful impact on me and many other English majors. It still baffles me and gives me the creeps and makes me feel sad and hopeful all at once. Go read the original poem here. And if you want a taste of what we did with this poem in college, read this Wikipedia entry.

Now go reread my Field Guide to Your Boyfriend post.

I’m going to transform this marvel of modern poetry by changing every instance of the word “blackbird” to “boyfriend” and we shall see what happens. This is my present to all of you on my birthday.

Oh, one more thing: what’s nice about being me is that I know people who can do weird, weird stuff on command. After the poem ends, you get to see something my friend Patrick made specifically for this post, even though he didn’t know what the post was about yet. He was just following my mysterious directions. Thanks Patrick!

Thirteen Ways of Looking at Your Boyfriend

I
Among twenty snowy mountains,
The only moving thing
Was the eye of your boyfriend.

II
I was of three minds,
Like a tree
In which there are three boyfriends.

III
Your boyfriend whirled in the autumn winds.
He was a small part of the pantomime.

IV
A man and a woman
Are one.
A man and a woman and your boyfriend
Are one.

V
I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendoes,
Your boyfriend whistling
Or just after.

VI
Icicles filled the long window
With barbaric glass.
The shadow of your boyfriend
Crossed it, to and fro.
The mood
Traced in the shadow
An indecipherable cause.

VII
O thin men of Haddam,
Why do you imagine golden birds?
Do you not see how your boyfriend
Walks around the feet
Of the women about you?

VIII
I know noble accents
And lucid, inescapable rhythms;
But I know, too,
That your boyfriend is involved
In what I know.

IX
When your boyfriend flew out of sight,
He marked the edge
Of one of many circles.

X
At the sight of boyfriends
Flying in a green light,
Even the bawds of euphony
Would cry out sharply.

XI
He rode over Connecticut
In a glass coach.
Once, a fear pierced him,
In that he mistook
The shadow of his equipage
For boyfriends.

XII
The river is moving.
Your boyfriend must be flying.

XIII
It was evening all afternoon.
It was snowing
And it was going to snow.
Your boyfriend sat
In the cedar-limbs.

I’m too tired to write any more, about anything. The past six months or so have been all about Red Bat Photography and endless work. Every day I see more signs of exhaustion on my face and in the way my mind skitters from one topic to the next like a hamster on amphetamines.

Which is why I’m so surprised when I wake up still excited about whatever I happen to be working on. I don’t think I’ve ever worked this hard on anything without becoming thoroughly sick of it. But with photography, there’s always more to learn, and the more skilled I get, the more interesting it becomes. It’s not just the artistic aspect that I enjoy- the business part is fun, too. I wasn’t expecting that when I started this gig.

The human relations angle is the most fascinating of all: how people react to being in front of the camera, how they respond to seeing photographs of themselves, and the many, varied purposes they find for the images we create together.

But dang, it’s a lot of work.

I relax by spending time with ever-more-beloved-nephew Jasper, who has four teeth now and will celebrate his first birthday next month. Joye took this picture of the two of us last week. The hand you see belongs to Steve. That red thing is a voice-distorting megaphone, not that Jasper’s voice needs amplification. He’s known for his high-decibel squawking.

After several years of intense grieving, it has felt good to take a break from constant reflection and simply do things. But I miss writing. I miss daydreaming, too. I hope I’ll get a chance to do both again before too long.

Click to embiggen.

Chew cardamom pods and stare at the screen; strain eyeballs to keep up with the rendering; end up in weird but entertaining states of mind; drink PBR in a clear goblet with ice cubes stacked under a plump slice of lime; enjoy the possibilities!

Oh, and listen to the birds chirping channel on Birdsong Radio, 128 kbps, Live Dawn Chorus Relaxation.

Look into my mouth and feel Destruction! Feel Apocalypse! Feel What The Hell Is That Pink Flappy Thing?!

I don’t know if what I write will be coherent, but I can’t think of what else to do right now.

Imagine a night like scented babyhood, an unrepeatable perfume of flowers smelled for the first time mingling with the earthy odors of a family’s flatulence in a warm room. Awareness is a tunnel slowly widening in front of your eyes, swathed with the hazy colors of skies, carpets, entrancing objects. You love your parents desperately. Your teeth are edging through your gums. The truth you learn about the world thrills and frightens you.

Every day something scary happens, usually only one or two things but it makes you wary just the same. You get mad because people don’t understand you. Sometimes, when your anger makes you babble in a frantic tone, your family laughs at you. This makes you happy and sad at the same time. You know they love you as much as you could ever want to be loved, but they are separate from you. You have feelings they can’t share.

This separateness drives them to hold on to you more tightly, prize you more enthusiastically, but still, it makes you nervous.

You are afraid of being alone. Yet you find that your mind wanders to secret and interesting places when nobody’s talking to you. This is partly because you are young and old at the same time. Every glimpse of this world brings back memories of everywhere you have arrived from. You almost remember those places, but you get distracted when the present compels you to join it. The present’s call is irresistible as soon as you start to feel like part of the team.

Your family, your parents, these are your people now. Yes. You notice the stars for the first time and decide to cling to the ground. You make your decision right now.

This milestone in human life fascinates me. Tonight, as I sat in my front yard admiring the dim shapes of lawn chairs and contemplating the possibility of failure, a vision of a very young person came to me. I saw myself, as a baby, watching my mother play the piano. I pondered what hurts I’d accrued that day, and was perplexed by the language that fell all around me. But I was carried away by that thing babies feel when they hear music, when music is brand new and completely personal.

The tightness in the heart for a second, before the mind relaxes. The blood singing in the veins. My baby self was grateful for it, and said Yes. I will stay here and play this part, and I will even (usually) believe there is nothing else.

That vision tonight was accompanied by a strong feeling of merging, though with what I’m not sure. I didn’t care. Such a feeling of mysterious closeness was a relief. Remembering babyhood returned me to a time before separation had calcified.

This is not quite as insane as it sounds. It was triggered by being around a real baby. Not that I can read his mind or anything, it’s just that the expressions on his face made me remember. At some point, I agreed to be here, and hands reached out to pull me in. If I had chosen something different, would I have been born somewhere else? How much did I know about this place when I signed my name on that line?

Why do I continue to say Yes to all of this?

That last question, though appearing ominous, is nothing to worry about. I will never be able to answer it, which makes it safe to keep asking. For a split-second, every once in a while, I know why I agreed to stay here. Then memory flees and I greet the present again, that layer of confusion in which the truth may or may not be hidden.

Possibly not the picture you’d expect to see at this point.