Monday, July 25, 2011

Photographer

Alex takes me home with him afterward sometimes and we sit around talking about the other models, about other clients of his, art directors we hate, shop talk really. He's got a good eye, the problem is that for him the camera sees things the way he does, so when he doesn't have a good AD or doesn't like the subject, you can tell by looking at the shot. He finally started bringing his own stylist, taught her photography, really took her under his wing, the daughter of his friends, and it was a couple of years before he admitted to me he'd fucked her, too. But that was later, when we drove up to see her at her new school, Bennington, at the beginning of the fall semester when the students were roaming the campus looking for apples high in the trees, carrying long poles with wide-mouthed cans nailed to the top. You would see them clustered here or there at a trunk,  like one many-legged insect, its long proboscis probing the branches. And she, her fingers were black with pigment. She'd been painting a lot which was good, but what of, and the sheer amount of black alarmed me. Counting backwards as I watch them talk I realize that she had to have been 13 when she started with him and this is sort of when I stop wanting to be friends.

But that hasn't happened yet, right now we're at one end of his nearly empty loft, and he's trying to tell me something about a trip and photos in the woods and...

I can't find the fucking fawn
he snaps as he's tearing through his drawer of slides and he sounds more upset than if there were an actual fawn trapped in the cabinet somewhere. 

Tuesday, July 19, 2011

What my camera saw.

http://s633.photobucket.com/albums/uu60/Isonomist/Rocky%20Mountains/

There are more, but that's enough for now. Like so much in life.

Monday, July 11, 2011

Rocky Mountain High

I finally figured out that "Rocky Mountain high" is altitude sickness. Everyone staggers around like drunks once you get to about 12000 ft. It's hilarious. You can tell who the most devout Muslims and Mormons are because they don't have a clue how to look sober up here.

Coin-cidence
About 12500 ft up and a few miles into the park is the Alpine Visitors' Center. While I was there enjoying the view, an Irish family beelined to me to ask me to take their photo. They've been from NYC to Montana to Utah and now the top o' the Rockies with us, and about 30 elk and 3 marmots. Just so happens I was in Dublin this very time last year. More, I had just given the cafeteria cashier an Irish 20c piece I happened to have in my pocket.

This trip has given me some reason not to go to Kilimanjaro. I had several days of painful migraines, and spent the hours after the 4th of July fireworks in so much pain I nearly begged hubby to take me to the hospital. The thing about a migraine like that is, there really isn't much they can do except shoot you up with painkillers and steroids. if the triptans aren't working, you just have to hang on and try not to beg for sweet sweet death, until the searing pain and nausea decide to let you live. And that was at 7500 feet. Our 3rd night, I was over 8500 ft, and felt like I had asthma. We were following the "hike up, sleep down" technique but it took a lot longer for me to adjust to each level than I had hoped.

I was fine by day 4, up to 14000 ft. If this were Kili, I'd still have a mile to go. Straight up. I'm not sure I can take it. Maybe if we moved to Colorado...