Texas Church, 2008
View On White
Jesus Said, Texas, 2008
View On White
Knife Town USA, Texas, 2008
View On White
Texas Steeple, 2008
View On White
Texas Rest Stop, 2008
View On White
Two weeks ago we traversed Texas in one day. It wasn’t that bad, actually. Maybe because we were listening to “The 4th Tower of Inverness” the entire way. My brain kept wanting to nod out on me but I managed to stay awake though not terrifically focused. I was hoping to map out more fully my latest novel and didn’t manage it then but the following week supplied me with what seemed some good ideas.
The ride back through Texas was, however, like traversing the deeper levels of metaphysical hell in which all ills of the world were magnified 10,000 times, compassion suffocated by Phaeton’s sun horses raging unchecked, their chariot frying the earth with a soul destroying quality of light. The ride back through Texas scorched all ideas I had for the novel, letting me know that everything is so damn temporal that nothing much matters. Especially not me. And I forgot all my ideas. All I knew was ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
I swear that next time we will go through Oklahoma. Even though the worst coffee I’ve ever had was in Oklahoma.
The photos are from our journey out through Texas, not the journey back.
Did you ever imagine a Texas rest stop could look so pastoral? Took some post processing, yes, but I saw that the photo was bent in that direction and went with it.
I’ve a new monitor. My Dell, which this past winter I passed along to Marty, he gave to a tech friend to check out and as it turns out it was arcing electrically internally and ready to catch fire any moment! So Marty bought me a refurbished 23 inch cinema display Apple monitor and took my NEC 20WMGX2.
The Apple is gorgeous and I haven’t even bothered to calibrate it. And I should. Here I’m irresponsibly working on pictures and haven’t calibrated, just turned the brightness down a notch. Very bad of me. But it’s so gorgeous already! And it’s huge.
At first, I was terrified. Marty unpackaged the monitor (waiting for us when we got home) and hooked it up. He called me in to look at it but I was scared and had tucked myself into the futon with the Burton’s “Taming of the Shrew” (I love the costuming, the Burtons, the sets which a Texas sun would never dream of terrorizing). I knew that I would look at my digital paintings and sob. Facing a new monitor in the past has always left me depressed and incapable of doing anything much for a day or two except breathing in dust balls under the bed.
Finally, I pulled myself from the futon and over to the desk. Because I’m a coward, my eyes were closed. “How do things look?” I asked. “Incredible,” he said for the 100th time. So, I opened my eyes.
And here I am two days later doing photos without calibrating because I’m irresponsible and just plain afraid to screw around with calibrating when everything is so dang beautiful.
We’re trying to get back into the swing of homeschool today and not succeeding much. I’m not worrying about it though as he saw and did so much on the trip.
I’m reminded now to worry about my surge protector/back up power supply. When the tornado struck and we had the humongous BANG here that took out the power, my computer went dark, everything went off, which had never happened before. I later found that the battery for my camera that had been plugged into the same circuit, recharging, had been fried. (Discovered this on the trip and thus lost some shots as I had no back-up battery and had to buy a new one.) I’m vague on things like surge protectors and though it looks like it’s working I’m wondering about its integrity.
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