And the silence prevails...

It's Memorial Day, so the newsroom is exceedingly quiet right now. It's odd to be working full time in the professional world. Kind of anti-climatic actually, but it is quite enjoyable here. I thought that I would miss writing, but a year and a half of copy editing has left me hungry for more editing jobs.

One thing about returning to this job, though, is that I have again become nostalgic for last summer. This, of course, has left me yearning for Morocco, one of the best countries to visit if you want to get a sense of Islam without getting shot at (a gross overgeneralization, I'm sure, but still a great country). And so I bring to the interwebs a few of my favorite shots from my time in Morocco. The first shot is looking Northeast along the coast of Morocco near Tangiers. If you look closely on the left in the distance you can see Spain and across from it you can see the part of Morocco that reaches out to touch it's neighbor across the Strait of Gibralter.

Lone Tree

And next, from the same place, looking southwest down the curve of North Africa:

Twilight Falls

Finally, here is a shot from a medina in Tetuoan. The medinas, or 'old cities,' of Morocco are some of the most wonderful places to visit. Not only are the alleyways tight and close together, but exploring them often means navigating a maze, with little surprises here and there. In this case, we turned a corner a found beautiful potted flowers decorating old, crumbling plaster that covered the walls of houses where people lived.

Where the Path Chooses You

Hopefully I will have more time to go on photography expeditions soon! But until then, I will continue to rely on old fodder.

Also, one of my current favorite poets, Gary Snyder, has been captivating me lately. A beat poet and buddhist, his poems leap off of the page with references to both his love of nature and his Zen Buddhist training. So here is a quick poem that thought I would share(unfortunately I cannot keep his same formatting, but I will direct you to a site that has a few of his poems with his unique formatting):

"Regarding Wave"
The voice of the Dharma
the voice
now

A shimmering bell
through all.

Every hill, still.
Every tree alive. Every leaf.
All the slopes flow.
old woods, new seedlings,
tall grasses plumes.

Dark hollows; peaks of light.
wind stirs the cool side
Each leaf living.
All the hills.

The Voice
is a wife
to

him still.

~Gary Snyder

My Imminent Return

Man, I wish I was here right now!

After two months of a self-imposed, and much needed, break from blogging, I may soon be back. Between getting schoolwork done and finishing my bout with The Captain's Log, I've had little time for
updates. I have kept up with my lj, but only because I don't really care what is in that. I'd like to think that this blog is much more professional and so the words mean more and so need to be more thought out. In the meantime, I have become addicted to food blogs and blogs in general really. It's easy to not do your homework when you could be reading about good food that you don't have money to make or cutesy dogs. Anyway, I have no time left to update a blog myself, though that will shortly change I hope :-). I still have a paper to turn in and a paper to finish writing, but when all that is done I will be completely finished with my undergraduate career. I just have to take a breather and focus to get there.

I have a job now. It's a full-time copy-editing position with a starting salary somewhere around $24,000. Unfortunately that is par for a journalism job in Newport News. At least entry level. Which is why I am not really staying here for long. Hopefully the future I am working towards will include a stint in Oregon. Because it is one of the most beautiful states I have ever visited, even in the city it is wonderful!

Portland at Night

And to end with a quote:

"Thus shall you think of all this fleeting world:

A star at dawn, a bubble in a stream;

A flash of lightning in a summer cloud,

A flickering lamp, a phantom, and a dream..."

~ The Diamond Sutra, Buddha

Spring is here

I've always thought that summer was my month just because it is so wonderfully warm. I love the heat and that is no secret. But I must admit that when spring comes my mood begins lift and I am much happier. So, yay for spring.

"This is wondrous strange" ~ Hamlet

So we've pretty much spent all year trying to keep with the same style and not stray so far away that we either lose professionalism or bastardize the beautiful simplicity of my newspaper's print edition. One thing I have learned this year, as I've continued to learn in all of my journalistic studies, is that when you try and stick to a set style (whether it be in layout or in interviews) you tend to back yourself into a corner.
Case in point, my newspaper, while it has gotten cleaner and cleaner as far as technicalities, the design has backed itself into a corner by feeling forced to stick with one design. But it was okay because we were sticking to the status quo (essentially not breaking any boundaries) and getting done around 4 am (early by Captain's Log standards).
But status quo was leaving us with basically two or three layout designs that we would recycle our stories through. It got to the point where we have to have the last issue sitting by us in order to make sure that this issue wasn't the same layout, but with different copy and art.
Last night, we finished the issue at around 230 am. Very early, and yet it just didn't pop. I was ready to call it a night and not care that this would be just another weak layout with clean technical details. Thankfully my staff is proving itself ready to step up and took it upon themselves to experiment until around 5 am. Well, I fell in love with the experiment and we decided to keep it. It would have been perfect, and in the end it was perfect, but the computer deleted the file (we'll have to get on fixing that) and we pretty much had to redesign it all in about an hour in a half. Which we did.
I love the layout (if you know me personally please pick up a copy of the paper and let me know how you think it looks) and am so happy to finally be hitting a stride with the staff that isn't about the status quo but more about varying the stride with the end result being a better race (sorry for the horse-racing metaphor).
I must admit I stopped caring about the Captain's Log. I just wanted this year to be over. Now I'm excited to get things going again and really start improving this paper. Sometimes it's the late breaker that really makes the race worth it (again with the horse metaphor!).

And it really is, in the word's of Shakespeare's Hamlet, "wondrous strange" the things you will want to start fighting for when you had given up all hope of making life better. This whole experience has made the creative life of striving seem worthwhile again.

But because this is sure to make you smile I leave you with this:

Visit Exploding Dog because it's awesome...

A little lost...

Sorry it has been so long, this semester has been unimaginably difficult. And, again, I'm pretty much not doing this resolution. I realized, that pushing myself to be creative, as I've realized before, does nothing but make me hate myself for not succeeding. I have a bad problem with failing or even seeming to fail.
This is not to say that I refuse to post pictures, in fact I promise to post them as the need actually arises. Such as today when I finally picked up my prints from Oregon.
Which, I admit, aren't that good. Mostly, this is because it had been so long since I had taken pictures that all of manual settings were off. It was rainy, so it was difficult to get a good shot anyway. Though, that of course is no excuse, because rainy days make for beautiful moody shots, which I have always preferred.
The image above is at a lake in a state park in Florence, Ore. It is near where my Aunt and Uncle live. It was actually quite wonderful because the lake was so big and surrounded by trees so it offered wonderful opportunities if only I had bothered to exert the knowledge I have to make my photos better.
Some of my other great photos were from the coast. I love the Oregon coast. The wild abandon that the waves show as they throw themselves on the rocks and cliff faces makes me more introspective than I usually allow myself to be. It's wonderful.
This above image is on Highway 101 between Newport and Florence. One of the best roads in the country for breathtaking vistas, in my opinion anyway. And, during the winter, the wet season makes for some spectacular skies. The darkness of this image is what really draws me in I think.
Overall, my experience of Oregon has made me fall in love with it. I want to end up there one day. I know I do. I found out the other day that Dr. Lee knows someone who used to teach at University of Oregon and that he thought it was a great school. I agree. My only pause is of course Travis. He says he'll go anywhere with me, but will he really want to leave his family? Do I want to lose my chance at experiencing more of the kind of family life that I would want my children (if I do indeed have them) to have, the kind of family life I never experienced?
Questions beat at me in waves. Or I am those waves, constantly beating myself up on questions about the future? All I want to do is share Oregon with Travis. All I can really do now is dream of it for myself.

Questioning the Darkness

Quote of the day:
"So remember when we were driving, driving in your car
Speed so fast I felt like I was drunk
City lights lay out before us
And your arm felt nice wrapped round my shoulder
And I had the feeling that I belong
And I had a feeling I could be someone, be someone, be someone

You've got a fast car
Is it fast enough so you can fly away?
We gotta make a decision
Leave tonight or live and die this way..." ~~"Fast Car" MYMP