Category: The Muse

*Ow* Yoga *Ow*

“Show me on the doll where Yoga touched you in a bad way…”

Here…and here….and over there….oh yeah, and that place too.

In the early afternoon hours of this past Saturday, I traveled up to the city of San Francisco to take what promised to be a really wonderful yoga class. Entitled “Yoga for Writers” it was taught by a gentleman who is both a well known local columnist and avid Yoga practitioner.

I like his writing style and the price was right, so I signed up. I arrived in time for class with my brand new yoga mat firmly in hand and a lot of hope.

This class promised that through Yoga, through getting out of your head and into your body and tapping into your inner self, you might be able to write more smoothly, easily, and with lots of verve. (ok, I made up the verve part, but it sounds good).

While I’ve been doing a good job keep up with my blog, mostly, the fiction side of my writing life is suffering in a big way.

I have a confession to make. I have a scant 3,500 words on my goal of 50,000 for the month of November.

Um. There are only nine days left? Right? I’m utterly failing. I stare at the screen and I got nuthin’ to write. It’s very bad.

My writer’s block has become immense. Intense. It depresses me. So I really did rather hope that the yoga class would help free up the ol’ Muse and get her dancing.

I was in a TERRIBLE mood after having a god awful week at work, and so I was actually scared and nervous going into this thing. Would the class be chock full of hipsters? Would it be chock full of tiny yoga girls in tiny yoga pants?

Answer was yes on both counts.

I entered the yoga room and immediately wanted to pass out. Why is it so *hot* in there? Ok, yeah, I know, they keep yoga rooms warm, even if you aren’t doing the kind of yoga (Bikram) where you sweat your holymarymotherofgod off while you stretch.

Sitting there on my little mat waiting for class to start, I was already pitted out.

*sigh*

The class description said “not for absolute yoga beginners. Assumes moderate level of physical ability and yoga experience.”

Ok. That’s me. I’ve done quite a bit of yoga in my life, though not recently. I know my Tree of Life from my Warrior pose. I walk three to four miles a day.

I’m not an athlete but I certainly have a moderate level of physical ability.

My lard ass was actually NOT prepared for what lay ahead.

I thought this would be a writing class interspersed with yoga. This was instead a hardcore not-for-sissies yoga class with an occasional writing exercise.

In the three hour class there were three 15 minute writing exercises and one 15 minute stint of sharing some of what we wrote.

The other two hours were intense, almost brutal yoga.

Yoga never hurt me before. Why, overly large statue of Shiva in the front of the room, WHY?!?!?!

My god. This isn’t peace, love and butterflies. It’s agony served up on a rubber mat!

I hurt. I can hardly use the restroom because while sitting down goes ok, I can’t get back up off the toilet. I can’t be still for more than a few minutes at a time or I yelp in pain when I move again.

Look. I’m a writer! We’re notoriously pasty and out of shape!

When did yoga start hurting people?

I found this article titled When Yoga Hurts from several years ago (2007) with concerns that Yoga was being taken a wee bit too seriously (i.e. competitively) in the local health clubs.

I’ll say!

Ow.

(To be fair, the instructor was actually really good, just incredibly hard core. He’s that kind of guy who can balance a handstand on one pinky at the rocky tip of a mountain and hold it for an hour while thinking pure and spiritual thoughts. Whatevs. I’ll meditate on a bag of chips and feel just fine.)






Image from Icanhascheeseburger


Another Hard Lesson For a Hardheaded Girl

I’ve heard over and over how “if it looks easy, it was probably hard to accomplish.” This applies to music, painting, writing, and pretty much all of the arts.

The answer, then, is always practice. And then practice. And then practice some more.

I recently procured a light tent and have been learning how to shoot stock images. It’s a great outlet for photography and occasionally, if you build up a good inventory, you can make a couple extra bucks at it.

So I thought I’d try my hand. I did my first submission of ten to the online stock photo company I’d chosen, and all but one were summarily rejected.

I was told that most “were not commercial”…meaning I’d submitted arty stuff and not “hey that would look good on a brochure” stuff.

Ok. This calls for expanding my horizons a bit. A streeeeetch to my current knowledge.

So I’ve been practicing. And struggling.

I have spoken with a professional photographer who has a lot of success with both stock and not-stock work. She gave me great information and feedback.

She advised that making the move to add “commercial” to your “arty” repertoire is a tough one.

I had no idea how just how tough.

I keep looking at this photo and sighing. Occasionally I whimper. (I suggest clicking the photo to see the big size. In the small form to fit this blog post it’s hard to see details):



I took the better part of a hundred photos of ding-dang tomatoes in just three different poses. I fiddled with light. Lenses. Exposure. All of it. From the piles of photos from that shoot, this is one of the better shots.

And it still sucks.

The stems are out of focus (c’mon Fayeth, that’s photography 101!). The colors are muddy (gah!) and the depth of field isn’t quite right as you can still kind of see the corners of the light tent. And the way the lights are configured, it looks like each little tomato has two little eyes (this was not easily corrected by Photoshop. I tried.). GAAAAH!

So frustrating.

Turns out it takes a lot of effort to make a “simple photo of tomatoes” look like it was just simply snapped off the camera and ready to go.

What does this all mean? Well…back to the light tent I go with a new bowl of tomatoes from the back yard.

Practice. Practice. Practice.

And then practice some more.

I think the edges of my personal creative envelope are starting to ache a bit.





Am I? Is it? Could It Really Be? Oh. Nope.

As I learn more and more about the art of photography, I’ve become enamored by the retro look photography made popular by the people at Lomography, Hipstamatic and Instagram.

I own several plastic cameras and I actively use the Hipstamatic app on my phone. I’m not as in love with Instagram, but I see a lot of fun photos posted on Flickr and Twitter, so why not?

While perusing the Photojojo online store (I’m a little bitch for Photojojo), I stumbled across the Diana+ lens and adaptor for a DSLR camera.

I was stoked! I don’t own a Diana, though I do own a Holga, and the thought of having the look of a Diana lens on my digital camera made me happy. So I ordered it.

Today I went out in the yard to take the new lens for a spin. I’m not going to lie to you, this is a tough lens to work with. It has zero electronics inside so shooting is all manual. This fact is actually good for me as I need to keep practicing my exposure triangle (ISO, aperture and shutter speed).

When I came inside and took at look at my photos, I felt only sort of “meh” about all of them.

Here’s the best of the lot.



Copyright 2011 by Karen Fayeth

After fiddling with these photos and playing with contrast, I went online to take a look at what others were saying about the lens and maybe pick up a few tricks.

I stumbled across this review from a user named Blunty3000 titled “Stupid Hipster Lens Review – the ‘Dreamy Diana'”.

Blunty’s main gripe seems to be that he had to pay “Sixty sodding dollars” for his lens. From what I can discern, Blunty is from Australia. I only paid thirty sodding US dollars for my kit of lens plus adapter.

Blunty seems to use this product review as a platform to eviscerate hipsters everywhere. Ok, fine. I get that. As for me, I like the retro look photos. I own and enjoy quite a bit of the hipster gear.

But wait. Does that make me a hipster?

Nooo. I mean…I’m over 40. I refuse to wear skinny jeans. I think retro photography is awfully mainstream to be hipster anymore.

Then Blunty makes a point that these hipster photographers are “…pining to feel nostalgia for days they are too young to feel actual nostalgia for…”

Ah. Yes. And there’s the difference. I was actually alive in the 1970’s.

I feel nostalgia for years I actually remember. I’m not a hipster, I’m old.

Back then my sister and I shared a suitably uncomplicated (and now very hip) Kodak FlipFlash camera. Ok, it was really hers but when she tired of it, I got it as a hand-me-down.

It looked like this.



Kodak FlipFlash Camera, photo attribution unknown.


Here’s some of the dreamy, out of focus, widely vignetted photos that made me one of the mainstream back then and an almost hipster today.

This is our family’s cat as a kitten. And yes, that is a poster of The Muppets in the background. Note the “soft glow” the vignetting, the all around retro feel. This photo is circa 1981. Very hip in 2011.




This is me posed at the chicken coop behind our place at Ute Lake. I think my mom took this photo. Maybe my sister. I don’t remember. It has that certain je ne sais quoi with the dry grass, the cloudy sky and the rundown gray stucco chicken coop. How very Grapes of Wrath. I place the year to be around 1977.




So after this dark journey of the soul to determine if I’d become a hipster and should then begin my self-loathing, I’ve come out the other side. I shall go back to shooting my retro cameras with reckless abandon knowing I can make all the old timey photos I want. I lived it baby!



Today when I Googled a photo of an old Kodak FlipFlash camera, I found the *perfect* photo. And where did I find this photo? On my own blog. I’d already posted it a couple years ago. I’m becoming self-referential!


Unless otherwise noted, photos are from my personal family albums and subject to the Creative Commons license found in the far right column of this and every page of this blog.


It’s Time We Had This Little Talk

As mentioned yesterday, it’s performance review season at work. I received my appraisal on Monday and I just finished up writing a whole slew of reviews for my staff.

So while I’m in the flow, I think it’s time for my Blogging Performance Appraisal.

We’ll rate based on a typical corporate five point scale:

5 – Walks on Water
4 – Exceeds my low expectations
3 – Yer all right, kid
2 – Um. Could you work on that?
1 – Oh, Way No

Let see, now let’s assess performance against my goals.


1) Write a blog post every weekday and occasional weekends.

Rating: 4

Very rarely have I missed a blogging day, and even when I do, I go back and make it up. I’m very diligent on this point and I’ve definitely done everything I can to meet or exceed this goal.


2) Continually produce fresh content for every post, meaning write an original post every day.

Rating: 4

Thanks to my friend NewMexiKen, I was able to install a widget that counts the total number of words I’ve published here on this little ol’ blog. (you can find it at the very bottom left corner of this page)

As of yesterday, that number was 390,597 words since March 2007. I’m very proud of this number. 95% or more of those words were original content, straight from my monkey brain.

If you are keeping score at home, the average book runs about 80,000 words, so in essence, I’ve written 4.88 books over the course of four years.

And that kicks ASS.

3) Create blog posts about topics that fascinate me and written well enough to fascinate my readers.

Rating: 3

Yeah, ok, so I sometimes wander off a little bit toward bodily functions. Occasionally I enter my own personal wayback machine and can’t find my way out. And then there is simply fits and starts of utter randomness.

Fine. I admit it. On this blog I’m entirely self-indulgent. If you, my cherished readers, wanna come along on the ride, I’m happy to have ya.

If it doesn’t work for you, well that’s ok too.

For the record, I ain’t a’gonna change. I’m having too much fun.

4) Have fun.

Rating: 5

Not going to lie to ya, writing this blog is something I look forward to every day. It’s never been something I dreaded or avoided doing. Every post has been a crazy lot of fun to write and in the process I’ve gotten a lot better at writing and editing.

I love looking at this crazy ol’ world through my blogger’s eyes and seeing something everyone else would ignore, then whipping out 600 words about it here. For me, it’s such a sense of accomplishment to publish a fresh post.

Even if that post is about something as ridiculous as square watermelons.

5) Embrace my readers.

Anywhere from 100 to 500 of you visit me every day and read my words.

To you, I’m incredibly grateful.

I rate you all a solid 5.

Now keep up the good work!







Image from fun140gifs.com.


Round and Round

And the wheel goes round and round.
And the flame in our souls will never burn out.

– From “The Wheel” by Rosanne Cash

Round and round
What comes around goes around
I’ll tell you why

– From Round and Round, performed by Ratt


Yeah a little wide divergence in my choice of artists, but I’m trying to make a point.

A little hard to make a point in the middle of a blog post about round, eh?

Ba-dum-dum-*crash*

The point is, this concept of circular, round, spherical, wheel of fortune, karma, changing seasons, the big wheel keeps on turning is something that has intrigued artists, poets, philosophers and musicians for centuries.

So when yesterday’s Theme Thursday listed this week’s theme as round, well…I knew I’d surely have something to say about that.

Yup. Something deep. Meaningful. Profound.

Unh-huh.

Sure enough.

Profound.

Meaningful.

Insightful.

Right here. On this very blog.

Only…I got nothing.

I mean, I have ideas. A round of drinks, a round of golf, singing in rounds, that epic wheel of fate spinning round, the wheels on the bus go round and round, I ate too much and now I feel round, the earth is flat, no it’s round.

Sure. Plenty of ideas but nothing to say.

The minute hand travels around the clock. Hours days weeks months years pass by. It’s Friday again, the winter of my week. Time to look back on what I did, what I didn’t do and find a way to go dormant over the weekend. I need energy to fight the dragons when the wheel clicks ’round and it’s Monday again.

For the moment, the best I have to say about the word round is that it happens to be the shape of the cookie I’m about to ingest. While I munch, I will think about the meaning of life and the role chocolate chips have played in history.







Photo by kasey albano and used royalty free from stock.xchng.