1. Took this  photo  at the feria¹ yesterday. It felt like the first time I saw ppl interacting in a certain way which made me think “I can ‘capture’ this photographically.” I’ve always been embarrassed pointing a camera lens at ppl [or having one pointed at me.] But these kids, the way the two dudes were wanking on the guitar and the girl pretended to be checking her text msgs or maybe she was checking them for real but everything about the way she was sitting was like “dios mio chicos, prestame atencion” or something that I could pick up 40 yards away but which the two kids didn’t seem to register or maybe they did but just felt like ignoring her.

2. I felt like I’d photographed something that told a story, but then when I saw it on the computer I realized I’d focused on the grass instead of the kids, which is actually a revealing mistake–I’ve always been distracted by and on some level more interested in vegetation / landforms / terrain than ppl.

3. I’m writing this while listening to Skeletal Lighting by Of Montreal which makes me think–along with what I just wrote about vegetation–back to a house party in Athens, Georgia where of Montreal played in the basement.  It was Halloween and Michael Stipe was dressed as a blue gorilla. Filly² and I had eaten mushrooms before we went and there was this weird scene in the kitchen when Stipe pulled out a tray of cupcakes that had blue icing that matched the blue of his gorilla suit.  He offered cupcakes to me and this girl who was dressed as a basketball goal.  Later I went outside and looked at trees and Filly told these girls who stood nearby smoking “my man Dave here can name every tree on this street.”

4. Predictably, this is the part where I wonder what would’ve happened if I’d stayed in Athens and not, instead, followed this other trajectory which progressed into this latest form where, apparently, I’m attempting to photograph kids in a plaza in Patagonia.

5. Either way, Of Montreal is kind of hard to write to.

6. We have no washing machine. This morning I spent an hour handwashing clothes. The air is cold and there’s snow on the ridgelines.  Not good washing [I started writing "writing"] conditions.

7. Later Layla was saying something that I couldn’t understand in this super excited voice. I followed her into the living room. A hummingbird was trapped in the living room, bumping along the ceiling. We opened all the windows and I talked to it in a friendly voice–”here you go, here you go” — while thinking “why do we change our voices when we talk to animals?”

8. I went back out to hang clothes on the clothesline and thought about how far this hummingbird has  migrated³ to end up today in our living room, and how it seems kind of strange for people to call themselves “travelers.”

_______________

¹ in El Bolsón, PatagoniaArgentina.

² friend from Savannah, Georgia who I played alot of music with

³ Hummingbirds migrate thousands of miles from the Northern to Southern Hemispheres