Earthquake Disaster and "D.B.: Pt 6"

Japan.  Holy Mother of Buddha.  The entire planet shifted.  Metaphorical. . . literal.  The photographs coming out of there look like something made up in a Godzilla movie.  Who am I telling?  I just had to say something about it before I begin my silliness.  Of course the irony of Japan nuking itself isn't lost on anyone, either.  Kind of upstaged the release of the new iPad 2.

Exciting news on the Aero Ektar front.  I developed a 4x5 negative in the crazy one shot developer/fixer that the people over at New55Project are promoting.  And it works.  This is big for me.  I'll be able to see the images I shoot with my whacked out setup in ten minutes.  Kudos to those fellows over there.  

Meanwhile, I've been working with my digital images trying to find a new "look."  That is my project right now.  Nothing else.  Just trying to work out a presentation style for what I do.  I'm kind of crazy about the image here.  I hope I can reproduce it.  I work on an image like this for hours and come up with something I like, then I forget half of what I did.  Fingers crossed.  

*     *     *     *     *

She came up while I was talking to a fellow I knew, and I could feel her standing and looking at me.  It was the blonde all the fellows had been drooling over since she walked in.  "Who's that," they asked elbowing one another and nodding in her direction.  Brando had come up with something else to keep the boys interested.  

I looked up at her and smiled.  

"Hello.  My name is Mavis.  Brando said I should come over and meet you.  He says your a mountain climber."  

I looked at her for a few beats thinking of what to say.  

"I'm no mountain climber, but I've been mountain climbing," I said.  

"Looks like you're going to be laid up for awhile," she said nodding to my toe.  

"Yup.  A bit.  You climb?"  

"I'm just starting.  I took the course out at Rainier.  I want to climb Aconcagua.  Have you climbed it?"

Shit. 

"No," I said looking down and shaking my head, disappointed.  "My buddies have all gone down and done it, but they always go when I can't.  I've wanted to."  

"What have you climbed?" she asked.

I went through my thin list of peaks and faces that didn't qualify me as a mountain climber in a crowd with any experience at all.  It all sounded good among novices, though, and usually I could make it sound damned heroic.  But tonight.  I knew I would embarrass myself.  Mavis was in shape.  She looked six feet tall, though she wasn't.  She was just long and lean and taught like a guide wire.  In pieces and parts, she wasn't pretty, but the overall combination was synergistically pleasing.  She stood out, anyway, in this crowd.  

"You want some more wine?" she asked.  

I did.  

When she came back, I made room for her to sit down in the window seat.  

"You O.K.?"  

"Yea, I'm fine."

"What'd you do to your toe."  

I gave her the brief version.  She said something about a hematoma and phagocytes and fibroblasts and a collagen matrix.  

"You a doctor?"  

"Yes.  I'm a veterinarian.  What do you do?"  

"I'm a school marm," I said.  

"Really?"  

"Yea, sort of.  I'm a professor almost," I laughed.  

"What does that mean?"  

"I'll tell you sometime.  Look at this.  Goddamnit, somebody drank my wine."

"Yes, somebody did.  Let me see if I can get two more."  

When she got up, one of the fellows I knew looked over at me with a grin.  I grinned back and shrugged.  

"Who knows?," I said shaking my head.  "Who the fuck knows?"