Giving Myself An Excuse

To those who check my blog every tuesday, you may have noticed that its been almost a month since I last posted anything. You can thank school for that! I've had tons of work dumped on my lately as CV approaches the end of the school year, and I haven't found time to pick up my camera and go to work. I have thousands of pictures that I've taken over the last couple of years, but I can't bring myself to post anything that isn't fresh or intriguing enough to write about. I'll be leaving my blog alone until I get out of school and settle into summer. Next week is my last week of school, but the work load will not be slowing down until the end of June. So give me a couple weeks and I'll be sure to have plenty of sweet shots to show you guys and write nonsense about.

More Than Meets The Eye

Think about the person that you think you know the best. The person that you could confidently say you know just about everything there is to know about them. You could complete their sentences, laugh at jokes that they tell don't make any sense to anyone else, and make eye contact with them and know just what they're thinking at that very moment. Think about that person. Now think about how it is, exactly, that you got to know them so well. Has it just been a cumulative thing over time? Have you had specific conversations with questions directed at learning more about them? How? Have you ever wondered that maybe there are things that you don't know about them? I don't mean things like what they're doing at this very second... of course you won't know that unless your right next to them watching their every move, but I mean things about them. Things that define them... define their character. Things that make them who they are. Things about their past, present and future. Hopes, dreams, and struggles. Do you know all of that? Well, here, let me answer for you...

NO.

And we probably won't ever know for the most part. They won't tell us everything thats inside of them. As humans we are inclined to lock up so many things. We are SO good at putting up walls and putting on masks to shut our real selves off from the rest of the world. I think so many of us are afraid to show what's really inside of us. Maybe it's because we're afraid of what others may think, or because that might prove that we aren't all so tough. Is it a bad thing to admit that we are weak? That we have vulnerable hearts and minds? What ever it is, someone's got to break down those walls and see through those masks. If you ever can... it will rock your world. Just look into their eyes. Eyes don't lie. As I mentioned in a previous blog, you can shut your mouth and quiet your mind, but your heart never stops speaking (from Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life). If there's any outlet for your heart, I would say it's through your eyes. As cheesy and cliche as this may sound, its completely true. I have been blessed a couple of times to just stare into the eyes of those who I thought I knew so much about. During a couple church trips I participated in an activity where we rotated around a room in two concentric circles, stopping at each person, face to face, and spent what seemed like for ever staring into their eyes. With the right introduction, an appropriate atmosphere, and all immature giggling from awkwardness thrown aside, we all began to cry. The entire group. With each person that we stood in front of, we became more overwhelmed with a feeling of such vulnerability and weakness. We were letting go all that was locked up within us and taking all of the weight off of our shoulders without saying a word. If there has ever been a moment when I knew God was present, it was right then and there, between two faces and flowing tears. Some of us tried to smile and act like we were okay, some of us tried to act like we had nothing to cry about, but looking into each others eyes we could all see how fake we really were and had always been. We hadn't necessarily learned more about each other, but we saw that we were all in the same boat. We all had weaknesses, failures, and downfalls that we had gotten sick of covering up for so long, and we were finally able to let them go. As good ol' Dr. Phil says almost every day at 4 o'clock, "you can't fix what you don't acknowledge!" I've found that to be very true in my life time, and its as simple as praying. My example of letting go of it all by staring into people's eyes may get you a black eye in return if its not set up properly, so I'm not necessarily instructing you to do that, but give it a shot with God. I mean really devote time to him sometime. Block out every distraction as best as you can and focus on Him. Dump all of your crap on Him... He can take it. Just give it a shot. When you finally get there, well... the feeling is indescribable. 

You might recognize this picture from the Blackout post i recently submitted. These are the same eyes as the black and white eyes hovering in the skyline of the city. So... I may have saturated the blue in her eyes a little bit for drama's sake, but its not that far off. C'mon, it looks cool right?

Garbage In, Garbage Out

So where do people get off just ditchin their trash just about everywhere BUT in the trash can? Is it really that hard to walk a few feet to the nearest trash can and take care of it there? Have we gotten THAT lazy? Have we lost all regard as to how our communities look and the image portrayed by them? Sure seems like a lot of us have become that way.

This is an issue that has really gotten on my nerves over the past few years so I'm just going to dive right in. When I see someone toss their crap on the ground and walk away without the slightest thought given to what they just did, there are a few things that come to mind. Call me judgmental, presumptuous... what ever, but they must not care about anything or anyone but themselves. They must expect the school slave...or I mean janitor... to come around and pick it up for them. They must think themselves above those few foot steps to the trash can. They must disregard the fact that others that share the community might care about how things look and that they might be interested in preserving or improving the wellness of the community. They must ignore, reject, and flip-the-bird to a lot of things with one small gesture such as this. 

Look, I know I don't live in Beverly Hills or Flintridge or South Pas or the upper portion of Altadena, but I don't live in the ghetto by any means, and I'd like to keep it that way for as long as I'm around and for as long as my family and friends are in this nice little (and booming) town of La Crescenta. I feel very blessed to live where I do with a good sized home, three pets, generally friendly neighbors, safe streets, cops that rest more than arrest for lack of anything better to do, and two of some of the most elite public schools in the nation... so blessed that I would do what I can to appreciate all of it and keep things the way they are. And I would REALLY appreciate it if others might give a rats patootie ( yea so that was corny... just go with it.) and take care of the community too. 

I've heard of studies that inquired what it is that turns nice comfortable neighborhoods into sketchy ghettos. One of the biggest contributing factors, as they found, was when a building (house, office, shop, etc.) is left vacant and run down for a prolonged period of time. If the property is unkept, trashed up, tagged on, littered on and left to rot... chances are thats a good glimpse of where the community is headed in the not so distant future. Some of you may know this as The Broken Window Theory. 

Now you may say "oh well c'mon... thats a little extreme. No ones going to let their quaint town turn into a trash dump that easily." Well I would hope not! But there's evidence every day that proves the theory to be true. Just within the last few years that I've been in high school I've seen waaay more people throwing trash all over the place. And just a few weeks ago I learned the story of the Pico Union District and how it used to be a pretty upscale place, but as families moved out and things weren't taken care of, things dove downhill and now its looked down upon as one of the worst areas of LA. So what do we do about it? Well, I've gotten a good sense of who reads my ranting and I don't think you guys are the ones that would trash up a place, so thanks for that! But next time your out and you see someone else dump something on the ground, try saying something... don't get yourself beat up, but if you don't feel threatened or uneasy about the person, tell them to pick it up. And if that doesn't work, then pick it up yourself and throw it away for them because you don't know who else is watching and that act may trigger a thought in their mind to clean up there act, so to speak. We really shouldn't let these things slip by because the more we do, the more the become a cultural pandemic. And when you think about it on a bigger scale, such carelessness and disregard leads to graffiti, even more foul language (now there's something to write a blog about), and just lower standards all together. Not to be a total pessimist, but I don't have a whole lot of hope for my generation, but maybe we can all work towards making the next generation a lot less selfless and a lot more courteous. 

Fog

This is a picture I took during last summer at a church event we had once a week called The Yard. This one specific evening we had dry ice... naturally we couldn't keep our selves from playing with it. In some ways we just never grow up. Fog is so much fun!

I couldn't seem to come up with a topic to write about for this post, and seeing that this is being posted on a Wednesday instead of Tuesday, I figured I'd dig up a cool shot from the deep, dark depths of my external hard drive and just go with it. Enjoy :D

The Richest Among Us

As of right now I am looking into selling the camera equipment I have and investing in a much more advanced camera body(the Nikon D200/D300 as opposed to my current D40) and a wider variety of lenses. I realized that, not only do I need to sell what photography gear i have now, I need to sell of a bunch of other toys laying around like my BMX bike, MX helmet, a little point-and-shoot Nikon, 1st gen. PSP, and a few other valuables. 

As some of you may or may not know by now, I am a die-hard fan of Road Biking, also. After photography, road biking eats up the rest of my time. It has become my saturday morning adventures, my after school stress relief, and the occasional 4:00 AM suicide mission. I have been biking for quite a few years now and push harder and further with each year that passes. Currently I can pull off about 30 miles per day if I cut out the time for it (back in september i was doing 40+ per morning until I had to cut it off due to knee rehab and complete retraining of my quads to fix an ongoing running injury of 5 years). The steeper the hill, the more inviting it is. The higher the street speed limit, the harder I'll push to break it. The more cars I can outrun, the more pumped I get. The only problem, now, is I'm outrunning my bike. I got my bike, labeled as a serious beginners bike, 5 years ago, and I am out performing it by far. I push harder and move faster than its geometry is made to take, and I'm beginning to hit a wall. Now if only i had upwards of a few grand to get my hands on a competition level, asphalt shredding frame.

So here's what I'm getting at... This isn't bragging time, this is humility time. So far all I've written is just the opposite, you might say... well just hold on a second and let me explain. My two biggest hobbies are very expensive and time consuming. Together, I have anywhere from 5-10K to save up in order to fulfill my wants and wishes. Whether you're wealthy or not, thats a decent chunk of change, right? I think so. Well then its a darn good thing I don't have to worry about where my next meal is coming from, where the electricity powering my macbook is coming from, whether the drinking water is clean, whether I'll be able to get my full 8 hours of beauty sleep tonight, or whether I can get medical attention in the event that I get hurt pretty bad. I can let any care of every necessity slide and obsess over the luxuries in my life. How lucky am I? How lucky are any of you who are able to read this right now? Have you ever stopped to consider how fortunate you and I are, even in spite of our "hard times"? Have you ever truly appreciated the roof you live under, the food that you snack on when you aren't hungry, the car that you drive in, or the country that takes care of you? I do... rarely. Not enough. Not nearly enough. Now I wouldn't say that I'm spoiled, but you don't have to be in order to be guilty of this. 

None of these things are ours. They are God's. Who are we to take them as "ours"? What... because we've worked so hard for what we have? Yea I see your point, and that makes sense, but at the very root of it all, we are given life, forgiveness, grace, freedom, and heaven all at no cost to us. We didn't work for that, but do we appreciate that? Do we REALLY appreciate that? Our souls are what goes to heaven. All material possessions are left behind to rot with the sins of man, yet we all seem to devote all of our time and money on the material. Okay maybe not ALL, but the vast dang majority. I applaud you who sacrifice what you are blessed to offer whether it be money, time, talent, or otherwise.... you have done something that I feel I haven't done enough of. 

I spent this last weekend right in my our backyard, LA. I went with the high school group from church on a missions trip to get our hands in the poverty and homeless problem thats so close to home. As it turned out, we became the homeless. Friday night we were stripped of all our possessions except two items of our choice. I grabbed my sleeping bag and a stick of deodorant... I didn't want to stink myself out of my own bed). From there we slept outside on the sidewalk, woke up at 4:30 thanks to the law that states no person is to be sleeping in public when the sun rises, and got to work making due with what we had. We weren't given meals to eat, a place to clean up, or any means of obtaining such. We had to beg for money and find our own way to get food around the city. You wouldn't believe how difficult it is to beg on the streets. What that did to our pride and mental state in just one day was incredible and it makes me wonder what it must do to those who live that reality for years. I'd get much more into detail of what it was like to be on that side of the world, but I think you get my point. IT SUCKED!

You have to see, though, that I'm not writing this as a guilt trip for those of us who have money, whether it be a lot or not so much, but as an attempt at a wake up call. We are blessed and privileged to have the possessions that we have, but with that we most likely have the ability to sacrifice for those less fortunate. Instead of indulging in our material possessions, what if we took those material things and put them to use in changing the souls of the hopeless. Because the soul is that only thing that ever lasts. You and I may be rich with this world, but we can also be the poorest in compassion, humility, love, and soul. God blessed us with material riches not to dig our roots deeper in this world, but to help others stay afloat in this cruel world that loves to take them under when they can't provide for themselves. We can use our riches, big or small, in the name and image of God to show God to those who may not know Him and, instead, only know frustration and misery.

The picture I put up is a logo I made last Friday for a series that we do at church called Blackout. It is an effort to make us more aware of those who are less fortunate and need to see Gods loving hand now more than ever. It covers poverty and injustice here at home and on an international level. It is student lead and student created, but fueled by God. If you are interested in learning more, please contact me. I would love for anyone reading this to consider attending a Blackout event and getting involved at any level to serve and sacrifice for our Father.

Faith is dead without action. 

So Do Something.

The Nephew

Die Blase

I'm sorry to say, having had a less-than-friggin awesome weekend, that I'm sort of at a loss for words this week. I know I usually get all philosophical and mushy on you, but I'm not really feeling it this time. I apologize to those who enjoy reading my rambling, but then again some of you may be sighing with relief that I'm coming up for a breath of air this time around. 

With that said ,and without further ado, I give you The Bubble. oooooh aaaaah! Now you can finally take a good gander at what has fascinated us since we were all little kids and provided endless laughs and smiles. Unless, of course you were one of those kids that thought it was an awesome idea to drink the bubble juice... I have no words for you. 

Enjoy The Bubble and have a wonderful day.

P.S. The title is the german translation for The Bubble. I am currently studying German for the second year and I like to throw in little bits of it every now and then.