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I have a few pictures to share, but first I have a statement.
One of the things I would love to do (and no, I have no intention of actually doing so) is amass a collection of pictures of this sort, put it all onto a CD, and send it off to L., who taught the poetry-writing class at my college. I wanted to work on my poetry, and have more of an incentive to do it than my own desire, so I took it. (Two years running. I have no idea what possessed me the second time.) He preferred free verse to anything else, which honestly disappointed me - I would have loved to work on the forms. But I also like writing free verse, and a great deal of what he taught made a lot of sense and helped me.
A great deal of it didn't, of course. But - unlike a couple other students who, I know, got very frustrated - I had expected that. I didn't expect our styles to mesh perfectly. But in the end, it wasn't our styles that made for the most frustrating parts of non-matching.
It was content. L. decided to tell me to stop trying to imitate Frost (whom he knew I read and liked) and write what I know. And I, insufficiently sharp-tongued at the time, only bitched to my friends about it, instead of demanding of him that he decide what the hell he wanted.
Because I wasn't imitating anyone, I was writing what I know. Now, if L's experience tended to the city (it did), and the sordid (certainly his poetry did at times, when I read his books), that did not mean that all his students' did. I was decidedly the farthest one out, however, being somewhat shy and never having gone to a dance club (or wanted to), etc., etc.
My poetry took a turn for the worse, for a while: in the end, I resorted to whacking my original images apart and turning them surreal, allowing L. to find whatever he wanted in them. He seemed to think this was excellent. I thought it was horse-crap, but I also kept extensive notebooks of every step of the process. Nothing was lost; all can be salvaged and put back to what I needed it to be.
What does this have to do with pictures? Quite simply, these are the pictures I wish I had had then, to stuff into his face.
This is what I know. This is the place I spent most of my childhood, this is the place whose clean air I breathe when I close my eyes and imagine peace and happiness in a stressful moment. These are the hills I drove, when I learned to handle a car. I walked here. I stared at evenings like these.
Oh, they've changed. It's been over twenty years since we first moved there. The top of Bald Peak is far more developed than it was then (a fact I somewhat resent, as it was much prettier before). But they're not very different, honestly. They match the memories of my heart, most of them quite well.
As I noted in the entry yesterday, most of these shots are from inside a car. Sometimes it's more obvious than others, for which I apologize. They are up in my Yahoo photo album, in the '2001-12-29' folder. The album is here:
[Link removed; pictures down. Sorry!]
One of the things I would love to do (and no, I have no intention of actually doing so) is amass a collection of pictures of this sort, put it all onto a CD, and send it off to L., who taught the poetry-writing class at my college. I wanted to work on my poetry, and have more of an incentive to do it than my own desire, so I took it. (Two years running. I have no idea what possessed me the second time.) He preferred free verse to anything else, which honestly disappointed me - I would have loved to work on the forms. But I also like writing free verse, and a great deal of what he taught made a lot of sense and helped me.
A great deal of it didn't, of course. But - unlike a couple other students who, I know, got very frustrated - I had expected that. I didn't expect our styles to mesh perfectly. But in the end, it wasn't our styles that made for the most frustrating parts of non-matching.
It was content. L. decided to tell me to stop trying to imitate Frost (whom he knew I read and liked) and write what I know. And I, insufficiently sharp-tongued at the time, only bitched to my friends about it, instead of demanding of him that he decide what the hell he wanted.
Because I wasn't imitating anyone, I was writing what I know. Now, if L's experience tended to the city (it did), and the sordid (certainly his poetry did at times, when I read his books), that did not mean that all his students' did. I was decidedly the farthest one out, however, being somewhat shy and never having gone to a dance club (or wanted to), etc., etc.
My poetry took a turn for the worse, for a while: in the end, I resorted to whacking my original images apart and turning them surreal, allowing L. to find whatever he wanted in them. He seemed to think this was excellent. I thought it was horse-crap, but I also kept extensive notebooks of every step of the process. Nothing was lost; all can be salvaged and put back to what I needed it to be.
What does this have to do with pictures? Quite simply, these are the pictures I wish I had had then, to stuff into his face.
This is what I know. This is the place I spent most of my childhood, this is the place whose clean air I breathe when I close my eyes and imagine peace and happiness in a stressful moment. These are the hills I drove, when I learned to handle a car. I walked here. I stared at evenings like these.
Oh, they've changed. It's been over twenty years since we first moved there. The top of Bald Peak is far more developed than it was then (a fact I somewhat resent, as it was much prettier before). But they're not very different, honestly. They match the memories of my heart, most of them quite well.
As I noted in the entry yesterday, most of these shots are from inside a car. Sometimes it's more obvious than others, for which I apologize. They are up in my Yahoo photo album, in the '2001-12-29' folder. The album is here:
[Link removed; pictures down. Sorry!]
