I just found the following, something I wrote one afternoon to my girl a long time ago.  How things like this endeared her to me is a mystery and a miracle…

Last night I went to radio shack to buy some headphones.  Not headphones for permanent use, but some that would do until I can get to best buy or wherever one might go to purchase overly expensive personal technology that is used to close oneself out from the social and civilized world.  I originally typed “civilized” with an S instead of a Z, but the auto spelling keeps on changing it.  I don’t like that.  I much prefer the British manner of spelling in this instance.  And in spelling color with an U.  Colour.  Strange that the autospelling doesn’t change “colour” to color.  So, anyway, radioshack.  For ten bucks I got radioshack brand headphones, and I must say they are the worst headphones I’ve ever tried listening to music through, and that includes the headphones that came with my Nintendo gameboy back in the early 90’s.  My favorite game was maybe ‘metroid’ and my brother’s favorite was ‘paperboy’.  In metroid, you were an alien that crawled through a labirynth of tunnels on a planet in a distant galaxy, gathering objects and fighting evil monsters that threatened to mutate and take over the universe.  In paperboy, you played a boy who rode on his bicycle and threw newspapers at houses in suburbia.  The more windows you busted and dogs you hit, the more points you would receive.  The difference in our favorite gameboy games is a perfect representation of mine and my brother’s diametrically opposed personalities.  Cover your mouth, then try singing clearly through the fleshiest part, then run across the room and try listening to what you just sang and you might, just might, get a sense of what its like listening to paleo or pearl jam or andrew bird or bach on these headphones.  I need some good headphones because if I don’t I will go crazy because I wont be able to drawn out the voices in this room.  I am avoiding mentioning the voices in my head because to actually mention them would only be a cliché or petty joke that’s been made too many times before.  Dan is eating peanuts a few desks over and he spills some with every handful he throws into his mouth.  I wonder what number soda he is on at this hour.  4? 5? 6? I had one today with lunch, and I really want another but I am denying it, knowing that if I do it could contribute to my early death or at least another pound of jiggly flesh I do not need.  I’ve never been able to drink diet soda or be able to reconcile drinking it for its lower calorie and faux sugar benefits.

Hope you’re having a nice day.

On a side note, our blog is pretty much busted.  Thanks, web host.  Joey says he has to fix some stuff on the “back end,” and wow is it hard to not make dirty jokes whenever he says so.  Also: the new Andrew Bird record is great.

how can the wolves tiptoe
ever so slightly through the dim
through the slips and the curtains
find me at the door i lost my key

sways and sways the fall has been
scrapes along the tracks of trials
the air swoops up to stab my face
from deep below the black hole well

a dollar a wish and free for the rich
tiptoe songs behind the trees
hiding trails from where i came
overgrown willows and figs and fog

the last leaf drifts and dances down
while the morning sticky leaves
the hands i hold are heavier now
still sweeter still worth the while

clearings and clutter and times of rain
put roses to bed for winter sting
the ones i love remain near still
and nearer i pray they’ll stay

Over the last few years I’ve made an attempt to get a new Christmas day tradition going - one that gets me out of the house and into the rural areas just southwest of mom’s place outside of Birmingham. With a quick 45 minute drive towards Tuscaloosa I can find myself in the middle of the landscape where famous men once were praised and where my favorite artist/photographer, Bill Christenberry, continues to make photographs.

Christenberry’s images are mesmerizing; they speak of a place and time that is at once intimately familiar to me and yet still strangely alien in ways I can’t seem to articulate. His photographs document the rural vernacular architecture of a handful of West Alabama counties and through their documentation meandering narratives of place and culture and time unravel without ever succumbing to overly romantic or nostalgic notions. In a lot of ways, his stories are told in ways that are very similar to how an old country road in Bibb County will follow a river or wind around low rising hills - there doesn’t seem to be much direction to it, but it feels right, you know you going somewhere, and there’s no good reason to be in a hurry about it. To read about Christenberry and see some of his work, go here to the NYTimes, or listen to a couple of nice features on NPR.

This year the weather was dark and rainy - not the most ideal for making photographs. But I went anyway, knowing that the time alone in the car would probably end up being more important than any image I could make along the way. I decided that this year I would try to find Sprott, home to a number of my favorite Christenberry pictures. I drove and drove, and found a few nice locations inside the Talladega National Forest, but I never could find Sprott. After I got back and consulted another map I realized I had missed it by no more than 5 or 10 miles to the south.

During my jaunt, I found a number of churches (all in the vain search of the Sprott Church) most of them with their own small cemeteries, full of graves with fresh flowers for the holiday. It was very quiet out - not just the cemeteries and churches, but the fields and the roads and the towns - the kind of quiet that I think only comes on Christmas day after all the presents have been opened and dinner eaten. And it was in this quiet that my mind was allowed to wander, and I could rest and think and reflect on another year past and of my own story that still seems to be unraveling like those back country roads - somewhat without direction, but going somewhere and in not much of a hurry.