C. Todd @ctodddavis - Tumblr Blog

Be Still. Art Inspiration. (at Oregon State University)

Pictures

Somehow I came about an article from last year about the 1980s street photography of Jamel Shabazz, and I was sucked in by the brilliant images. I had never heard of Shabazz but quickly realized I am a big fan of his work, particularly his images of people in New York City from the ‘80s. Definitely check out this interview with him and see some of his work for yourself. Just click here.

All I know about NYC from this time is what I’ve read and seen in pictures, which provides an array of messages that are very different from the current state of the city, which I first visited and fell in love with in 2010.

But Shabazz’s pictures. The provocatively inviting poses, the peaceful facial expressions in both happy and serious looks plus the quintessential ‘80s style that different groups wore with so much flair. These images tell the stories of people’s lives at that time, highlight their values, capture their persona and invite the viewer into their world. It’s part of what differentiates artists from people who take pictures and professionals from hacks. To tell a real story through images instead of words is to have a subject(s) invite the audience along for the journey without dragging them to the end.

So many pieces of the story speak to me, especially the poses with the fashion coming in a close second. They are somewhat intertwined though. How one dresses impacts the pose while the pose then heightens the look of the clothes. Together, they offer a great portrait into a time and a style in a city that are linked. It wasn’t the most beautiful time for the city, but some people see those as the glory days of their lives or the heart of their youth or the beginning of something better. No matter what the overall story of a city is, each person in the picture has their own view what the story actually was, and it was Shabazz who had the ability to capture and share it through his lens.

Curves

Lines on lined paper. Words in books, print/online media. Manhattan streets for the most part. 100 meter track races. Roads in the Indiana countryside. Rowing races. Lanes in a pool. They’re all straight and perfectly functional. Practical even as they require the least movement, thought, action. One direction: keep heading straight till you reach County Road 500 East. It’s exactly 5 miles from here. If you look hard enough, you can almost see the stop sign from here.

Direction without left and right movement easily becomes less about meandering and more about getting down to business. Straight talk rather than beating around the bush if you will. Absolutely nothing wrong with this since most of the time life calls for getting things done, but curves. Curves. Oh sweet curves. They can make your engine rev and mouth water at the mere thought.

They’re that magical, especially when envisioning those curves taken quickly in sporty car. Testing one’s sportiness, and the car’s, too. These roads can easily make a weak stomach miserable, overwhelm a timid driver and overwork a backseat driver’s invisible break.

However, what was likely an impassible stretch of land at one point now has a way of engaging the fleet-footed driver’s mind and bring motorist looking for adventure from lands near and far to test their grit, driving and voracious appetite for truly working out a car’s engine and tires.

Yet these curves seem to lead us not to big cities, bright lights and new fan dangled entertainment. They lead to good times in towns many have forgotten, once thriving communities highways, by-ways and interstates have taken us away from exploring and sights people used to cherish that are distant memories or only noted in stories kids find humorous today.

It’s in the backwoods places that life happens, people can become real and friendships started in the big city are fully tested during times without mobile connectedness and on runs and bike rides and adventures that breathe life into the mind and soul.

It’s not that the same isn’t true of lands reached via straight roads, but the curves provide a mental diversion on the journey to help prepare the psyche for something different and help make the path part of the adventure.

Nalgenes

It was just another weekend of getting sloshed and passed around, seeing things that can’t be unseen at all hours of the morning, day and night, feeling filthy with no certainty of being able to come clean, rarely sleeping in the same place nightly and being tossed to the side when I wasn’t needed or wanted.

I thought I was going back to Athens, GA, to support a grad student, not a foolhardy college freshman seeing freedom for the first time. What is this guy thinking, and doesn’t he realize I need to be fulfilled and can’t live with empty feelings?

One day I’m his wingman, right there with him, keeping life going, believing we’re one, but the next morning finds me waiting to be picked up, questing his ability to think straight and operate at full capacity. Hours roll by with no sign of a high five even after we locked eyes several times before he departed. It’s like he doesn’t even notice me and how much I add to his life.

I know I can be more to him. I add so much to him. For crying out loud, I’m at least 57% of him. Why does he think he can treat me like this: leaving me empty, dirty, lost, in dark places when he needs me the most?

I simply won’t stand for it. If he’s going to do this, I’m going to find a cool river in a sunny and warm place to relax. He’ll come crawling back.

--------------------------------

What brought on this story?

A friend who is a writer suggested told me about a writing project one of her teacher’s had the class do, which was to pick one object and write about it for 10 minutes. The isn’t specifically to write about the object, which is an option, but to use the object as a focal point to launch one’s writing, and since we have no loss of objects around us at all time, we won’t run out of topics in a lifetime.

I had already begun trying to write for 1 hour a day when my friend shared this with me, so I’m taking the idea and molding it to my world, which will be writing about 1-3 objects daily for a total of 1 hour. Simple to make happen.

Since I was looking at a Nalgene bottle on my countertop while I was talking with said friend, this is where I’ll start. I don’t want to fight hydration either since my Nalgene is filled with water most of the time. However, I’ve been known to use a Nalgene to transport mixed drinks, wine and an illegal spirit from one country to another at least once. While my wife was displeased with my brilliant idea, Sabb Canty Cumbee, my great grandfather who was a moonshiner known as The King of Hell-Hole Swamp and who newspapers wrote was a “corn farmer,” which was always in quotations, would be very pleased. Thus, I remind my wife I’m carrying on a family tradition and paying respects to Sabb every time I enjoy a sip of the Cuban Rum. To you Sabb!

Sure, a Nalgene bottle is a splendid vessel for keeping liquids with us, but they lead a full life of stories, too.

#Hydration #Nalgene #Sabb Canty Cumbee #Moonshine

Community

Earlier today, I finished listening to Sebastian Junger’s thoroughly enjoyable and thought provoking book Tribe today. Most notably, it brings to light the missing community in the United States that takes place in the worst and hardest of times when people have to rely on others and support others as a means of real, tangible survival.

While I have friends in the Navy and played sports growing up, I can’t relate to war or the level of deep connection he discusses, some of which are deeply personal for people who aren’t fighting but live in a country riddled with war all around them, which I am grateful for given the sacrifice many have made on behalf of the US, including for me.

However, I can think of Junger’s book from the standpoint of a community and the grave need I, and I’d argue we as a whole, need for friendship and fellowship and connecting with people from any and all backgrounds, especially given I moved to a new town 2 months ago. The community I had in Portland didn’t need each other for food, money, daily care, housing and other basic necessities, but we brought out the best in others via open conversations, digging questions, support and encouragement in the good and bad times plus a willingness to be present when necessary.

This is what I miss the most about Portland, what I’m working to build in Corvallis and have to have to succeed in any endeavor: people who rely on me and on whom I rely, a community, friends, a few folks who will answer the phone no matter what time I call, guys who will listen and ask the questions that hurt to answer and couples who aren’t afraid to be honest and open with my wife and me. This takes time and openness and a willingness to be vulnerable and likely hurt on my part, but the end result is crucial to growth and happiness and life and valuable relationships. Little did I know there’s research to back-up this need for people and an imperative for me to give to others.

For more about Tribe, check out the following:

NY Times Review: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/19/books/review-sebastian-jungers-tribe-examines-disbanded-brothers-returning-to-a-divided-country.html

NPR Interview with Sebastian Junger: http://www.npr.org/2016/05/21/478962909/sebastian-junger-s-examines-veteran-life-after-leaving-tribe

#books #sebastian junger #tribe #community

Mary's Peak peek. (at Fitton Green County Natural Area)

Training

Consistency. No matter what you’re trying to accomplish, like me improving my writing or training for a 25k trail race with 2600+ feet of elevation gain or expanding my knowledge through reading, the sum at the end isn’t accomplished in one action, one day, one week or one month necessarily, but in all of the efforts along the way.

I’m a runner and enjoy running, but I’ve been lost when it comes to training and racing for several years. Yes. Training and running are different. Running is an activity done by many but without any specific goal at the end. It can be done regularly or sporadically, but on it’s own, it’s a positive exercise.

Training, as a friend of mine showed me by way of kicking my butt with a plan to help me race a 5k, on the other hand, consists of running and workouts that tax the body’s systems - lungs, legs, muscles, heart, mind - in ways akin to torture in the moment. It’s defined days of running to get faster, stronger or quicker, to go longer, harder or harder for longer and to stress the aforementioned systems so racing is possible. A week or month or year of running provides improvement, but adding specified workouts to running is life changing.

It was a few months ago when my wife was asked to apply for a job that would potentially move us 90 minutes away from where we were living at the time. To entertain myself while waiting for friends, I searched for races in and around this potential (now actual) new city, and I started to find some road races but an ample number of trail races, too. My curiosity was peaked as I felt my heart beating a little faster.

This lead to conversations with friends and peers at the running store where I worked, and several of those friends were already trail runners who were training for 50k, 50 mile, 100k and/or 100 mile races. Thus, when I said “look, a 25k that starts 15 minutes from where I’m going to live,” one of those ultra friends proclaimed, “I’ll do that with you.” Challenge thrown down indirectly, but I was not faced with several reasons to sign up and start training unless I were not going to accept the challenge, which would be good for my physical and mental health.

Of course I said yes, but I didn’t sign up until today, which also means the my training has really be running to this point. Furthermore, just running means I tended to succumb to not running or going easy when frustration, tiredness, complacency or regression hit. Now, however, I have shared that I’m doing the race and going to be training. I found a training plan to get me started. I have group runs to help me meet more people, explore trails, do track workouts and get ready. At the same time, I know it’s going to hurt, both the training and the race’s 2600+ feet of elevation gain.

I’m sitting here with a little trepidation about the decision because it’s been so long since I’ve stared down a training plan with a race on the other end, i.e. 10-ish weeks from now. That’s Sunday, October 2.

While I quibble about this, I don’t regret mentioning the race. I don’t regret the pain I’m going to experience if not enjoy. I don’t regret any of what lies ahead because I know training rather than just running will get me there. Friends and people I don’t know right now will help me prepare. My friend who put out the challenge signed up just after I did, but she’ll be fine since she’s doing a 50k a few weeks before October 2.

It’ll take a week or two to get into a training mindset, but I have my training plan to adhere to so I know what I have to do daily. This is what it takes to get better: finding something worth committing to doing. Finding a way to help get you there. Then forging ahead with the plan. It’s scary, but let the training begin.

Style Revisited

I wasn’t thrilled with my Style post from last week when I wrote it, and that feeling hasn’t changed. The question about style in my life stems from the major roll appearance played in my Southern upbringing, which I look at now with some disdain because so much emphasis was put on style while little was put on substance. That took a few counseling sessions to work through.

Nevertheless, the topic of style came up over the weekend while listening to the Ted Radio Hour podcast entitled What Makes Us...Us. If you want the short version, it’s the part by Steven Pinker called How Do Nature And Nurture Combine To Make Us Who We Are?.

I’m ok with the fact what I wear matters to me, although some mornings I think about I’m going to wear too much. It’s one part of what makes me uniquely me. My own style and my sense of style will be ever changing. I’ll adjust and grow and continue to consider my options and how to merge my previous tastes with my current likes, which I can see as tasteful infighting or taste building. I’m definitely more on the struggle side of the spectrum while growing with each day I stretch my creative and ambiguous side.

I feel better now.

Small Town Weekends

Weekends are what we make of them no matter where we live: going out vs. staying in for food and drinks, out or in solo, with people (and how many), music, shows, athletic/outdoor endeavors, events, exploring. We make the decisions and plans or act spontaneously.

Having living in two decent sized cities - the suburbs of a 6 million person metro area + pretty close to downtown of a 600,000 person city (2.3m metro area) - until two months ago when my wife’s job took us to a college town with 55,000 residents and 28,000 college students.

While it wouldn’t be defined as small, it’s small to me, which isn’t a positive or negative to the city. It’s my home, and I’ll make what I can out of all that’s here. However, all that’s here is less than all that’s in the larger city where I spent the previous 9 years.

I could gripe about and bemoan my new home, but that suggests my focus is on what this new city doesn’t have to what I used to have. However, while I have plenty to explore and learn about my 55,000 person town, the fact that it’s smaller than my previous city is actually freeing because if my small town doesn’t excite me any particular weekend, my wife and I have the capacity to go somewhere else in close proximity on a whim just as we did this past weekend when we decided during dinner on Friday night that we would drive 2.5 hours to spend time in the central part of the state. Why? Because a hot air balloon event and a cycling race were happening, and we wanted to see both.

Could we have stayed home and enjoyed our weekend? You bet. If we still lived in the larger city, could we have still gone? Most definitely. However, it’s easy to believe we’re giving up more by living the big city that always has events than a small town that has enough to enjoy but not too much to decide between several options.

I shouldn’t hide that my wife and I enjoy traveling, so skipping town anytime has never been something we’ve shied away from doing, at least not that we were aware of. Yet, it seems like we’re more available to seeing new parts of our state than we previously allowed ourselves to do. Or was it that the draw of so many events and people, whether we went to them/hung out with them, kept us in town?

No matter what the reason, I can say after two months in our new home, it’s much easier to venture out than it was before. It’s much easier to pick what we want to do or where we want to eat out even if the food isn’t at the same level as before. In the end, the events and food and activities are merely a means to spending time with my wife, with friends, with new people, and it looks like we’ll have an easier time relishing all of that in this new small town we call home.

Style

Style is always changing, updating, developing, morphing. That’s nothing new, and the fact everything’s style is changing isn’t new either. Houses, furniture, dishes, clothing, shoes, blankets, art, floors. They change style. Our preferences change as we grow and move and meet new people and see new products.

There’s a built in demand for new items based on this premise, and I recognize and appreciate that fact. I am an experience within my means over cheap person, so I am part of those who seek repurposed and artisanal and objects with stories and so much more. All of my gathering and buying and tossing out and consumption and replacing or not replacing is some of the process of my style coming to life.

So many little decisions create a unique dynamic of myself and others, which I realize is largely impacted by taste makers and stores and designers and the like, but people like me make the purchases and choose from the colors and sizes and lengths and models and combinations available, be them current or previous seasons. At the same time, these items must go with what we already own unless we’re starting over. I wanted, at least in my daydreams, for my wife and me to massively purge and start almost from scratch when we sold our house and moved to a new city last month. It wasn’t practical or necessary, but when we move into a new house, I don’t want to try to make our old stuff work as much as I want to create a new home with items that fit the look and feel and time (be it a 1920s craftsman, a 1930s Victorian, a 1960s ranch or a farmhouse of any age) and space and proportions.

What I really want is to expunge items from my previous style (black wood furniture and frames and shiny) and bring in items more harmonious with my new style (reclaimed wood, leather, colorfully tame). Is this my style for good or merely the current me, and will I be ok if we end up finding a stellar mid-1900s ranch that we make modern? Maybe. Hopefully.

I don’t want to get stuck. I don’t want to dress like a suburban dad who wears jeans from 10 to 15 to 20 years ago, sweatsuits from farther back, shoes that scream I’m out of touch. I cringe at the thought of awful wallpaper and curtains and tablecloths and bedding. This is the backdrop of my youth, yet when I attempted to bust this skin as a youth, teenage style became mixed with the old school, Southern taste of my parents. This created a unique blend I don’t want to repeat, so I fight to develop but not get stuck in one style. I work to see with an artistic and open mind willing to blend yesterday and today to continue to make me. To see myself in any situation existing with my own style and look and vibe that naturally grows out of who I am.

* I don’t go back and edit my writing, so even though I feel like what I just wrote is a bit rubbish and poorly written, it’s part of my growth writing, putting together thoughts and following wherever my words take me. I suppose that’s my writing style.

Choice

During a conversation over and about coffee, espresso and a variety of brewing methods, I told a couple of friends I’m a recovering maximizer. I have proclaimed this many times and continue in my growth as a satisficer, which has been greatly helped by learning how I became a maximizer. Being raised by a father who saw life’s options as black or white, right or wrong, this way or that way and with only one right choice and one wrong choice, I saw decisions as right or wrong. Thus, when it came to buying a watch as a child, I might as well have been put in a straitjacket.

Swatch was my ultimate downfall. One of the tragedies of my youth was at the Swatch counter in a department store. My perfectionist mindset believed there was a perfect watch in the case, and I was hell-bent on figuring out which one it was for me. Sadly, I have zero recollection of what that watch looked like, but I remember the mental anguish I felt that was only heightened by my brother’s insistence I just needed to pick one or he was going to beat me up, my mom using her protective mama bear words and my dad huffing and puffing and ready to blow you - all the Swatch watches - away. That was my family dynamic in one image. As I write this, I have the urge to purchase a Swatch watch, so the experience didn’t ruin me.

Since reading Barry Schwartz’s Paradox of Choice: Why Less is More five years ago, I've been in recovery. I started walking toward the light with decisions and thinking. I sought the mental freedom only a satisficer can enjoy, possibly even fathom. Being a maximizer was draining and damaging and daunting and made going to places like Vancouver’s Granville Island Public Market, an ice cream shop and an old school candy store more like torture than the sensory orgasms they are.

I laugh at my former self and the times I get caught in the tangled web a maximizer weaves. Choice can be beautiful in the hands of a satisficer and the nemesis of a maximizer. Here’s to the continual satisfaction of being a satisficer.

Learn more in this Wall Street Journal article and Barry Schwartz’s TED talk.

Musical Palette Palate

Music is like whisk(e)y to me: I can talk about each at merely an elementary level. I don’t have a refined palate, know nothing about a musical palette - heck, I actually just learned the word 5 minutes ago - can’t appreciate subtle differences that make one bottle/style/piece good and another great yet I think I know what I like and dislike when I mindfully consume both, which grows and develops and changes as I consume more of each, sometimes together.

It doesn’t matter if our literal and figurative whisk(e)y and music palates are vastly different or closely aligned similar in my book, and, in fact, I continue to learn, with the help of a good buddy and former co-worker, I love spending time with people whose musical palate isn’t like my own.

At various times in my life, I had never heard of Third Day, JJ Grey & Mofro, Little Wings, TW Walsh, Jon Bellion, Indigo Girls, Joseph, Richard Thompson, Tab Benoit, The Duhks, Keb' Mo', Elliott Smith, Pacifica Quartet, Dave Swarbrick or Johnny Bertram and the Golden Bicycles before friends were talking about them, I admitted I hadn’t heard of him/her/them/that music before and good conversations become richer, more meaningful and head off into new, fun directions.

I got up-close and personal with friends’ eyes lighting up in different ways than I had seen before. Friends started sharing crazy road trip memories, old concert stories, bizarre musical run-ins at hole-in-the-wall or way off-the-beaten-path spots. A willingness to share my limited music knowledge has given and continues to birth never-ending joy of diving into friends lives where they intersect with music, and this has changed my life, or at least my ears and mind.

Friendships have taken on new meaning. My limited musical knowledge, which I viewed as a limiting piece of my conversational life, has grown into a massive learning opportunity in both a listening and sociological manner. I’ve come to appreciate and really enjoy a wide array of music and artists, which has allowed me to share some stellar music with friends who are narrow-eared in their music tastes.

My knowledge of what makes good music is still bad, but I’ve come to see enjoying music is less about liking this or that and more about listening to new music, hearing it through friends’ stories and slowing down long enough to actually listen to the lyrics, the rhythms, the meaning, the instruments. Then, I’ll pour a second or third glass of whisk(e)y and talk with my friends to learn what makes this, the musical palette, so palatable to them, their life and now our growing friendship.

Writing

Just write. You’ll get better. That’s what writers say, and while I wouldn’t say I’m a writer, I’m working on outlets to stretch myself, build different creative muscles, put into words and dive deeper into various thoughts I have, offer random thoughts for others and develop a stronger grasp of words and language and textualization, which I’ve come across several times recently in relation to US Supreme Court Justices, notably the late Chief Justice Scalia.

While I had a general idea what the word meant, I wasn’t was a little fuzzy on the term textualization. I didn’t a little investigation and reading to see what I could find, notably how it might relate to my writing efforts specifically and me in general. Peter Barry, an English Professor in the UK, summed it up best when he suggests “its essence is the belief that things cannot be understood in isolation – they have to be seen in the context of the larger structures they are part of.” (Peter Barry)

This hit me in a few ways. First, even though textuality focuses on the written and spoken word, i.e. to understand my words one must get to know me, which excites me given my pursuit of deeper and genuine friendships, I’d like to extrapolate the term to show it’s about me and you and anyone and everyone we encounter. My words and thoughts and point-of-view are flexible and ever-changing as I mature, interact with new people, am exposed to new thinking, travel to new places and live in a dynamic environment.

I have a core that’s deeply rooted in my Christian beliefs and love of Christ, which greatly impacts my perspective, but this relationship is anything but static and boring. He has too much to teach me and show me plus too many people and places where He can use me to keep my as I am even if I try to zig when He wants me to zag. Thus, the challenging beauty I see in textualization: it never stops ebbing or flowing, waxing or waning, living or breathing, which mean’s I can’t either. That’s why I’m here writing.

I didn’t have an instructor say, Go home and write a page tonight. And let that page come out of you— Then, it will be true.

Langston Hughes did for my favorite poem, Theme for English B.

However, you are a part of me, just as I am a part of you. That’s American. [That’s human.]

Sometimes perhaps you don’t want to be a part of me. Nor do I often want to be a part of you. But we are, that’s true! As I learn from you, I guess you learn from me— although you’re older [or younger or in any way different] — and [more or less or differently] free.

That’s my Theme for Writing for Me.

I like my whisk(e)y just like I like my trail running shoes. (at Foot Traffic Sellwood)

On the Table [my name for it] Unframed by JR; Ellis Island #saveellisisland

#saveellisisland

Bee on point.

Blown away by God's beauty in the most incredible sunset I've ever seen, and this is but one unaltered shot of a sky that kept giving for 30 minutes, which was an incredible way to end an 11th anniversary. (at West Beach Resort)

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