I’m flying back to Nebraska in 43 hours, and I have 14 hours of work, 6 hours of personal appointments (these ladyparts don’t wax themselves), 6 hours of last-minute friend catch-up, and as close to 16 hours of sleep as I can manage before then. This gives me approximately 1 hour to pack and get my ass to the airport, but does not leave me much time to blog, so please accept these recent images with my love and apologies:

They say you can tell a lot about people by where they choose to point their camera.

I wonder what these shots say about me?

One month ago I was in San Francisco—in the same apartment I’m headed back to today—when I posted my house on craigslist. It was a whim, just something I did to make Fannie Mae think I was serious about selling, when all I really wanted to do was walk away.

I never dreamed it would work.

Never dreamed.

But it worked.

And now, four weeks, a home inspection, another appraisal, a shockingly successful garage sale, way too much packing, not enough blogging, a bruisey week of moving, a final walkthrough, and one giant check later, today’s the day. The buyers sign my freedom papers at 10 AM this morning, but I’ll already be on the road, headed west for the next month or two. The title agent will call me when it’s all over—perhaps I’ll be as far as North Platte by then. I’m bound for Rock Springs, Wyoming this evening, where Stella and I spent three snowbound days during the shock and awe campaign, what seems like a hundred lives ago.

It seems appropriate to spend the night passing through a place I’ve gotten stuck before, because that’s exactly how I’ve felt for the last couple years—psychically snowbound, with only war and weather on the tv screen—and it’s the last thing I feel right now. I’m all coltish and hopeful these days, ready for some room to run. Today will feel sunfree, I hope, with no shocks, only awe.

Thanks for all your support over the last months and years—you know who you are, you know what you mean to me. Thanks, especially, to The Subtle Parents for loving and putting up with The Subtle Pups while I wander (and for loving and putting up with me in all my evolutions). I’ll miss you all. And thanks to my sister and the neph for giving me a reason to come back. Thanks to my Lincoln friends for the growing sense of community: you make it hard to leave here. And to my San Francisco friends, put your walking shoes on, we’ve got miles to cover and pictures to take. I can’t wait!

More later, from the road.

Image is Michael Crawford’s deconstruction of Rauschenberg Minus Nebraska by Chuck Close

Sometimes, you have to take the shot with the camera you’ve got. And when I’m wandering through tunnels by the zoo with the dogs, that’s always the iphone. I haven’t figured out a way to administer constant sharp leash corrections to Asshole, Jr. while also managing my big-girl camera and its unslender lens. I am just not that coordinated.

But the water in the tunnel was coursing along, just like we were, and there was all that fresh graffiti I couldn’t pass up, especially not with that abandoned bicycle over there. Plus, iphone shots are tailor made for arty processing, and I’m a big sucker for the faux-holga effect you get from camerabag. So here you go, Monday: your daily photo, all grit and underground. Imagine me there, a wafty strider with two mutts at my heels, leaning out over the water to get it for you.

PS: It turns out that everything hurts now. Maybe the long walk and the cardio were not a good pairing with yesterday’s grand spill. In any event, a scalding hot bath and a superhero origins film are in my very near future. I would keep reading Remnick’s book on Obama tonight, but it’s too damn heavy for my poor sore paws.

Ouchie! My knee’s got quite a shiner:

Quick, someone kiss it.

I took a spectacular header yesterday. I was carrying my camera and iphone from the kitchen to the office and I forgot that I’d set the babygate in a new place to corral the dogs during brunch. So yeah, I went flying, and so did all my most expensive tech. But my camera’s tough, almost armored, my beloved 50mm lens still shoots fine, and this is not my iphone’s first rough landing followed by a long skid.

The only visible damage is on my right knee, and it’s just one of those sharp barkings that swell up and go all goth-rainbow for a colorful while. It didn’t stop me from marching the mutts around the zoo for an hour yesterday, or from busting out 30 minutes of cardio at the gym, or from falling asleep in a funny tangle at 6:30 last night.

I’ll probably carry this bruise around for much of the summer, though. This is the same leg that still has a dog scratch scar from more than a month ago; everything seems to fade slowly on me these days (and within me, for that matter). Maybe I have less bounce-back as I get older: things hit harder, bruises run deeper. Or maybe it’s a reminder to take my time, to really let the lessons set before I escape into my next moment: Step lightly, stay fluid, watch the path ahead, take the long view, accept the occasional bruise as evidence of a life lived.

After all, life should mark you, otherwise you’re doing it wrong.

I am PWD. That’s Posting While Drunk, in case you can’t read my sake acronym. So far this week, I’ve done icky graffiti, adorable baby, and now a dog shot, which fits my basic flow of cute infant, cute mutt, something edgy. (So basically, I’ve killed 2 girls with 1 cup by posting an unsettling animal today.) This also fits my definition of a guerilla street portrait, because LOOK AT THOSE EYES. He’s all bitch, plz, get that thing outta my face. Clearly, I am a puparrazo, stalking the four-legged fur-bearers. And no, I have no idea whether I spelled that correctly. PWD, people!

Hello from the couch. Here I am again, resisting the siren call of cable television. It’s 2:40 PM and I just resurfaced from the nap I needed after getting up at 5 AM to typetypetype in powerpoint (that tool of corporate propaganda-bites, aka Satan’s Bullet List). Now I’m awake and considering my next move. I could walk up to the Haight with the camera and capture a few faces, while searching out a salon for an emergency color assist (we call this “multitasking”). But my every tendon aches right now, after days of walking and miles of hills, and I wince preemptively at the thought of the upslope or downslog I’d have to cover to get anywhere.

Or I could watch some crap on hulu and just enjoy the cush. At my house, there are 8 rooms (of which I use 3) and no couch. I need a nice urban apartment with a place to sleep, a place to work, and a place to lounge. I’m putting that on the To Do list, as soon as that damn dog stops frolicking and gets back in the car.

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Thank god I have company.

Yeah, it snowed again. For the eleventy-billionth time since October. But it was so still and lovely yesterday that even my bitter, winter-hating heart cracked open a tiny bit as I tromped around in all that white (which reads a little yellow here. Oops*). I found this fellow tied up next door and, even though he’s a snow dog and built for these conditions, I was thisclose to bringing him inside and tucking him under the Snuggie.

*Said yellow could be due to the fact that I had the camera set to portrait style, to bring out the warm tones in skin, and forgot to set it to landscape, which highlights blues and greens, or it could have been an overenthusiastic slider correction in photoshop (I get a little excited making the colors dance). I do not believe it has anything to do with the earworm I can’t stop singing this morning, which I’m now going to pass along—you’re welcome! You know the one: Watch out where the huskies go, and don’t you eat that yellow snow…

Stella’s eight now, with white on her eyes and muzzle, but she’s been orchestrating my existence since she was just a tiny squirrel only 8 weeks old. In those first days, her ears could not even hold their own weight yet, but even then she had the wiles and guile to bend others to her will, which usually involved snax and belly worship. I have to work to be the top dog, but Stella, she just is.

This was a lazy morning shot, taken to see how my new boyfriend, the Sigma 50mm asskicking portrait-honcho lens, handles himself wide open (which, in this case, is f1.4…HAWT!). Even though I got the white balance all wrong according to my photography teacher, just CHECK OUT THAT BOKEH. And don’t be fooled by Stella’s expression. She may look like a dog of a certain age in thoughtful repose, but you can see what’s really on her mind: THIS BELLY’S NOT GONNA PET ITSELF, HUMAN.

My assignment this week is portraits, portraits, and more portraits. So c’mon over and lemme take your picture…

Listen up, you Titans of Internetlandia! It’s time to drop that pose of harried self-hatred and run from the glums!

>> So look in the mirror (ignore the badly dried bangs, the bruise-like eyecircles, the pallor of doomed fish) and repeat after me:

You are doing what you can, you who have so much, but feel such lack. These are trying days and you’re mostly fine. Everything else is just momentary wobbles and temporary fury. Try not to kick the dogs, even though their toileting has slipped and their behavior would irritate saints. Try not to come down so hard on yourself. Try to be kind and generous and infrequently alone. Practice the long view and if that doesn’t work, go la-la-la-I-can’t-hear-you until the mood passes. Don’t be your own enemy.

>> Now look at the screen (ignore the ratcheting misdeeds and hate-screeds, the fumbled opportunities, the crowing of the schaden-junkies) and repeat after me:

We can’t quiet the voices in our heads, but we can kill the voices on our screens. Take a break from the inanity, the insanity, the endless natter and chatter. We may miss an event or ten—a wrong move, a sudden scandal, a dire outbreak—but we’ll be shielded from the response, as well, the unending overreactions of all those galling twats who would make us feel less. Do not let them in.

>> Then look out the window (ignore the yellow dagger-cicles hanging from tired eaves, the filthy shit-bespecked snow, the relentlessly leaden sky) and repeat after me:

We’ve almost conquered January, the month that makes a witch’s tit look tropical. March will roll around one of these days and then we’ll complain about the rain. Even summer will come soon enough and we’ll wallow in the swelter, longing for the cooler north, just we dream ourselves south in wintertime. But better days are on the way: there will be warm evenings on porches with friends. There will be bike rides. There will be epic treks with dog and camera. Just hold on.

And what are you telling yourself to make it all better as we trudge into February?

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