Monday, September 30, 2013

Chaos, or September Family self Portrait

September's portrait comes with a surprise: from now on the portraits will come with a poem written by... someone who will, for the time being, remain anonymous. (it's not me. no really.)



enjoy....



Clinton Hill, Brooklyn


Broken tiles, mouldings strewn half-cut

A boy fantasy of tools, nuts
And bolts roll, and dust dances dead
As the door slams shut.

Shake your head and roll your sleeves up
Brush up, belt up, buck up, beat up
Crank the hammer, load the drill bits
Jack the power up!

Start the scrubbing and the rubbing
Sanding, staining, serious sweating
Crumbling crusts and rust fall down
A gem gets glowing.

Dead stop; double take; do you dare
To believe this beauty...in my care!
Pride in possession, well who knew
My bourgeois laid bare.


***

The family self portrait  project started in January 2011. 
I take one portrait of the whole family, myself included, once a month.  

Every family should do this. 

To see previous months click on the links below:

***

Friday, September 27, 2013

the night fairy




Quiet as the night, the fairy came and danced among us,
batting her batton, shaking her shaker.

When morning came and the fairy dust settled,
We saw that what once lay in ruins now shined bright and new.

The colors were bright, the columns were straight,
and everything smelled of freshly baked cookies.

The kind that make you want to call a place home.

And so, quietly as she came, the fairy packed her bags and walked away.
Leaving bits of her magic scattered around the house. 

Tuesday, September 17, 2013

Don’t get me started





It’s nearly 2am and I have to get up in less than 5 hours to take the kids to school. I’ve spent the last three hours in a heated argument with my constructor. Admittedly he is not actually here. It’s just me, alone, tossing and turning in my bed.

 We are on the fifth month of what was scheduled to be a three month renovation project. This after a four month delay due to landmarks and burocratic red tape just to get the permits.

You know how they say the most stressful things in life are the death of  family member, divorce or a move/construction? Well, I’m not quite ready to kill off a family member, but I’m just about  ready to consider  giving  up my marriage if it gets the damn house finished.

The backyard is a war zone filled with construction materials and torture machines whose sole purpose -of this I am sure- is  to torture my soul. It has also  become “Hotel Royale” for mosquitoes in the neighbourhood who hang out in the  piled up  rain water, and come inside the house in the evening for some mediterranean  dinner, aka me.  The guest room is  a dumping ground  for cloth covered corpses and other construction materials. Which means my guest arriving Saturday will have no room to sleep in and no bed, as the sofa bed remains in it's original box under all the other stuff that is supposed to go in that room. Which, come to think of it,  is probably fine since  we are still waiting for the bathroom  permits. 

The floor paint in my office and bedroom floor keeps getting stuck to the furniture and peeling off when we move anything around. They claim they used the right paint  and its just us. I mean, how irrational of us to expect to be able to have things  such as chairs AND move it around INSIDE the house. So at some point we will have to move out of our bedroom and I will have to transfer my office so that they can re do the floors, except we have nowhere to go because the guest room can't be vacated until we get permits for the bathroom, and we can't even get the guy who gives us the appointments to pick up the phone.

Did I mention the electricity keeps cutting off? Which would be a problem if I was working out of my desktop, but its fine because I am currently working out of my laptop, as the desktop is broken and we can’t afford a new one. It is a problem when  the internet goes, but alas, usually it comes back. 

Don't get me wrong. The guys are nice and I know that someday this will be all be a distant memory. But right now there is just me, my imaginary bedroom contractor, and alott-a vile in the gut. 

Tuesday, September 10, 2013

August- ish family self portrait

Alghero, Italy
So we did the shoot for August, but I haven't had time to process it. Strictly speaking  it was taken the first week of September, so, depending on how September pans out, it might turn into the September portrait..... and given that I had option B for July, and was looking at it and kind of liking it...

Well, here, the August-ish self portrait  for you enjoyment and my peace of mind.

Peace out


***

The family self portrait  project started in January 2011. 
I take one portrait of the whole family, myself included, once a month.  

Every family should do this. 

To see previous months click on the links below:

***

Tuesday, September 3, 2013

On mother nature


This photo was taken by  Mayerling Garcia in the  Cerro Negro volcano, Nicaragua.  it's a friend of mine that is about to embark in one of life's most amazing adventures. I asked her if I could share it because it is downright one of the most spectacular pregnancy photos I've ever seen.  Hope you enjoy it as much as I do!