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The No-brainer Side of the Knob

Crap!  I wrote yesterday, so I must write today if I’m going to write tomorrow.  Remember, I promised mechanical prose for a couple of days while I work out the cobwebs.

Early in mid-December we bought a new digital SLR.  A Canon XSI.  This model sits at the top of the first tier of digital SLRs for Canon.  Of course I wanted to go higher–that’s why the marketing folk make tiers–but I resisted such inclinations.  I’m starting to realize that features I can’t understand or determine when I’d use are features I don’t want to buy.

We’re pleased with the camera overall, but haven’t given it much of a workout.  We pushed the envelope on volume around Christmas.  We both ran into a flash-bound “Busy” warning indicating we’d better slow the heck down, but never hit a “Card Full” indicator on the new 4gig SD.  Most of those shots relied on the pre-programmed settings, not the creative ones.

For right now creative means slower.

After some practice I’m sure I’ll shoot as swiftly as I did with my first SLR.  I’m still frustrated the f-stop and speed information appear along the bottom of the screen and not the right-hand side.  This is the second camera that frustrates me in this regard.  I’ve still not overcome that vertical layout habit I nurtured with my Minolta from the early 80s.  It doesn’t help that the finer steps between each setting look so unfamiliar to me I can’t always figure out which is an aperture size and which is a shutter speed–I bet the book could help me.  Since creative means slower and a passel of kids means I need agility I’m sticking with the no-brainer side of the knob for now.

As a low-grade photo hobbyist paying for each frame twice drove me to be cautious with film.  Sadly, this caution did not inspire me to take better pictures by learning to think through a shot before making it, it taught me to just take less photos–to develop fewer.  With this digital I disregard frame counts and lighting.  I shoot from the hip as often as not and delete the bad ones as I go.

The freedom to capture images poorly and without thought, to rely on volume more than skill, I will employ as a luxury and not a crutch as much as I can.  Maybe I should tuck that thought away as I write?

Day 232
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Drop In The Line

I thought I’d work my way into this thing again.  Getting over a hump of this magnitude is a little tough.  Imagine skipping Mass for most of your college life.  Then imagine trying to get up one Sunday morning after graduation and drag your ass to church again when all you want to do is sleep late.  You can easily praise Him with biscuits and gravy at brunch rather than the Eucharist at 8:44.  Today, writing feels like that.

Worse, tomorrow, trying to write is going to feel like the next Sunday when you weasel out of the ecclesiastical trip on the grounds that you don’t want to over do your renewed zest for religion lest you return to your collegiately imposed heathenistic ways.

Or imagine an air-conditioned pick-up and a humid South Texas parking lot.  The brightness outside a theater after a matinée.  Someone requesting, “Smell this.”  Then shoving a carton of milk toward you.  Worse, “Taste this.”.

At first your return writing is a little mechanical.  Little more than a proper arranging of words on a page then capping them every so often with a period.  Maybe even less, a mere stretch of the fingers across the keyboard.  All uninspiring; all easily ignored well before even your most dedicated of readers makes it four paragraphs in.  That’s fine.  You’re actually searching for the habit, the pattern, the rote familiarity of I before E (except after C).  Casting for creativity or color too soon stirs gentle waters and those shiny fish dart for the coverage among the roots and shadows.

Just drop in the line.  Just watch the bobber.  Just repeat.

Day 321

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Lude to the Monowheel

Can’t hardly write a prelude one day without writing the actual lude the next.

The sign outside the shop said “Fat Bert’s Hoops”.  A brass bell on a string clingled when Dad opened the door and held it for me to go in.

The showroom displayed hoops up front.  The best models against the windows circling left and right of our entrance with an aisle between them.  Three rows of hoops to the left on the short side of the showroom.  Four rows of hoops on the right with a few treads at the back.  The shop arranged the wheels like church pews going up to a parts counter that served as the alter.  Deep-from-the-earth smells of grease, oil, and rubber lingered like incense.

“I’ll be with you in a moment,” the man behind the counter intoned.  Dad half-waved and nodded like he knew what he was doing.  I did too.

My attention lighted on the nearest hoop: a sleek street racer with a yellow body and pulse red highlights.  These are the ones you lay down in with your chest on the tank and your face in the vid.

“No way, kiddo.”

“I know Dad, but we’ve got all afternoon to look.”

“Yes.”

“Look!  The vid even has a chase-cam view.  I read about how they do that.  Blending the fore and aft cams on the fly to produce a 3d view that looks like it’s from above and behind the hoop.”

Day 320