Pbnjellyfish

The last time I was in Paris it rained every day.  My host left for work in the mornings, so I found myself wandering around most days seeking shelter in the many cinemas around St. Michel.  My favorite thing about the city of light is its seemingly endless offering of celluloid delights for the insatiable cineaste.  I saw a scratchy print of Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me at midnight, and matinees of Zelig, White Heat, and Lady for a Day on other soggy afternoons.  My trip only allowed for about five days in the big city before moving south to continue my journey.  Perhaps it was the rain enhancing my melancholy, but I couldn't help wanting the city to be how I knew it years before, when it seemed brighter and more hopeful.  Thinking back, I know that the city hadn't changed at all.  The cinemas were still there and the streets winded in the same way they always did, but I had changed and my experience in the city reflected that.  I went back expecting the city to always be the same to me but in truth it wasn't.  I could still visit the same places I had and sit in the same creaky cinema seats as I had years before but something was missing.  Cities are only backdrops or blank canvases for us to splash or dot meticulously the paint of our lives upon.  The experiences you have in them are only the result of circumstance and not the cities themselves.  Sometimes however, if you're lucky, the city can participate in your life, and bring you gifts of wonderment or people, and that can have an impact.  But cities can also neglect you with their indifference.  Fortunately, Paris has been both a welcoming friend who's introduced unforgettable people to me, and also a stranger who has turned its back.  In my mind, because of the contrast, the city means even more to me.  Moreover, I'll always have the dark theater and the bright light projected ahead.      

The rest of us walked on, taking in the neon lights, and still tasting the salt on our tongues from the meat.  We chatted and took turns fumbling with the map and laughing, but my mind remained with my mysterious dalliance with the Korean saboteur.  These people, the ephemeral ones, pass into our lives only for an evening or for a conversation, but it's long enough to intrigue or influence.  I don't remember the man's face but I remember where he'd been and my conjured up ideas of the deeds he'd done.        

I placed third in a contest in which I had to transfer as many slippery mudfish as I could from one tank to another in one minute.  I got 87.    

Aug. 23, 2009.  Rural Ohio.  The last time I went to my grandmother's house nearly everyone was there.  It was the first time in many years that all of my father's siblings and their sons and daughters were together to share a meal and reminisce of times past.  I remember when I was fearless and didn't mind cannonballing into my grandparents' icy pond with my brother, but it was enough to watch my cousins and shiver behind a camera lens.  My great-grandmother was there watching too, and about to turn 100 in a few days.  It's hard to believe it's been so long since I've been back.       

These few were taken in early March, at Gakwonsa temple a few minutes outside the city of Cheonan, South Korea, where I currently reside.