Inspiration

Inspiration or sometimes my lack of it. I have been off a bit on my photo blog for some time now. It seemed that for a time I didn't have that driving force in me to post. I am however getting myself together to at least put something down on here be it my thoughts, feelings, or ever day jibber jabber.

I feel bad about the fact that some idea's that I did grasp and thought would make an excellent addition to this blog faded away in my memory. It was as if I sketched a beautiful picture in a field of sand with a stick and as time progressed it slowly eroded and soon it was forgotten. Though I can never be to upset I know that as one slowly fades with time a new idea arises and so it can sometimes be an endless cycle.

One damaging thing that did occur during the summer that did sorta effect me was my camera breaking. Well we accidentally dropping it and it end up being broken. Who was the guilty party Me, gravity, grandma's wooden floor? I'm more inclined to believe it was all three but I can't let that hold me back. I have more than enough pictures to hold me till I get a new camera so I can't use that as an excuse to stop submitting posts to my blog.

So I can look at this in some ways as a return to a home that I created on the net. A place that my thoughts, ideas, and feelings can reside. Also the pictures of Salisbury I take hold place here as well. For whoever decides to read this and check it out they can get a glimpse of this town I call home.

A Moment of Change

Standing at a moment where the country can change feels quite amazing. Adding the fact that I will be able to play a part in a possible change that will be recorded through history feels even more larger. No matter how small my roll or to say my poll will be it still will be apart of a vast collection of voices in this country that wishes for change.

I have been one who's never taken the ability to vote for granted. This is something that every American should be proud of a take part in. We have the ability to choose who our next leader will be and I am proud to take a roll in that.

I'm one to try to encourage people to vote no matter what side they wish to vote for. The fact that you can show the officials that you want to help pick the next leader shows that you not complacent to how they run things.

Tomorrow a change can happen in more ways than one. I'm excited and I am ready to make my voice heard.

This town

At times I tend to forget about my home. I get so caught up in this virtual realm that I pay no heed to home I live in. I was riding through town taking some simple pictures of the city as it was living its life and it amazes me how I am stuck in a spot while the city is changing and evolving around me. I'm not saying I can't adapt to the change but rather its more of the fact when I do see the change to me its deep and drastic changes while to the people living out in the city its more suttle.

The summer time is a great time to just wander around and capture great pictures. At times some of the pictures I get a hold of seem like one in a million shots. It's one of those things where you feel you are in the right place at the right time.

Salisbury is no big city by any means but for me its just the right size and its great seeing the diversity and the various portions of it. For me it feels like I like to be the observer of the city. Look at it from a distance and be amazed at how its changing and for me look at its beauty.

So many things happening.

It seems when this summer got together so many things began to bombard me. It's not such a bad thing and keeps me from lingering in one set state of mind more or less. My posting of my blog has been rather lax here lately and sometimes that can be a rather burden because I have so much I'd like to write about and then more or less I'll soon forget what came to mind.

I have been working on my tolerance to sun light. More or less improving it and how I can handle it being out in it without my shades. I think its been going pretty good and to be truthful I have been getting tired of wearing shades every day. I want to grasp back the things I once had a for quite some time I thought I had lost.

I'm going to try to slow things down and take this summer one day at a time. Enjoy what I see, hear, and experience these next few months.

My Two Sides

I been spending time with the family more and spending some time with myself. Reflecting on how I came to who I am and where am I going. I noticed that I have two sides of happiness. One side is technologically driven where for me when I'm in my room surrounded by my glimmering lights and hums my electronic devices make. A sanctuary in some sense for me where these devices are with me I use them for the various purposes they are meant for. My computer, television, game consoles, mp3 player, even the various clocks that are around my room.


Now my other side is one where I'm outside in the open and in the free. Some might think that it's all around you when you step outdoors from a house or building but for me its at one place. My grandmother back yard is another haven for me. When I'm out there it's me, my music, and my grandmothers dog. She drops her toy and I throw it and it goes like that for as long as I'm out there. It gives me a feeling where I'm not tied down to the hustle and bustle of everything going on around me and not having to deal with time constraints. The best time is when the sun goes down and the stars shine. They aren't as bright as they were when I was little because of the lights around but you can get a good view better than in the city. I can just stair at them and see the beauty of the night sky.

I look at both these sides of me when I seem to encounter them. Its me learning more about myself as I go along in life.

In This Twilight

As time progresses I notice this blog is slowly growing on to me. Each day I look at what I see and what pictures I have taken and now to place them on here. This in some respects is an emotional outlet for me for when at times I can't express whats in my heart and mind. I know and I can see that this will grow more and more toward me and with each passing post my feelings in and toward my blog grow stronger and stronger.

I often think people get a misperception of me by how I look and such. I often have a serious look on my face as I walk to where I have to go and maybe at times I can look a bit mean or at the least moody but in reality I'm not. It's on the fault of me for giving the look that I am and as a result sometimes it feels as if the world shuns me. At times I am just a lonely individual looking for some one to talk to and some on to hear me out.

It's one of those things I'll have to work on. At times I feel at peace when I am alone and get to spend time with myself. Other times I like to spend it with other folks and have fun with other people too.

In the end I know that at some point in time everything will come together for me.

ATTENTION!!!

One thing I find myself yearning for when I am out in public. I want to be notice in some ways and I want the world to see me. In a way I think its because I live a some what seclusive life I'm not saying I am alone by myself and deter any one who wants to mingle with me its just that socially I'm not at a level that I was once at. Their are variable circumstances that can be attributed to this situation or problem I should say. It could be what happened to my eye, my interest in my computer or the internet, or a burning desire to read and learn as much as I can and be with myself. Now there are situations with those things that I go for that can include meeting other people and in the end being more social but deep down I also feel a fear about not being excepted.


At times its often confusing for me or in the end I am the one making it confusing and really its not. What I find that takes me away from being so alone and at times draws attention toward me that I wish to gain is music. Its my heart and its my love I can close my eyes and let my music go through me and it seems as if I'm in another place. I happen to sing a lot of the songs I listen to and that brings a even stronger connection to the music to me. I have a ok voice depending on the song what what I want people to hear is not my voice or its tone but rather the message of the song because to me each of the songs I do listen to has meaning and tell a tale.

In some respects music for me has some complicated fields to it. I love all music just because no matter how good or how crappy it is in some respects its a tale of self expression. That being said I find myself drawing away with some forms of music just because the way they are. I grew up being told I'm black or african american for you PC folks but I very well am no. Technically I have a small sliver of "black" in me being that my grandfather was mixed, my mother is mixed, and my dad is not black so for a while I felt I had been living a lie being told to be something and set to a color boundary when I felt in my heart I should be free. This goes from music, culture, to just trying to find myself. At this point the music that blacks should be seen as to be liking I don't like. I used to be big into rap, hip hop, or any other of the sub genres that are in it but now I have no love for it and I really don't feel anything out of it. This may be very well a musical evolution on my part. My mind is expanding, my ears are opening, and my eyes are looking for and seeing interesting and better forms of music. I will never be to a point where I would hate that field of music I do see how ever I really don't have any feelings for it and it gives me nothing I wish to hear.

Now to the subject of this post Attention I find that music gains attention to me and draws attention to me. I want people to question what I'm listening to or why I am listening to it. I want to break the walls of conformity with the wrecking ball of creativity. Let me listen to rock, heavy metal, punk, alternative. or the many other fields into it. I want you to see that a person of any color can love that form of music, that form of expression. To me its one of those things idea's change, people change, and society changes and we all have to mold with it. If you don't do that you will end up breaking.

Just something thats I have been thinking about. I hope I grabbed your Attention.

A Moment Of Spring

When I take pictures like these sometimes I feel like I'm in the right place at the right time. I can capture a moment in time and it looks great. I often wonder how some people can ignore the natural beauty of nature. You can see the most beautiful things and just are leaves, grass, dirt, or clouds. I guess it has to deal how open the persons mind is.


This spring this summer I'm not quite sure what I will be doing. What I do know is that I'll be enjoying the warmth and the lasting sunlight. That's one thing I am glad to have back the ability to really see out in the sunlight well I might add and not be bothered by it. When I got that abrasion on my cornea and for those years sunlight no matter how small it was just brought utter pain to my eyes I thought I would never have it the way things once were. I didn't want to live the life of a vampire or pretty much close to it. I'm glad things are better for me though I mean for me one of my greatest loves is walking home from work along the railroad tracks and I look to my left and in between some o the buildings along route 13 I see the sun going down and I'm listening to my music most notably a Dune song because it fits the time. I know its geekish but thats me I love this song when I walk along the railroad tracks. How ever its really good for me because its one of those things that lets me feel alive and lets me know what I have here in this world.

The Young & The Old

Time passes as it always does since its creation. A cousin was lost a few weeks back but days before his death another cousin was brought forth into our family. I was able to catch a picture of grandma and the young cousin and it felt like a new chapter was written in the book of our family.

In my mind and in my eyes grandma is the creator. She brought forth this family and made it as I know it. Grandma has a mom and dad, and they had parents of their own but in my eyes she is the starter of how things are.

I wonder what this young cousin would see and how his world will be. I have a fond memory of growing up and trying to understand and grasp the things my aunts and uncles knew. Now with 25 years under my belt I can look back at what I have learned and look to the future at what I will understand later down this road called life.

Changes In The Family

I woke up to news you never want to hear today. I can always tell when some one has died by the way mom starts to speak to me. It was the same when she told me Jason had died after I got home from the crash, it was the same when she told me Brandon had died, and it was the same when she told me my younger cousin Alan died today.




It's a terrible tragedy and for me its rather strange. Little Alan as I knew him passed away in a car crash early this morning. For me its a strange situation because I now feel like I'm on the opposite end of the spectrum. Ten years ago our family had a terrible car crash where I was in it and out of a car of five I was one of two survivors. In the car was me, my cousin Kevin, his mom Linda, my best friend Jason, and me and Kevin's friend Brandon. Me and Brandon were the only survivors of the crash.

It feels so strange for me to see this happen again and it really hurts my heart to see another family member lose their life over a mistake while driving. I was thinking all day about what should I write about or how I should express myself on my journal about what happened. I haven't seen him in a number if years but still I do have memories of being with him at grandma's along with his brother and sisters my other cousins.

When it comes to death at this point in time I don't look at it as your deeds in live equal out to a final grade on where you spend your afterlife at. In life the main concept is choice we each do good deeds and bad deeds thats what it means to be human. I would just like it to be that as he leaves this mortal plain of existence little alan is able to find a place of piece and where he can be happy.

The Eternal Struggle

She's a playful little bugger. Though sometimes I wonder who is having more fun me or her. I often go outside with her for an hour or two and just play with her. I find that the simple things in life make it worth wild and enjoyable. Watching the sun set, taking a simple walk on the beach, or listening to my music any of those things often can bring pure bliss to my life. I much rather keep my life some what simple and see the wonderful things most people don't recognize. In the end thats that makes me feel so different at times. I am a man who lives outside of this box called life, I am a man who looks beyond this box called life and looks at other things around it.

In my time on this earth I lost so much and gained so much on both sides. I look at life on a whole different way than a number of people because at one point in time I almost lost it. On the day of the crash I lost grip with reality and myself and my life just about. When I was finally at the state of where I could see who I was I had to start putting the pieces together on just what person I really was.

I take the simple things in life to be its greatest. A calm afternoon playing with my family's dog far out weighs a night of chaos and confusion in a party world. I found that me almost losing my life made me look at each day as being special and never take anything for granted.

The Moon Over The Mail Box

I love science. It's one of those things that I have always had a fascination toward as soon as I learned of it. Our sun, our night sky, our moon, The stars all around. I never was one to take simple answers that my mom or adults gave me about science and space when I asked them questions. What is the sun, how many stars are out in space, when was our planet created, how long does our sun stay on. Those questions I had in my mind pushed me to find the answers on my own.

When I was in elementary school and I was asphyxiated on our sun I read that our sun is a simple star just like the many stars of the night sky. That information blew my mind away the revelation that we have a star like the many stars of the night sky and that each one of those star's may have planets with life like ours. That information I thought about excited me.

I'm a big science fiction novel, short story, and movie watcher but I had no fear of extraterrestrial beings out in space the way they were presented in movies and such. The fear of them is formed in our own mind because we as human beings wouldn't know how to handle seeing a being or creature with our level of intelligence or beyond. Its a fear that we are no longer the top creatures in this galaxy or universe for that instant.

As I began to expand my knowledge of this world and beyond I started to lose grips on the religion I grew up with. I was brought up in an average christian family. I respected what I was taught through it but as I learned more and more on a science scale for me the two couldn't combine. I'm a moral person who respects people rights and freedoms. For me I can't hold it true to my heart that we were made by a mystic being who created this universe in 7 days. I need to see research, I need to see evidence, I need to see mathematical calculations. Our earth is 4 billion years so is our sun. Our solar system is just one out of billions in our galaxy, our galaxy has over a 100 billion stars. For me there may be no after life, no holy land of bliss or a plain of eternal pain and torment. What makes me happy is that I am able to be a animal, a being who is conscious and can see the world and universe for what it is I'm happy about that.

We have so much we don't know and so much we still can learn. This world, This galaxy, This universe has so much to show us we just have to open our eyes and see.

Hey Salisbury

I'm glad its a bit warm today it has that nice spring feeling in the air its a nice day today. One thing that I had almost lost that I'm glad to have back being able to look at sunlight. A number of years back I had gotten a abrasion on my cornea on my left eye and it caused hell for a number of years for me. The most notable thing is the fact that everything I see out of my left eye is blurry it has been worse in the past but its better now. Another thing was the fact that sunlight hurt my eyes like hell. A whole ton of pain every time i was outside during the daylight even on cloudy days it hurt.

I had to go to the eye doctors quite a bit and over time my eyes were able to heal and at the point now I can even see sunlight and it doesn't hurt any longer. It feels real good being able to see the sunlight or the sun going down and not face pain with it. You never realize how much you love something until you almost lose it those words never seemed more right until now. One thing that has carried over to me since this situation with my eyes is the fact I always wear shades now. Be it sunny, cloudy, or almost dark I always have my shades on its kind of a force of habit now.

For now today I will bask in this warm sunlight with my window open and be happy at the beauty of the light I see.

Taking a trip back

This last past two weeks now I have been catching episodes of Mystery Science Theater 3000. I loved the show and I was a steady watcher from about 94 till it went off the air. I been catching classics like "Manos: The Hands of Fate", "Space Mutiny", and "Puma Man" all great episodes of movies that you really couldn't watch outside of the show because they were that bad.

I work at a local college here SU and spring break starts the end of this week so I will be off for 10 days starting today. I don't know what I'll do while I'm off most likely go over my grandmothers and visit her and travel around town and take some pictures. I would like to go down to main street and the plaza and take some pictures around there. Get a new feel of Salisbury and see it in new ways I never seen it before.


I like taking pictures of Sara she doesn't mind me taking a ton of pictures of her. Its rather funny how easy it is sometimes to set up some pictures of her and how hard it is at other times to take pictures of her. She is one playful girl though as soon as you pick up a toy of her's she is ready to play with it and wants you to throw it for her. She is however the family dog and the one that every one loves no matter how bad she acts.

Caught in a loop

It has been quite a few weeks for me. Last week I began getting a tad bit sick and then it came down with full force. I don't get sick to often but when I do it often strikes with a vengeance. How ever I'm feeling much better and things are settling back to normal for me so I'm pretty happy now. I tend to like the winter months more than the summer months but I kinda want this cold weather to be done and over with. I feel I could do so many different things and accomplish quite a bit this spring and summer.







One thing I find funny is when I go on taking pictures of Salisbury as I'm riding through town is that when I capture them in black & white is that they have such a nostalgic feel to them. As if for a brief moment time has been captured and its a moment where all things are standing still. For me its as if those moments in the past in Salisbury that I remember seeing as a kid is captured right there.

My first steps.

For a long time I have been thinking of making a blog. I did try once before in the past but in a way my past blog had not purpose. This one I feel has a meaning and something that can drive me to continuously work on it. This is my photo blog and more specifically its my black & white photo blog. I have always held a deep passion for black & white photo's they have always held a special place in artwork in my eyes. Photo's themselves are wonderful but when they are black & white they seem some what more magical to me. It's as if the world has been frozen in place that time is standing still that very moment. For Christmas I was able to get a digital camera (and with a lot of help from my sister, thanks a bunch em) I'm able to take pictures of my world all around me and for others to see.

This first picture of my blog is in fact the first picture I took with my first digital camera. It's of my grandmothers dog as she was laying to go to sleep that Christmas night. She is pretty much the family dog and goes by the name Sara. I have a ton of nick names for her though The Greedy One, and Greedy Beedy being the two main ones i use. As she laid her head on my grandmothers leg to go to sleep I'm sure thoughts and dreams soon filled her mind. These moments are the ones where she is calm, quiet, and innocent.