Short Random Thoughts

Busy day today . . . didn’t have time to write much Randomness.

May I interest you in a Website? One of the Websites I amble to every so often is Toycamera.com (http://www.toycamera.com/). This amazing site shows you the fun that can be had, and the amazing pictures that you can take, using a cheap toy film camera. The cameras of choice are Dianas and Holgas. (For more info about the types of cameras, read http://www.toycamera.com/about.cfm) I actually own a Holga – it only cost $20 – and it takes fairly passable medium format pictures. (Which, if you know anything about medium format cameras, is an absolute BARGAIN for the size.) Good, old fashioned, playing-around-with-the-camera-and-seeing-what-comes-out . . . almost pinhole-like in its simplicity. And the best part is that the cameras are so cheap that you don’t mind toting them anywhere and doing wacky things with them. The film is a pain-in-the-rear to load, but I think that is because I’m not quite used to it yet.

It’s almost that time of year. November 1-30, 2005 is National Novel Writing Month. (Also known as NaNoWriMo.) You have 30 days to write 50,000 words. Anyone who blogs should definitely try this contest. I always want to do it every year, and then just don’t. I may try this year though . . . who wants to do this with me? More info: (http://www.nanowrimo.org/)

Another W.S. Merwin poem: I actually Googled him and looked up some more of his work –I do like his writing, I must seek out some of his books. He is an older gentleman, born 1927, and one of his volumes, The Carrier of Ladders, won a Pulitzer Prize. I will end with him again today:

ANY TIME

How long ago the day is
when at last I look at it
with the time it has taken
to be there still in it
now in the transparent light
with the flight in the voices
the beginning in the leaves
everything I remember
and before it before me
present at the speed of light
in the distance that I am
who keep reaching out to it
seeing all the time faster
where it has never stirred from
before there is anything
the darkness thinking the light