i have always been into photography. as a kid i got an old camera for a couple bucks at a garage sale - i still have a few of the pictures i took at the zoo with my first roll of film. my older sister was a photographer. some of my best friends and most creative people i know are professional photographers. i almost became one, but life sent me down a different creative path, but one that allowed photography a big part.

I recently discovered a cool website called flickr.com. 'time' magazine called it 'completely addictive' and i have to agree. it is more than just a database of photos and the people that take them, it is a place for you to become part of a community with that highly creative species, photo sapien. i could go on describing how cool it is, but you really should just check it out. the work by this woman stunned me...stoopidgerl

if a picture is worth a thousand words, then what is a website with thousands of cool pictures worth?

posted by bluematrix at 03/28/06 09:40 | link | comments (4)

it is 4 miles long, 3 miles wide, 700 feet tall and as many as 60,000 people call it home. it is the payatas dump outside quezon city in the philippines.

it began taking shape in 1973, when the city government reportedly started renting a portion of the 2,818-hectare Payatas Estate as a dump site. from a small dump, it grew into a hill, then into a mountain that kept bulging with about 2,000 tons of solid and not-so-solid waste being trucked daily from various parts of metro manila. it also drew the urban poor. in july 2000, after a week of rains, the mountain of compacted trash loosened, then crumbled and crushed scores of homes (if a dwelling on a landfill can be called that), along with some 200 occupants.

a man in the trash business here wanting to help, visited payatas recently. he said, 'you smell it long before you see it. there are no words to describe seeing 2- and 3-year old children waiting for garbage trucks to dump their loads so they can rip open black plastic bags and scrounge for something to eat.'

seeing a 2 year old fighting rats for rotting scraps of food amongst used needles and feces and razors, everything steaming in the moist tropic heat...i can't fuckin imagine.

sometimes when i get a little down with myself, the universe sends me a reality check.

posted by bluematrix at 03/20/06 09:26 | link | comments (3)

some thoughts on creative blockage from 'free play'...

"I came to know that blocks are the price of avoiding surrender, and that surrender is not defeat but rather the key to opening out into a world of delight and nonstop creation.

One of the great traps at times of blockage is that we may accuse ourselves of a deficit of concentration and focus, a deficit of discipline. We then take a paternal or militaristic attitude toward ourselves. We will force ourselves to work, we will go on a schedule, we will take vows. The most dangerous trap is to get into a contest of strength between "will power" and "won't power." Discipline is crucial, but we do not attain it by stiffening up. We attain it by sitting still and penetrating the emptiness within, making of that emptiness a friend rather than an adversary or bogeyman.

When you are stuck, meditate, free associate, do automatic writing, talk to yourself and answer yourself. Play with the blocks. Stay in the 'temenos' of the workplace. Relax, surrender to the bafflement; don't leave the temenos, and the solution will come. Persevere gently. Use intelleto, the visionary faculty. Stay close to the zero mark; indulge neither in great highs nor in great lows.

The depths are obscured in us when we try to force feelings; we clarify them by giving them adequate time and space and letting them come. What we experienced yesterday as the pride of creativity or the self-deprecating feeling of incapacity we see today as the signal to surrender.

Like the rules of the universe, the whole matter of personal creativity is baffling and paradoxical. To try to control yourself, to try to create, to try to break free of the knots you yourself have tied is to set yourself up at a distance from that which you already are. It is like looking around this way and that for your own head. The paradox of control versus letting things happen naturally cannot be rationalized, it can only be resolved in actual practice."

posted by bluematrix at 03/13/06 21:42 | link | comments (1)

those who deny their demons, batter us with their angels...
the catholic priest's hand
is on the alter boy's knee.
the reformed alcoholic
singing the praises of abstinence.
the polished politician
lying thru his smiling white teeth.
the slick salesman
exaggerating the virtues of his wares.
and the lowly poet,
trying valiantly to batter his demons,
denies his angels.

posted by bluematrix at 03/07/06 09:24 | link | comments (1)