you keep my secrets hope to die

because i clearly have a problem; i bought a new polaroid camera. it uses the peel apart film, of which, also due to my problem, i've now built a small stockpile. here a few shots from its first day out on the town:

clockwise: casey, flan, casey and flan together, ryan. (flan was shot with sepia film, the others with black and white.)

young blood by the naked and the famous:

a mix for a winter spent in a friend-filled, snowless portland

the lovely tape-playing radio that is no more. sigh.

1. no nostalgia - agesandages


2. helena beat - foster the people


3. rain on - woods


4. iraqi music - souad abdullah


5. arcadia - dirty mittens


6. if i had a little love - the majestic arrows


7. i follow rivers - lykke li


8. california sunrise - dirty gold


9. living in america - dom


10. last night - the strokes


11. off our backs - m.e.n.


12. lights & music - cut copy


13. all the weird kids know - built by snow


right click and 'save as' the song titles for a copy of the corresponding mp3. also, for more winter-themed music, check out the latest collaborative mix from 'would you jump rope?'

bye bye to the too good to be true kind of love

shot on tz artistic with my sx-70

do you remember, when you were younger, how each year your teacher would dedicate an hour or two to having the class decorate brown paper bags with hearts and arrows and more hearts and more arrows? you'd do it in anticipation of feb. 14, the day when you would then tape the bags to the front of your desks and walk around the classroom slipping store-bought valentines into each others' bags?

well, i do. i also remember, at some point, i became really self-conscious about what it was that those valentines said. i can't say which grade i was in at the time. just that it had to have been elementary school. in any case, just like the year before and probably the couple years before that, i had gone to the store with my mom to pick out the perfect valentines. i thought i'd found them when i came across a box of x-men valentines. the back of the box looked promising: wolverine, gambit, cyclopse, storm, magneto. all the usual suspects. and they looked cool.

but when i got home and started addressing them, i ran into a problem. there weren't enough of the sort of valentines that a boy would give to another boy. you know, the sort that didn't imply love. the sort that were perfectly neutral. there was one in particular i remember. it had on it a picture of magneto and the words on the card said something like "i'm attracted to you." it was a play, of course, on magneto's magnetic superpowers. but to me, way back then, the idea of giving that to another boy seemed awful.

there were others like that, i'm sure, but that's the one that stuck out to me the most. so, i did what i figured any elementary schooler would do, and got out the whiteout. i started erasing the phrases that the card company had pre-printed on my valentines and began writing in new ones.

the next day, after all the valentines had been passed out, i started going through the stack. i opened up one from a kid named robbie (i don't know why i can remember his name). apparently, he, too, had settled on those x-men cards. but he didn't seem to have my same hang up. he'd given me the same magneto card that i'd stressed about the night before. only minus the whiteout.

it's weird the things you worry about when you're young and a bad valentine can seem like the end of the world.

anyhow, given that we don't make paperbags anymore, i'll post your valentine here, a song by edward sharpe and the magnetic zeros:



(for those who may have noticed, i'm using a new mp3 player on this blog, but i'm still uploading the files into my dropbox. that is to say, they're still available for free download. just right click on the band's name. otherwise, use the built-in player for a one-off listen.)

falling back on a better place

these represent the latest of my polaroid snap shots. i'm taking a break from the impossible project color shade push! film, which has been driving me insane. it's just so fickle. anyhow, i loaded the sx-70 up with some of my remaining tz artistic film (by far my favorite polaroid film material). i'm not sure i was as judicious as i should have been with the pictures i took. oh well. the last two were definitely not what i hoped they would be. that said, i had some fun trying to distort the bottom-left image. i might dedicate a pack pretty soon here to polaroid distortions. i need some better tools first, though. anyhow, i'll leave you with a dixie cups song that i can't get out of my head. enjoy:

take two

i've been trying to get the new color shade film by the impossible project to work for me for a while now. it's pretty finicky -- completely sensitive to light and temperature. i think i'm finally getting there, though. these are the two best images so far.

also, i feel obligated to point out that this post is kind of a big deal. it's no. 100 on my little blog. exciting, i know. anyhow, i felt like i should do something extra special. sadly, i couldn't think of anything. so, for lack of a great idea, i'm just going to give you all a free song that has been keeping me company for the past few days: if i had a little love (rehearsal) by the majestic arrows. enjoy!

making music and coffee

a traditional coffee ceremony in malakia, dilling.

almost as soon as heidi and i had arrived in malakia, helawa, the woman who would put us up for the next few days, asked us if we'd like to share a cup of coffee or tea. coffee, we said, would be great.

in sudan, coffee is served strong and spiced with cinnamon and cardamon. grounds are cheap and easy to come by and a cup of coffee is just a boiling pot of water away. but in malakia, things, it seems, work a little bit differently.

after we'd decided on coffee, helawa went into her kitchen and came out with a small fire pit, a pestle and mortar and fresh beans and spices. she set about roasting the beans right in front of us and then grinding them with the spices. nearly an hour after her offer, she served us fresh coffee. the next day, she promised, we could do it again but she'd bring around the neighbors and her sisters.

that's exactly what happened. helawa and five other women gathered to perform a traditional coffee ceremony. they roasted the beans and ground them up and all the while they sang. have a listen to what making coffee in sudan sounds like:




the coffee is roasted over a coal fire. you have to keep the beans constantly moving or they'll burn.


once the beans are roasted, they're ground along with some traditional spices.


the pestle and mortar became the drum beat for the songs.


while the coffee is brewing, the women sing and the cups are clanked along to the beat.


the coffee is served in a traditional pot with bits of twigs that act as a filter for the grounds.


the children don't get to drink the coffee, but they do get in on the singing.

sounds of sudan

most days i spend working at an ngo in amarat, a small khartoum neighborhood that's a fair ways away from where i live. in the morning, mostly out of laziness, i get an amjad (i hope i'm spelling/ transliterating that correctly) straight to work. amjads are a small step down from taxis, sort of compact minivans that look (and feel) like they're made out of aluminum. you have to negotiate your price up front.

my morning conversation usually goes something like this:

me (with terrible arabic accent): asalaam alaikum! (hello!).
amjad driver: wa alaikum assalaam. (right back at you.)
me: ana mashi al amarat. sharia mohammed najeeb wa sharia saba hamseen. tamam? (i'm going to amarat. mohammed najeeb and 57th streets. you dig?)
amjad driver: aywa (yeah. obviously.)
me: kum? (how much?)
amjad driver: khamsatasha. (because you're a foreigner, 15 pounds.)
me: la. katir. ashara? (no way. that's way too much. and i'm not stupid. how about 10 pounds?)
amjad driver: ok (ok. but don't get too excited. this trip should only be 8 pounds.)

after that, i get in, the amjad driver figures out he's heard just about every single word i know of arabic and we drive silently to amarat. (or he actually tries to talk to me and we just keep saying the same words over and over again -- only each time we say them a little bit louder. because, you know, the louder you are, the more the other person understands.)

anyhow. after i get off work, i'm feeling a little less lazy and a little poorer, so i take the bus (only 40 sudanese cents!) back to my flat. (more on the fun adventure that is every bus ride later). but the bus does not offer the door-to-door ease of an amjad, so i'm stuck walking a mile or so.

now to the real point of this post: walking sort of wakes you up. at least it does me. it makes you a bit more aware, more aware of directions and smells and people and ... sounds.

see, khartoum has a soundtrack all its own. i guess that's true of any city, but this one, well, it just seems so right, so perfect for the constant movement of sudan's capital.

i was going to try to describe it in a blog post, but when i tried to sit down and write, words didn't work. so, the other day, i took an audio recorder with me and flipped it on for a few minutes of my walk home.

my advice: close your eyes, press play and imagine streets full of sand and cars and shops and people and random telephone chargers for sale.

close your eyes, press play and listen to khartoum.