It hit me last week when I took a series of shots of a particularly spectacular sunset, and the colors were washed out. It wasn’t that they were wrong, it was that they weren’t there.

And then, tonight, we picked the first three tomatoes from the collection on the back porch, and I took this picture.

And they weren’t particularly red or anything – they’re some kind of orange number with a fancy name that I’ve completely forgotten. But that picture isn’t anything like those tomatoes. There’s no intensity.

So. I guess, despite never having used Kodachrome, I miss it.

(They were really delicious tomatoes, though.)

Navigating through this light was difficult. Kind of awesome looking, though.

Like this conversation I had today: what it was about isn’t important (well, it is, but it needs some time to percolate), but it has me all inspired to do … stuff.

…

Well, there goes any hope of having a nice coherent summer, you know? I think … let’s see. I need to come up with a plan for my overthrowing-institutionalized-education journal, if I’m going to do that. I need to come up with a plan for teaching, if I’m still feeling motivated to participate in an educational something or other. I’ve got to find all of my tools so I can practice bookbinding, and see if book repair is something I can tolerate doing.

I need to find a press. I’m looking for a 5 x 8 Kelsey, though a 3 x 5 would work, I think. I mean, I’d love a nice Reliance. Any iron handpress, really. But if I get one of those, I need a lot of money, a truck and a jack and a studio space. (One of these things might be possible.) Or a cabinet-maker who wants to help me learn how to build a wooden press. You know, something like that.

Did I mention that I cut a whole lot of paper so I’ve got book blocks to sew up. Which might be productive.

(Oh man. And also, my variation on the freeing of expanded education totally works with how to make teaching craft – and I am going to have to stand on a chair shouting about craft again soon – work in a highly competitive environment.)

…

I am seriously stumped on where to start on anything.

And I ate lunch on the library ledge the other day, which is much improved now that the students are gone for the summer. It’s not that I don’t like them, it’s just that … there are so many. And they’re so positive, and bounding with energy, and haven’t yet given up all hope that their lives will ever amount to anything …

Usually, this mood hits sometime in January. Or when I haven’t done anything constructive in months. It’s June, and I’ve been making pretty consistent progress on a couple of things, at least.

Well, there’s the problem – I’ve had the UFE quarterly journal on a back burner for a while, and it’s starting to boil over back there. I think some of the metaphorical onions may have gotten scraped out of the pan and landed in the fire. Or I broke a symbolic egg over the burner and got that weird charred hair smell from it splattering on something inappropriate. I mean, ok, I want to have two things: a concise pedagogical mission statement (overthrowing the institutional edifice with cooperative active education since 2010?) and a call for contributions …

But holy carp, what do I want to call for in contributions? Do I want people do share their knowledge? Do I want people to write letters to their ideal teacher? Do I want essays? How the hell do I deal with a potential slushpile? (I mean, ok, I suspect it’s not likely to be big, but it’s definitely going to be a slush something …)

And then how do I convince people that it’s actually worth pre-ordering so I can even think about getting this monstrosity printed?

Where does the time to design it come from?

Crap, do I ask for visual contributions too?

Do you see how I am managing to completely overwhelm my brain by trying to make everything work immediately all at the same time instead of sensibly taking it one step at a time? I am so good at that, I should parlay it into some kind of amazing career. I suppose it’s kind of a common skill-set, isn’t it?

Right. So I am going to focus on my off-the-cuff concise pedagogical mission statement “overthrowing the institutional edifice with cooperative active education since 2010″ … which isn’t bad. It gets the point across. It could be a little more subtle. Or less. “Breaking down the walls of the doddering institutional edifice with cooperative active education,” a little awkward, but I’m willing to think about it some more. “Breaking down the institutional edifice with a curriculum for the modern Renaissance person?” Heck. I can’t tell. I mean, ok, so what I’m looking for is a learning exchange, right, in which some people maybe get paid for their skills, and where other people learn whatever it is that they’re really crazy interested in. Maybe “Breaking down the institutional edifice with the curriculum you always wanted.” Which I kind of like.

But that’s where my brain is. Catchy slogan. Then everything else happens as if by magic, right?

I overheard the strangest conversation in the bookstore today. (My ears perked up, you see, because someone said “Kierkegaard.”) I don’t even know where to begin on how incredibly strange I found it – but I do, clearly, need to actually read Fear and Loathing. Because what I got out of Kierkegaard was the impression of a very weird sense of humor, you see.

Then again, reading anything in the philosophical vein literally – which I am certain people do – is necessarily going to end in bizarre interpretations.

Anyway. I was thinking about something again. It might have been back to the rant about modern machines & how they shape our approach to certain categories of objects. It might have been something about textiles. I can’t remember from one day to the next – it’s all a bit of a blur. I am pretty sure I want to get a tiny press – not necessarily because I want to print (although I think I do), but because I value the reminders of a possibility that even someone like me can do maintenance on the tools of a trade. Modern machines – especially the harbinger of the future machines – are too arcane, too much left to experts for repair.

I might be wrong, but I think that’s at the heart of the so-called DIY revolution (which is a bizarre phenomenon, and I think  I need to do some unpacking of what I actually think about it – because, yeah, sometimes it’s amazing, but sometimes I fail to see the point, or it just seems to be an increasingly stuff-oriented philosophy. Which is, correct me if I’m wrong, not where it was “supposed” to go.) … it’s so alienating to not be able to make a thing you use work, to not understand how its moving parts fit together, etc etc.

Which brings me to something I occasionally cycle through bitterly regretting – I think part of the reason I never really got into computer-guts was a certain operating system which just made everything about the bits and codes and things going on under the plastic that one extra layer less transparent – and so I went back to books and string and tools I could see right to the heart of.

Not that I ever thought of it that way when I was, oh, a wee little thing.

But there you go. And last weekend I finished reconstructing my memory of a bookbinding structure that I did once and took awful notes on – thanks to some pictures on the internet and a diagram I thought I’d lost somewhere along the way. It’s something I’m pleased with – and I’m going to make a few more. Just to see if I can get it up to my own standards (as far as I’m concerned the first one is awful, even if it is a perfectly functional book, and a nifty thing to have made).

That’s going to have to wait, though. I’ve got this huge list of things I need to get done this month. Good grief, how do I manage to get so darn overscheduled just on self-imposed deadlines?

Oh well. At least I had a lovely walk.

Across the interstate:

And past The Quiet Man (next to the T station), a tavern that is either shuttered permanently or very concerned about light accidentally making its way into the depths:

It seems strange that there are people in this one.