Here comes the sun

It was a good weekend for taking pictures.

Saturday was chilly and foggy, not the best picture-taking weather, but I still popped the point-and-shoot into my bag when I went out to run errands. I’m glad I did. Walking home through Golden Gate Park, I passed the dahlia garden next to the Conservatory of Flowers; even in that flat grey light that ordinarily washes everything out, the flowers glowed as if each one had its own tiny spotlight.

Today, though, was clear and bright and warm. I grabbed the DSLR and headed across town to see what I could find. I ended up in the Castro, where I shot some streetscapes and some building details and a group of men taking pictures of each other in front of what was once Harvey Milk’s camera shop and is now a gallery and gift shop. I noticed the Harvey Milk mural that’s on the wall perpendicular to the window and ducked in to get a closer look. Then I was distracted by the jewelry, all by local artisans.

I started talking to the man behind the counter, and he insisted I try a few things on. I ogled. We chatted. And then I did something I rarely do, something that usually makes me feel awkward: I asked if I could take his picture. What was I worried about? He immediately said, “Absolutely, just get my dog in the shot.”

So I did.

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Spiritual autobiography, part 1

For anyone who’s coming here from Chaos Theory, let me just warn you up front that this blog involves no poker. I repeat, this is not a poker blog. I don’t even know how to play poker. Yet.

Onward.

~~~

As I write this, the sun is about to go down to end Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year. I did not attend services. I have not attended services, except for family events, in almost 25 years. I’ve gotten some pushback on this, especially from various older family members, but I’ve never had a strong emotional attachment to the faith of my ancestors. It never gave me any sense of spiritual nourishment. At the same time, my ethics are strongly colored by my heritage — especially my strong belief that I am obligated to be a positive force in the communities I belong to, to work for justice, to try to build a better world. Ironically, I never heard the phrase tikkun olam (which means “repairing the world”) when I was growing up. I didn’t hear it until I was a college student, by which point I had already decided I was joining the long, rich tradition of cultural but non-religious Jews.

In my early 20s, neopaganism caught my attention. I liked a concept of the divine that included the female, and I enjoyed creating my own rituals that I could change whenever I felt like it. But after a few years, that, too, lost its appeal. I knew intellectually that it was all symbolic, and I couldn’t suspend my disbelief long enough to enter the mystery.

At that point, I stumbled into Arlington Street Church, the “mother ship” of Unitarian Universalism. One Sunday, intrigued by the fact that the minister was planning to talk about Thich Nhat Hanh, I walked in, sat down, and listened as the sun shone gloriously through the largest collection of Tiffany stained glass windows in any church. And I ended up there most Sundays for the next couple of years. At ASC, I found all the community and intellectual stimulation of organized religion, without any insistence on dogma. (I confess I also noticed the place was chock-full of attractive like-minded men — although, sadly, they too were looking for like-minded men.)

I probably would have hung out at ASC on Sundays indefinitely had I not decided to move to San Francisco. I tried the UUs here, but they were a little too tied to their Christian roots for my heathen comfort. And so for the last ten years, I’ve had no spiritual home. In that time, I’ve gradually arrived at Douglas Adams’ point of finding the garden beautiful without needing to believe in fairies at the bottom of it. There’s not really any organized way of observing that, I suppose.

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Learning by doing

I’m thinking about taking a photography class once I have a little spare cash on hand. I’m also thinking that I’ve been taking pictures since I took a basic photography class back in high school. I know what I’m doing, more or less. What I need is some kind of structure, some organizing principle, that will help me decide what to shoot and how to shoot it. Maybe I need to make a list — low light, landscape photos, portraits, action, etc. — and just work my way down it.

Then again, there are so many lovely gadgets and tools I don’t know how to use…

I don’t know. I tend to learn by doing. But I also tend to put off doing things I don’t already know how to do, because I have so many other things I already know how to do that I’m not doing. Taking a class might be a way to break that postponing habit.

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You can’t win

…if you don’t play. Which is why I am working up a letter of introduction to send to book packagers, asking them to keep me in mind as a writer if they get a project that seems like a good match. This is a new area for me to explore, so I’m revising with alacrity to make sure I come across as the most reliable, competent ghostwriter or co-author possible.

I’m tossing out as many lines as possible and hoping a big fish bites. Although I’ll settle for a little fish. A sardine, maybe, or an anchovy.

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Looking eastward

I’m going to New York in a few weeks, in part to have a corned beef sandwich (one of the few foods SF doesn’t do well is deli, more’s the pity) and in part to see friends, but mostly to do some work-related schmoozing. It’s been more than two years since I was last there, and a lot has changed in publishing. So today I started the process of emailing various editors to find out if they can spare a little time to meet with me and tell me what they’re looking for.

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