My iPhone 1G Camera Retires

In the wilderness of the urban world, I've been carrying my iPhone 1G to photograph what I see.  It's the original first-generation iPhone I bought when they first came out.  It only has 4 GB, and I've never maxed out the memory, probably because I don't use videos a lot on it.

What's interesting about using a very simple camera like this all the time is:  Its restricted technology makes me deal almost solely with composition.  You cannot rely on tricky features of the camera to get your image right.  No flash, no zoom, no macro focus, just compose and shoot.  I sometimes get a little cranky with the limits it places on focusing sharply and controlling things about it that other cameras can do, but I think that overall I've learned more about what I'm looking at and thinking about why I'm shooting the picture instead of what the camera can do.  I have learned to shoot quickly and pay attention to light that's available to me.  Also, I have to hold very still (reiterating the very first thing I learned in photography).

Now that's about to change a bit.  I'm finally upgrading to a 4G (fourth generation) phone/camera.  It's the same size as the 1G that I have been using.  But now I will have a reversible lens (shoots at me or at you without turning the phone around), more megapixels per file (image), a flash, selective focus and some zooming ability.  Immediately, it makes me think more about the camera than I did before.  It will be that way until it, too, becomes second nature to use, but I don't think it will take long.  Apple makes very intuitive products, and the camera on their phone is designed to be a tool to use and not an implement that introduces frustration like so many other cameras tend to be.

I'm posting a few images here from the last couple of days.  Kind of a tribute to the little iPhone 1G I've carried with me, a trusty tool I've grown to respect and admire.  As I've stated before, probably 90% of my images on this blog are from that iPhone.

Brain Shift

I drove along the ridge top through the ink-black forest and then down the winding road home.  Cold rain pelted everything and dragged moss from the trees to the road where it lay in limp clumps in the black night.  Everything in the world seemed wet, and it was as if all light had seeped into the cracks of pavement, down into the dark earth to be held there by the wearying winter storm.

How closed in and dank the night seemed, with no moon visible and creatures huddling in hidden thickets, waiting until light would rise from the ground at daybreak.  I drove through wafting curtains of rain that moved like drifting mist in my headlight beams, and I noticed I was tense and tired from work.  Then the part of the mind that notices but does not comment on what it sees began taking its turn after a long stint at work, and I felt both grateful to be away from the minutiae of patient care and alert for road dangers in the enveloping rainstorm.  It had been a busy night, but it was time to leave it behind for good.

At four miles -- about ten minutes -- my commute is nothing, almost too short to be able to unwind before arriving home.  But there is a point when I feel a mental shift happen, from detail-oriented work think to a free-form, more relaxed and creative musing.  I breathe better, I become more relaxed and I remember other parts of life than work.  

It is said that our minds are divided into a primitive brain and a more sophisticated higher-functioning brain that makes executive decisions quickly and fluidly when we are presented with various situations.  We are constantly receiving sensory input, and we must do something with the information, either instantly forgetting about it or reacting appropriately.  At work, phones, computers, and demands are constantly present, stress is increased and creative-artistic thinking is not usually possible.  But later, when I want to think creatively, what happens?

fMRI is a short name for functional MRI, a scan of an actively working brain that detects where neurological activity is increasing and decreasing during tasks given to a person in the MRI scanner.  What doctors have seen in studies is that there is a shift in brain activity that is noticeable when a person is asked to begin a creative skill - like writing or playing an instrument - and when they've "warmed up."

Think of playing tennis or playing a keyboard.  You begin the task and you feel awkward, conscious of all the parts of your task, and you just can't find your legs, so to speak.  Stiffness, nonfluency, or a feeling of dullness make you feel slow and clumsy, but after a few minutes of "warming up" you have a feeling of being in the zone, of energetic creativity, and off you go.  You lose track of the world around you as your thinking begins to be done in a different part of your brain.  You begin in the frontal cortex and switch to less conscious, more automatic areas and exist almost in a dream-like state when "flow" is really happening.

What's writer's block?  You don't make the switch.  You stay in the conscious, executive-thinking brain and cannot access the dream world where creativity flows easily.  Who knows why; it just doesn't happen.  There are probably many things that block you from accessing that flow, and it's frustrating when it happens.  When you're in the zone and your brain activity has switched from conscious effort to automatic free-flow thinking, it's a relief and a pleasure.  By practicing meditation and mindfulness, you can train your mind to switch earlier, and you get better at it.

I arrived home in a steady rain and hurried inside out of the dark and cold.  I'd left work behind and would need to sleep soon, so my mind had to relax even further until sleep and then dreams could overtake me.  Consciously going to the unconscious, I was able to drift off to sleep very shortly afterward, unaware of work or the sheeting storm outside.

Hangin' With My Swim Buddies

Wow, I miss one day of swimming - Monday, which was a holiday actually - and my swim buddies are all over me.  What was my excuse?  Not anything I'd hang a hat on, that's for sure.  "Where were you, Christine?  We were here....(implying "you were definitely not.")

I guess I've found my tribe.

On a regular weekday, there are workouts available, and each one is slightly different than the others.  My group gets in at 5:30 AM and goes for 90 minutes, doing sets of pulling, kicking, drills, and swims.  Go anywhere in the world, and this is what swimmers will be doing when they work out. The intensity of the 5:30 group is consistently good and people are in the pool to improve, swim hard and get fit.

The 9 AM group is pretty much the same, but they only go for an hour or so.  Some swim fast, but most don't.  Most of them are people I've known for a while, and they're a fun group, but the focus is more on socializing and doing a shorter workout.

Then there are the 11 AM and 12 PM groups.  One or two people do both hours, but most people in those time slots are floppers and don't really care about the workout that's up on the board.  Their disinterest is, unfortunately, contagious.  Attitudes affect others pretty easily in groups; swimmers at noon are  certainly influenced by them.

We who swim in the earliest group are the biggest group and the most intent on getting a solid workout.  The only thing I miss is sunlight, but even that has its downside:  I get more distracted by almost everything when I can see it all; predawn limits my field of vision.  Our pool is outdoors, no roof, so it'd be nice to get some sunshine and a tan which translates nicely to Hawaii when you go.  If you go, that is.  

This is about the one-month mark in the semester, and those who had misgivings about swimming early have quietly dropped away, leaving slightly more room in the pool now.  Each lane still has three swimmers or so, which is a good number for a pool of this size and level of ability.  We have sorted ourselves out by pace, so when we circle in the lane (you have to stay to the right of the black line or end up with a concussion after smacking into someone), we are all swimming at the same pace, less likely to catch up with and pass anyone.

With our routine well established and everyone familiar with each other, it's getting easier to tell when someone doesn't show up who is usually there - like me yesterday.

You know, it's not like they'd sit and wait for me to catch up with them in the workout, because they're almost all faster than I am.  I hold my own and swim hard, but my pace is not quite up to their speed just yet.  Someday, I'll surprise 'em. The point is, they know I'm part of the group, and I'd left a hole by not being there.

It was pleasing in a certain way to know I'd been missed, that I mattered and had created a blank space by my absence.  Team-building, even if it occurs by simply showing up, gradually creates a willingness to make an extra effort.  You sense that the work has an importance that's greater than yourself where loyalty and trust are intrinsic parts of the whole.  Those qualities get you through difficult work sets and challenging efforts that you almost always lighten up on when you're by yourself.

I've heard people say, "I always go harder when I'm swimming with someone (and/or) there's a coach up there on the deck."  Camaraderie and friendship are the most valuable aspect of sports teams, the elements athletes miss most when they retire or a season ends.  The strengthening bonds of friendship reinforce group ethics.  Our group's ethic is don't miss a workout, as I found out.

It was good to be missed, to be included in a group of people I admire and respect.  I'll really hear it if I miss a practice, and believe me they will hear from me if they miss now, too.  The kidding is fun, but the underlying message is:  We're in this together, we need each other, so show up and do your best.    

Beauty at Sunrise: A Gift

The sun was coming up over the eastern hills beyond Salinas and Hollister as I journeyed north on Saturday. Tentative at first, then bolder, light rays burst forth from beyond the Gabilan Hills and danced across the tips of branch stems and wingtips to the ocean of Monterey Bay.  The beaming light set small hills, ridge tops and marshes in sharp relief and revealed new details of farmlands I had driven past hundreds of times before.  Distances between things seemed lengthened as their forms became more distinctly gold-edged.  The slanting light was as if shot parallel to the ground from a stage light even as the sky overhead was a dark gray-blue.  All things, slumbering in a darkened world moments before, pulsed newly alive.  

Dove-white clouds drifting in a piled mass were a collage of pastel streaks that looked soft as fine wool. Long glancing beams outlined the landscape for miles and miles, a diorama of cool winter, gilt-edged, with dark wet earth and gray-brown tree trunks brooding and still.  Beautiful?  It seems such a weak word now.  It was the kind of beauty that brings the heart to a standstill, the mind struggling to grasp such an exquisite thing as a winter sunrise after rainfall.

Drive north from Monterey some morning as the night sky pales into daylight.  Take the coastal, bay-skirting route or go more inland where the rolling undulations of San Benito County stretch from one horizon to the next.  The open land lies in repose, as it has for nearly all time. It is lovely and gentle, tender and complex.  It is a heartland, a centering place of graceful and timeless beauty.  Where oaks, laurel and buckeye trees growing on the hills' flanks have both a delicate texture and a sensual undulating roundness.  

Get up before dawn in winter, drive out away from loud, stinking towns and cities into California's curving beauty and watch how wet leaves and arching branches of old oaks catch the sunrise and give it to you like the beautiful gift that it is, not speaking, but singing a sweet enduring melody.  Like as not, your heart already knows the song, doesn't it.  

Posting Less, Writing Better

Over the past year, I've written every day, posted something most of those days and looked at what it means to me.  Essentially, writing every day is a discipline and a goal that I've reached as of the beginning of the year.

Now, looking back on the year or more of daily discipline, I've noticed a few important things.  One of them is that there are some major steps to producing a publishable work.  Obviously, the prime step of sitting down and writing out an idea comes first.  Then comes the next step or steps you must take to refine work, edit and hone ideas.  That's something that has not been given enough attention in the past, and it's showing up as an annoying problem, in my mind anyway.

Some ideas or subjects are pretty quick to develop, and I'm satisfied with what ends up on the "page" here. Others I would have liked to have taken a lot more time with, and of course I still can go back and rework them.  This leads me to the next step now, which is that for the most part, I will be posting less often and developing ideas and themes to a fuller extent so that they seem more complete to me.  I want to take more time to delve into that creative space and see what can come of it.  After that, I will submit finished work for publication and see what happens.

Most, if not all, creative thinking requires a warm-up period when the mind is set to work on a task and needs to be let loose and wriggle around a bit before really hitting its stride and feeling good.  Athletes and other folks call it "the flow."  You know it when you feel it.  After some warm-up time, you feel less hesitant and more energized.  At the same time, you're less aware of the immediate surroundings and distractions that may pop up.

It's that feeling of flow that I have had not found enough time to reach.  By imposing the daily post goal, I've often rushed to use time and get something posted, whether I really was fully satisfied or not.  On the other hand, it does take me less time to write out what I want to than it used to.  The daily discipline has been excellent in that regard.

So, I will write daily but only post every other day or so.  If I hit a stretch of time when I can write for a longer period of time during the day, I may post something here more frequently, but the goal will now be for quality instead of quantity.  I hope that makes sense.

Thanks for reading, subscribing and passing my posts forward to friends.  I know quite a few people are subscribing and checking in regularly, which is cool.  I appreciate you having you as a reader, wherever you are.  Anytime you want to respond, you can do so by posting a comment or emailing me at bottaroc@gmail.com  .