Tag: family

by jad

Antigravity (On the Cost of Film Photography)

It’s been harder to justify the cost of film photography lately, but the siren’s call is almost just as hard to ignore, so I decided to stretch a roll out across a couple of weeks, like an “everyday carry.” This is counterintuitive, because the cost usually makes me more precious about the shots, needing them to “mean something.” These don’t mean anything. We took the new light rail to Mercer Island and found some earthworks, walked around, then took the light rail back. x I didn’t think about it at the time, but these fit well with an advertising project … Continue reading “Antigravity (On the Cost of Film Photography)” →

by jad

The HOTU Digicam (No Year-End Review)

Merry Christmas from my lil friend, a “HOTU” keychain digicam that Santa gave me. It looks like a dinky version of my Fuji and even comes with a little strap to wear around your neck like a total dork. I love it! x Wanna see something cool? x This one is for all you gear heads. Only quality content on this page. x Is this street style? x No year-end review. Just this photo I took while heading home thinking that I might have ripped the roll of film I’d just finished shooting out of its canister. x No year-end … Continue reading “The HOTU Digicam (No Year-End Review)” →

by jad

Black Friday in Wenatchee and Leavenworth

Black Friday in Wenatchee. This place is like a box of LEGO bricks strewn across a pile of thick winter blankets and looks especially magical in the low-hanging morning sun. x As I was going through the photos I’d taken over Thanksgiving weekend, Christine said that I should tell you all about how difficult I had been while she was trying to come up with a plan for where to spend the break. I’d nixed three other choices as being 1) too far or 2) not worth the effort and 3) (allegedly) grumbled about the point of life itself before … Continue reading “Black Friday in Wenatchee and Leavenworth” →

by jad

A Season of Grief, Ofrendas, and Grief Bursts

We are in a season of grief. Ofrendas are everywhere, in galleries and at protests. KEXP is playing music about it. There’s a play titled “Eulogy: Or How to Plan Your Own Funeral” showing on Capitol Hill. Some of this comes from wider diffusion of traditional ritual: from All Hallows’ to All Souls’, via Dia de los Muertos, the culture is learning to look past the ghoulish masks of Halloween to the thinning of the veil that they celebrate. So many of us this year are choosing to walk through that, into the vale of tears and out into garden … Continue reading “A Season of Grief, Ofrendas, and Grief Bursts” →

by jad

Spooky Season and My Father’s Dying Days

I guess I wasn’t really actively thinking about it much last year, but the reality is, spooky season will always coincide with my father’s dying days and final demise from now on. That puts a different spin on every memento mori of this time. It was actually my dad’s birthday on Sunday, but I didn’t know what to think of that. All I can think about is that we never really made much of thing of it while he was alive. So, now what? x Soon, it will be 1 year since, in just less than 1 month. And soon … Continue reading “Spooky Season and My Father’s Dying Days” →

by jad

The Red Thread

The other day, I shared a post I’d made 5 years ago as part of a writing challenge I’d given myself in 2020 called Twenty Weeks of Gratitude. It was a memory of project I worked on in 2015, which had roots in prior work I’d started 5 years before that, so you can imagine how everything might feel like a lifetime ago. Like a door that keeps revolving in a half-forgotten dream, or the ripples from a pebble someone tosses in a stream, etc. I recorded these videos when these threads unexpectedly came together while I was in Lebanon … Continue reading “The Red Thread” →

by jad

My Heart Sees It

Someone asked me if my dad’s roll of Kodak Advantix film had been used, and I was certain it hadn’t, so imagine my heartache seeing these frames come back from the lab. This is my baby sister when she was still a baby sister. That’s the balcony at our old place; the same balcony she took her work calls on when we hung out at the same place when I was back there in January. It looks different now. So do we. I didn’t expect to see these photos so quickly. I didn’t expect to feel the way I do … Continue reading “My Heart Sees It” →

by jad

The Windmills of my Mind

My sister found and sent me a picture of a single-serving carton of the chocolate milk we both grew up on and it looked exactly the same. This set me off into a slow moving spiral of sappy nostalgia, like a wheel within a wheel, you might say, a mood that I was already in this morning, having just finished a roll of film that was in my dad’s Kodak Advantix camera—a roll he’d loaded some decades ago but never used. So now I’m sharing these random moments I’ve collected around town; quiet moments in the noise. I found my … Continue reading “The Windmills of my Mind” →

by jad

We Toasted to Victory

This is the moment we visited my father’s grave. It was the first thing we did, the day after I landed in Beirut. Among these images, some frames I remembered him occupying the last time we were all here together, when he could still walk with difficulty, and could point out the ancestral landmarks to me and Christine. I didn’t look back at those photos I’d taken of him back then. I just felt them in the moment. “If I were you, I’d constantly be going around like: do you know my small Lebanese hometown is basically a cult run … Continue reading “We Toasted to Victory” →