Photos and Journies

Since I've had a child photos have become very important to me. I sort them in folders to backup:

Cats
Darcy Adventures
Darcy chill
Misc
Nature

The cats photos have really dropped off, but still work having the cat-egory. When I did my most recent sorting, I made the judgement call that the photos that go into Darcy Adventures are not just ones showing her being adventurous, but also adventures that we are only on because we have her. So, if there is is a beautiful nature photo, but it was taken when we were on one of our trips to another county, then it still goes in Darcy Adventures.  

I highly enjoy the process of sorting the photos. I have a little shell script that I can type 1 through 5 and it sorts the photo that is up in the appropriate category. Should this just be done by some kind of AI sort? I don't think so, as these regular backups give a chance to look at the pictures again.

Though I am a bit embarrassed to have read the source, I am honest enough about where I get my ideas to cite Ayn Rand's Romantic Manifesto stating that art is a selective representation of reality... And I like what I select with these photos to represent reality.  There is exploration, reverence, beauty, love, curiosity and creation. And just as important is what there is *not* in these photos... anxiety, cruelty, or greed.

I did my sorting yesterday while listening to trance music, and the experience of it compelled me to immediately grab Kerouac's book "The Dharma Bums," which I immediately pulled off my shelf, where it had laid dormant for a few years after the only time I had read it, and embark on rereading it.

One moment in particular made me start thinking about the book. I was going through pictures of my great solo adventure, which was walking on a bridge over a river that separated two counties, and one of the photos was of a bit of graffiti that was scrawled somewhere in the middle. At the time, I had thought to myself about when he reached the top of a mountain, Japhy had given out some loud noises ("a beautiful broken yodel... his triumphant mountain-conquering Buddha Mountain Smashing song of joy"), and when Kerouac's stand-in character asked him about it, he replied that "those things aren't made to be heard by the people below ..."
 

Assholes?, sure, but it is beautiful to that there are nooks that you can only get to by going to places so many cannot bother with. I am sure the vast majority of mountaineers would look down on my adventure, but that is very much besides the point.

The point? Something in me is seeking, yearns to see new things. But not tourism, which satisfies everyone in my familiar circles. I seek escape, so I can come back sane enough.