The Whale

Around three months ago what some would consider the impossible happen. I sold my beloved STi project. It was a truly great time spent modifying and researching that car and the end result was just an impeccable pice of automotive art. However there was one thing missing, the fact that sustainability, ease of use, and consistency are all equally important values in the equation of building a car that satisfies the beauty of driving, the art of design, and the purpose of logical refinement filtered through a great platform to make what's good ever personally better. Retrospectively the STi became everything I wanted it to be, a gorgeous, reliable, usable, and faster version of what Subaru already gave us, and with that accomplished it was time for it to go to a new home and fulfill its use. I guess I just see the issue like this; I was given the ability and means and connections to build it but not the means to use it. So why be trite and feel entitled to race it or tear down a great car when a deeper look can show you that all a car is really good for is the experience of beauty and the people you meet. So I was able to reconnect with a friend and intentionally bless him with my art and given ability. Hopefully he'll experience just as much and more while he owns it. So now all I needed was something to drive.

Moving into the major narrative; how does one fight automotive monomania? WIth a shining white whale. If ever their was such a ghostly representation of the pale behemoth, that muscular ghost of bone and sinew it would live in the slinging echo of the boxer motivating my white wagon in wakes of wallowing traffic. I dare say it may be the best car I've ever driven, and I didn't even build it, loe my pride. Authorities turn their eyes, Porsches can't catch it, my family is ever safe in it, and it's interior consumes antiques large enough to make even, well, a whale proud. Yes I do indeed love the 2002 Subaru WRX Wagon that now lives in our drive and for once I own a vehicle that has no agenda of modification. To produce one has just been a slap at how good it is. Overtime it will receive a subtle mixture of refinement and personalization but I'm striving to make this one a permanent horse in the stable, maybe even one for the kids down the line. For now in prayer and petition I hope to use the wagon to connect with as many people as possible, build those relationships, and hopefully even help out in our community; all the while braving the traffic with my lovely wife Ashley and our coming daughter Zoey.

It's Just A House Burning, But It's Not Haunted

Whenever I feel a bit restless I find the best cure to the heart to be automotive wanderings into the city. Taking these on occasion I have more less unintentionally developed a mental catalogue of moving architecture; for nothing else can snap the wandering mind into alertness as the beauty of a home graceful and well designed. Favoring the desolate, I love to pass by the abandoned homes of prestige that the city has left, perhaps for no other reason than the chance one might have taken up the unlikely task of restoring one. Finding quite the opposite, one such house that had truly impressed me before I found hulking about after being set afire. In such situations a kind of parallel state is created; with the house essentially segmented between the realities of its creation and grandeur, present misery, and eminent destruction, and obviously all that can be done is to capture the flickering remainder before its falls back to the earth. This then is my business; a photographer, a dealer of the vanishing. For what further action can one take but capture existence of creation for the enrichment of the created and celebration of the grace of living?