holy moly.

Holy Moly! The weirdest thing just happened to me. I went for the routine and dayily check of the company mailbox. Rows and rows of little doors in a back hallway of a UPS store. The hallway was straightforward plain - secluded yet with open window to the sky outside. It was crazy! suddenly I was so happy! the hallway was so happy... I didn't want to leave.

Granted, I am a over thinker and over feeler.. retarded and suckl-ly so. But this task carried no worry, no anxiety. My key was going to fit the lock.. the door was going to open. The hallway didn't make any statement.. it wasn't a person, anything that would grow out of you or change on you.

It just was.

I knelt there, by the box a few minutes and took that in. Soaked it up. I realized, now that I could understand it fully, that I could decide to make life like this (if I wanted) -- so simple. It was like I was kneeling at the alter of simplicity, and not just a postal box.

BUT, this sort of simplicity was a simplicity I fear like a an antidepressant. To simplify my thought process. To be more normal and socially acceptable. Does it also shut off all the glorious things too? My thoughts and feeling that seem so debilitating are also my personal strength.
I love seeing moments of time this way. Even the very thought... the idea of the beautifulness of this hallway probably wouldn't have struck me any other way.
It made me laugh sheepishly as I left the UPS store and reentered into the real world.

This hallway then, as funny as it seems, was a intelligently sent tool. A tool to show me how I could think. How I could see things in life to harness my so called weakness. To take my complexity and consolidate those thoughts into the exact shape and form of a UPS store hallway. A hallway defined by straightforward rules, where you are the only variable. Trying to seeing the forest but still able to break it down to the trees.. whenever. you. want.

Golden!!

50 First Dates.

When I was going to school in Chattanooga, I started this project with a boy to try and hit up every restaurant in town. We would sample the food.. the wine or brews and write a nice prose review accompanied by photos of the adventure!!

I felt sad for a long time that it never happened. But instead of feeling sad anymore I am going to unearth project! and revitalize it!

50 days. (not consecutively)
50 dates. (hopefully)
50 dishes.
50 drinks.
$0 (haha maybe..)

bringing the age of chivalry back! with a bang!!

In video game metaphor, Sahale shall rack up cool points in this mission to level up in the game of Life Knowledge.

As a part of the project, I have purchase a map of Seattle so I can mark each choice restaurant in its neighborhood and check them off as I go!

I also started an okcupid! dating profile to meet some new peeps. But I can alway open for suggested and reliable dates. Only requirement, must possess: a different and interesting perspective.

found this.

faith.

when in doubt. be a servant.

a story. the tragical life of gangsta Sahale.

a taste of sand.

Feelings are embarrassing..
They always seem to be inappropriate.

Because, unfortunately, there are too few cool people .
So.... I try and ignore my feelings so that no one knows.

But it doesn't matter....
Because you end up digging trenches for them anyways.

Digging them, deeper and deeper until you are stuck..................




and no one, especially the one who got you into trouble, is going save you.

This has happened enough times that I have put down (at least tried) the shovel of jealousy, or emotional energy, shared experience.. and sorta isolated myself.
BUT
I am a human with a warm blooded heart and sexual desires.

So life has become like chewing sand.
VERY boring.

I usually go from stunning highs to the lowest of lows.



How do people do it??

Maybe I need a man-whore to make out with and a cool person to talk to. That way I can have the best of both worlds without being inappropriate!

I just need some one to take the taste of sand out of my mouth.:.

//sj

sahale sneak attack.

This weekend I was documenting like mad. I wanted to try to collect stories.. as they happened in the moment.
What I learned is that there always have been a million amazing stories happening all around me that I took for granted.

We went up to Rosario Beach on Saturday because some of my parent's friends work at the marine station up there and my brother was working in the kitchen for the summer.

The most chillin and beautiful thing I have ever seen, was the small dinoflagellates that live in the bay-ish beach that surrounds the marine station. After midnight, we all went down to the dock and dipped our hands in the water.. and the waves phosphoresced, lighting up with small dinoflagellates. It was the most amazing, beautiful thing. They looked just like twinkling stars.

Earlier that day, my brother and my uncle and I had walked the levee out along Padilla Bay. It was open wind-swept land along the inner coast of the sound. It was surreal and cinematic to sit out there and talk.

Camping by sahalemarja

Later, on Sunday me and my mom went to meet one Mr. Jack Gunter. My mom and her friend Liana had been weaving this tale about this guy who was fantastical. He was a man of a million stories and a million projects. Most of them sounded pretty out there or somehow must blown out of proportion... tall tales if you will, because of their fantastical nature. So my mom took me to meet the man.. and to here some of his stories.

He was very please to see my mom again, and to meet me. To hear about my filmmaking aspirations. My mom told me that he made a feature film about topless hockey players and a novel about his version of the history of the puget sound... from the big bang into the future. He also is a prolific painter and sculptor, owning an operating a "History of the World Part IV" gallery, filled with fake artifacts "gathered" from the Puget Sound. Things like ancient jars with ferry boats carved on them.. reconstructed to look like antiquities.

Jack Gunter by sahalemarja

He told me about a film night that he holds every Thursday night for his friend, Bruce Baillee... who lives on his home island of Camano. He told me emphatically that Bruce is the smartest person he knows and formerly a famous experimental filmmaker. He holds these film nights and invites smart people to give Bruce at least a couple hours of intelligent conversation, since he is too big for the island. In fact, he told me that Bruce started a film society in San Francisco that got George Lucas started and inspired his career... So I went home and researched it out.

Castro Street, (Bruce Baillie), by zohilof

From George Lucas's wikipedia:

Voila! It was true.

and so much more.
I can't wait to find out more about him..

paintings and pottery by Jack Gunter

Sunday night, I went out with two friends. And they felt compelled, maybe it was the social setting, to tell me a million stories where we had share time but apparently not space. Things that happened right under my nose! and I never knew about. I appreciate friends like these.. haha who can live vicariously for me. As we sat under the red lights of the Cha Cha Bar on Capitol Hill in Seattle, I laughed so hard. And in re-listening to these moments, I felt like I was an undercover reporter for "This American Life".. I never stopped to think about these stories and how awesome moments can be in the texture of a human's life haha, whether or not they should have been lived or not.

TwinHandGuns by sahalemarja

Italy by sahalemarja
Drugs by sahalemarja

Today we interviewed some people on the street for a work project... and one guy in particular said something quite profound to me. He said that obituaries only show dots between your birth and expiration date... but those dots are all made three dimensional by all the small things that are planted in your life between those moments of first life and death. I keep thinking that those moments are all around us. Even in this one weekend.. I was astonished how many stories happened around me that I wouldn't have noticed so well without seeking them out.. with my camera... with my recorder.

Look for 'em!

Carpe Diem!

moon river.

my moon river cover :)

Moon River by sahalemarja