I’ve been working on this for months (or more accurately, my whole life) and it’s still nowhere close to done (working my way up to 100).

Publishing it anyways because I was inspired by Maggie.

I’ve shown you mine, now show me yours? Let’s make this happen, people.

My one heirloom sat in the living room of my childhood home – a hope chest (for my dowry!)(actual dowry Steve received from my mother: endless supply of worries about if his coat is warm enough for the weather) that has been passed down to the first woman in each generation in my family. When I was younger, it always looked like just another old thing in a house full of old things, and I was 13 before I discovered that it held much more exciting treasures – my mother’s old vinyl collection.

My mama and I opened the chest one rainy day, pulling out John Denver and Joni Mitchell and the Moody Blues, her waxing poetic about parties in her apartment in Boston, where they sat on pillows for lack of furniture and drank bottles of wine and played loud games of Pit and listened to record after record late into the night.

We kept some of the records out and many of my Saturday afternoon sleep-ins were interrupted by the first hisses of Ladies of the Canyon cranked all the way up. I’d stumble out and give my mom a bleary-eyed glare and she’d chirp Oh, is it too loud? Sorry about that, well now that you’re up….

I loved the depth and rawness of the music that came out of our speakers, the range of tone, but most of all I loved that it sounded so real, like actual people were singing and playing instruments – tiny gaffes and all. You can laugh, but as a child of the auto-tune generation, this was a revelation.

********

All I want to do is shoot with old cameras. I’m obsessed. I triptumble around – head shoved down into patchworked black tubes, strangers peering discreetly, trying to figure out if I’m crazy…Is that some sort of metal detector? Why are you taking pictures of the ground?

Even photographers often don’t understand – there’s so much great technology out there, why would I tie my own hands by working with equipment that was last hot in 1950 and a method that is unwieldy at best and impossible at worst? Where everything is backwards, and I have to stand on a chair to get a straight on shot and where light leaks in and getting perfect exposure is a comedy of errors?

********

This Christmas while back in the Midwest, I sat cross-legged at my hope chest again. My Mom hadn’t been through her records in years and each one made her gasp as she remembered where she got it, where she listened to it, who it reminded her of. We sat with piles strewn about the floor and she sighed and said, you don’t understand, this is my LIFE.

Steve and I boxed them up greedily.

At my in-laws, we sat in the basement, going through box after box. My father-in-law has been a collector for most of his life and we didn’t even make it through all of his boxes — it was too much for one trip — and he said, take whatever you want, take them all, I just want them listened to.

We found a map to his old girlfriend’s house drawn on the White Album.

Steve kept freaking out about the music – oh, THIS album, ohmygod, I cannot wait to listen to this. And I was excited too, but mostly I just could not get over the photographs on the album covers. This Mason Proffit album, in particular. This photo really struck me (I can’t find the back, but you’ll have to trust me, it makes it even more awesome) and man, if you put that photo on flickr now and asked for feedback, you would hear things looks like some of the faces are blacked out – maybe use a fill light next time? and this is really nice, but could use some sharpening and why is there so much noise, try running noiseware? The people who give this kind of feedback mean well – they’re telling you the things that are wrong with the photo and trying to make it better, trying to help you perfect your art.

And that’s what I was doing for so long, listening to that feedback (both internal and external), striving to take more perfect photographs – sharper, more saturated, composition lined up right along the grid of threes.

I did this despite all evidence that everything I truly love is deeply flawed.

*********

Our new turntable arrived yesterday. Our neighbor rescued it from the FedEx guy and hollered over our fence. She came over and I connected cords and we drank wine and there was a knock at the door from another neighbor who had wandered over after hearing rumors that we had records and then another and we finally got it all set up and put on the Moody Blues.

We sat around until late into the night, opening albums, discovering hilarious line notes and other treasures, listening to the pops and hisses of record after record.

*********

I’ve thought a lot over the last year about the kind of art that I love, the kind that I want to create, the kind I want to leave with the world. And here’s what I’ve realized – the art that speaks to me often does so through its flaws. I love the blurred faces and the hard grain and the faded coloring of that Mason Proffit photograph. They are technical imperfections, but they are also what make it interesting.

This is a rather difficult revelation to have in the age when HDR and hyper-saturation and unnatural sharpness and other means of perfecting nature are what a lot of people think make a photograph good.

But I’ve slowly stopped caring so much about how things will be perceived, stopped trying so hard to make my photographs perfect and focusing on making them more interesting, and started seeing their flaws as my stamp – proof that a human participated in the creation of this art, that this is what makes it mine.

And I’ve finally started making art that I’m proud of.

Photo by the absolutely amazing Cliff Brunk.

Part I here.

1. Steve kisses me when I get up to the Chuppah. When he pulls away his face is stricken and he mouths I don’t think I was supposed to do that. I shrug and grin at him.

2. Walking into our handmade Chuppah at the same time, hand-in-hand with a giant, determined step.

3. Seeing Sarah grinning at me. She doesn’t look nervous at all.

4. Seeing Steve grin at me. He looks more nervous than I think I’ve ever seen him.

5. While David does his short Tom Robbins reading to start off the Ceremony, Steve mouths to me YOU LOOK SO PRETTY.

6. I don’t see anything else. I know other people are there, but I see Steve and only Steve. The emotion on his face is overwhelming and I’m already feeling overwhelmed by this moment myself and by OMG this is actually happening, he’s about to be my husband and he squeezes my hands and beams at me and I think I’m going to cry and so I look at Sarah and she looks so relaxed and I feel calm again.

7. Hearing Morgan’s reading (The Invitation, by Oriah Mountain Dreamer) – so raw and full of emotion. It feels like an invitation to the whole world and I am so present and buzzing that it feels like my skin has an electrical current.

8. Giving my dedication to Steve’s parents – how important and right it feels to thank them for their role in giving me this incredible man. Trying to look them in the eye without crying. Barely choking out the last line (I’m so proud to be entering into the loving family that you have built, though the truth is that you have been family for a very long time.) and running to give them a big group hug. We are family.

7. Hearing Garrett’s reading (Union by Robert Fulghum) and feeling that yes, this is our wedding - finally our wedding, but we have been wedding ourselves together for a long time.

7. Saying our vows (you can read them here). I try to really absorb each one as Sarah is saying it, so that when I say I do, I can really mean it. But then I realize that they are already a part of me – that I absorbed them all in the hours Steve and I spent talking about what we want our marriage to be based on, in reading others’ vows, nodding or shaking our heads, writing them and repeating them and distilling them down. They are already in my heart. They are already in his heart.

8. We have a long minute of silence to absorb the magnitude of the moment. Our eyes are closed and it is quiet and I hear the crashing of the waves and everything melts away. Steve squeezes my hands tightly and I lean forward and touch his forehead with mine. What passes through us feels charged and electric and sacred. Though we’ve written the words in later, this is the moment where I marry him.

9. Hearing our friends and family shout “I DO!” in promises to support us, encourage us and guide us always towards each other. Being blown away by the enthusiasm.

10. David struggling with the rings – looking very, very stressed out as he tries to untie them from the muslin. Isn’t sure which to hand to Sarah first. Panic! Hands them both. Looks very relieved when they are out of his hands.

11. Steve grabs the wrong hand, starts trying to put my ring on it. I try to gently remove it and give him my other hand. Everyone laughs. He blushes.

12. My ring is warm from being passed among so many people we love. It feels loved and worn in and like it’s always been there.

13. Finally losing it as I put the ring on his finger. I have memorized this part and I barely get through it without crying. (With this ring, with these words, and all the words of my heart, I choose you. Over and over again. I marry you and bind my life to yours). I still cannot say these words aloud without tearing up. I just tried.

14. After I finish, euphoria washes over me. I look at Steve and he is (still) grinning. I look at Sarah and she is grinning. I look out at the crowd and everyone is grinning. In my head is hurry up hurry up hurry up!

15. Sarah quotes W.H. Murray (Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness … the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too … Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.) and it occurs to me that yes, this is the riskiest thing I’ve ever done. The bravest and the wildest and the most sacred. That making a commitment this bold has caused something inside me to shift – almost imperceptibly – and it has settled in exactly the right spot with a long, contented sigh.

16. I now pronounce you Married under the laws of the state of California. You may kiss each other. And we do and we do and we do.

26 before 26

1. Launch an online portfolio – www.heyitssierra.com/portfolio
2. Take a Spanish class with Steve
3. Write 10 9 8 7 6 5 love letters longhand, snail-mail them
4. Find an old card catalog, alter it – This is now an old record player and the altering will commence in the next couple of weeks! DONE!
5. Conceive/create a ttv photography series
6. Read Infinite Jest – Decided to wait and do this on the Infinite Summer Schedule this summer, as my partner in crime never got it together….
7. Set up an Etsy shop – Something even more fun in the works, but it’s not ready yet!
8. Plan a camping trip with friends
9. Set up automatic charity contributions
10. Begin an artistic collaboration – In the works, but not ready yet!
11. Learn to properly poach an egg
12. See an active volcano
13. Write an artist’s statement, re-write it, mean it
14. Drinks at the Den, show at the Fox DONE!
15. Walk across the Golden Gate Bridge, alone
16. Visit Vancouver with girlfriends
17. Create a mixed-media piece
18. Go see the Raiders play
19. Host a monthly Sunday potluck dinner Okay, so I only did this once. Bah. Will do better this year!
20. Pickle something
21. Go to Nightlife at the California Academy of Science
22. Wreck a journal
23. Join the darkroom studio – Going to do this in the winter when it’s gray and depressing out.
24. Say marriage vows DONE!
25. Do 10 real push-ups in a row – Steve witnessed!
26. Submit work to a gallery/show

I confess that I really never believed Proposition 8 would pass. I had a moment of doubt when I was filling out my absentee ballot, when I thought wow, that question is worded rather strangely. I hope people understand this is a vote to remove rights. But I was working day and night on the Obama campaign and I checked the numbers regularly and they were so close and I thought that the work that I was doing – registering young people, turning out progressives in large numbers – would be enough.

Every time I saw a Yes on 8 commercial, informing me that gay people marrying would hurt my upcoming marriage and damage children, my stomach constricted. The phone banks I was running were all calling other states. I only spoke to California voters when I was calling to ask volunteers to come in for shifts. But I waved this off, thinking they will pull this out, this is California, this is something that we can’t lose.

You know the rest.

We have been constructing our Chuppah slowly over the past several weeks. As we’ve examined wedding traditions from our cultures, the Chuppah is one that resonates deeply and that we will be honoring. It symbolizes the home the couple will build together, is open on all sides to represent hospitality to all guests, and holds nothing inside it as a reminder that home is the people within it, not the possessions.

Steve and I talked recently about when we “knew.” I have so many different moments – when I knew he was special, when I knew that I loved him, when I knew that I loved him enough to fight for him, when I knew I would love him always. But I knew I wanted to marry him when I realized that he was my home. That no matter where I was or what I was doing, home was my head on his chest and my hand over his heart.

It was important to us to build the structure from scratch, by hand, just the two of us. Steve selected and stained the poles, we crouched on the floor of Home Depot, cutting PVC pipe, mixed and poured 80 pounds of concrete into foil cake pans. We bought six yards of unbleached cloth and Steve folded while I ironed and Steve pinned and I sewed. Last night I embroidered our names and a nod to our favorite Tom Robbins quote on it in teal thread. It is plain and imperfect, but it is ours.

I am trying not to feel guilty that this family that Steve and I have built will be recognized. That we will be a legal family when so many other families have been stripped of that right. I’m trying to find the silver lining – trying to be thankful that the 18 thousand married same-sex couples will not be forcibly divorced. Hoping that the lives and stories of these families will show people that there is nothing to fear.

Guilt is an unproductive emotion.

So instead, I will say this: this is my fight, too. I will not accept entering into an institution that discriminates. I don’t believe that anyone’s civil rights should be put to a popular vote, but if that’s the way that this will be won, then that’s the way we will win it. I’ve always believed that an institution is best changed from the inside out. When liberals would threaten to move away during the Bush years, it always felt like the coward’s way out. Democracy is not always easy, but this is your country – show up, do the work, we need you here now more than ever.

And so we will marry, and we will fight until our friends and neighbors can do the same. And I promise you this: when this makes it back on the ballot, be it in 2010 or 2012, we will do the work. We will donate. We will make phone calls. We will pound pavement.

We will show up hand-in-hand and we will stand with you.

The bottom line is that (a) people are never perfect, but love can be, (b) that is the one and only way that the mediocre and vile can be transformed, and (c) doing that makes it that. We waste time looking for the perfect lover, instead of creating the perfect love. -Tom Robbins

Dear Sara,

When you were dying – in the very short spaces where I let myself really know that you were – I thought I knew when I would miss you. And I was right – I miss you today, on the anniversary of your death, on my birthday, on yours. I miss you whenever I see Ewan McGregor. When I’m home and drive by Puccini’s and when I go to the drugstore to stock up on candy before a movie. Whenever someone says that they hated Moulin Rouge with a roll of their eyes (in my head I always imagine your exasperated response).  Whenever I want to talk about the complexities of family. I will miss you dearly when I marry and in weak moments I let myself imagine you there, grinning at me.

But I never could have known this.

I never really call myself an artist. And by never really, I mean that I don’t – ever. I’ve thought a lot about why in this past year. How easily I bestow the label on others. How it feels like something that I can’t claim, without risking the dreaded omg-who-does-she-think-she-is.  Why I care who people think I am. If I should. I try to push myself, to find my voice, to say what I need to say, but I do so quietly and behind-the-scenes, leaving things uncreated and unsaid and unpublished.

I remember how it felt when you called me an artist.  You threw it out so casually and so often, ignoring the way my eyes widened in protest, in please-don’t-tell-them-that.  You did so long before I even found my medium. When I was sitting next to you at Herron, trying so hard to transfer what was in my head onto the paper, trying and failing to bend the colors to my will. You always made it look so effortless and I humped along and I never understood how I got to be a part of this “we.” This we who were artists, who created things. You were an artist and you looked the way artists should look and you talked the way artists should talk. Everything was altered under your touch – your hair a daily sculpture, your car a political statement, your skirts shortened, your jeans tattered.  I was the opposite of an artist — cerebral, a reader who parted my hair in the middle and wore prairie skirts and made lists and got lost in my own head.

But when I came over you would have two canvasses gessoed and you’d haul out your paints and we’d sit in the front yard and I would say what should I paint? And you would say, whatever you want to paint! You always said this while already painting. And so I would paint because when someone hands you all the tools and sits beside you, what else are you going to do?

Your paintings were always vibrant and full and sometimes tortured, though I’m not sure you ever saw them that way. You painted the things you knew and the things you wished you knew and the things you were trying to teach yourself. I remember when you brought your painting of Che into school – the one that said “A true revolutionary is guided by a great feeling of love” –  everyone one loved it and no one knew quite what it meant. And I thought well no, sometimes revolutionaries are guided by thirst for power or struggle over the control of resources or plain blood sport. But I looked at your painting and I wanted to believe it. That was the power that your art had.

My paintings were horrible by anyone’s estimation. They lacked all detail or nuance or cohesion. They were often quite thick because I just layered paint over paint, hoping that it would turn into something worth seeing. I worried about wasting your paint because nothing ever came of it but it never bothered you. I wished I had something to say, that I was sure like you.

You called me an artist to my face and I’d say oh I’m no artist. And you’d scrunch your nose and say Sierra, of course you are, you make art, don’t you? And I’d say I guess so, but in my head I knew that I wasn’t. There were other requirements and I didn’t fill any of them. And now, when we’re out and I hear friends tell someone she’s a photographer, and they look at me head-cocked, I rush to add oh it’s just a hobby or yeah, I take pictures. I see you just over their shoulder, shaking your head.

I know it’s not just a hobby. Because I see beauty everywhere, and sadness too. Because I have things I need to say. Because when I don’t make time to create, something essential in me withers. I realize now that you were feeding this before I even knew I was hungry and in these moments when I inch closer to naming myself I miss you so deeply it feels like I might break.

Love, Sierra

So I mentioned in my last post that I got a Holga and have been shooting film. It’s part of a super short toy camera workshop I’m taking at the Art Studio in Berkeley (because what’s the patented Sierra way for dealing with being overwhelmed? why throwing another thing on the pile of course! It’s cool, you can steal it, I won’t sue).

I had this grand theory that I’m somehow inferior as a photographer because I’ve only ever shot digitally and am self-taught and in order to understand the true nature of the art, I needed to dive back into the roots and gain some solid technical grounding and slave away in the dark room before I could get a real appreciation of the medium, etc…woe is me artsy whine whine whine etc…

But that all sounded kind of boring and like it would take a long time, so I thought instead I would take this toy camera class and get a quick primer in the darkroom to see if film photography was worth pursuing.

Enter: Holga.  To non-camera-enthusiasts, let me explain the joy that is the Holga. It’s basically a total piece of shit camera that sometimes doesn’t even work and breaks and light leaks in from everywhere and has crazy vignetting and has a lens that’s made of plastic and it costs about $25. (Hint: if your Holga isn’t “working” the right way aka leaking light and being crappy, you’re supposed to drop it a few times and hope that it comes around).

So if you’re like my mom, you’re now asking so ummm why would anyone want to shoot with that? Especially when you have a semi-nice SLR? Well, because sometimes the stars align and you can eek out quite lovely, ethereal images (or so I’ve been told). Or because you really like a challenge. Or because you’re kind of bored with perfectly crisp, photoshopped-to-the-hilt images being heralded as the future of the art and think that they often lose something essential along the way. Or because you want to harken back to a time when it was about the moment, and nothing could just be “corrected later.” Aka you’re feeling quite smugly nostalgic for a time you didn’t even live through. Also, you sound like kind of a snob. Just sayin’.

So I got my Holga and learned how to load film and off we went to L.A. for the weekend. I didn’t even bring my other camera because I didn’t want to tempt myself. I shot 12 pictures on the trip, frustrated at my inability to control anything, hoping the exposure was close, guessing at where the lens was even really pointing (it has a viewfinder, but don’t let it fool you, it’s actually just a hole and has nothing to do with where the actual lens is looking). I kind of hated it, but I also kind of loved it because it made me really edit what I shot, and I eagerly anticipated my little photo-zygotes.

If my life were a movie, the story would end like this: girl learns to let go of control, shoots images recklessly, is rewarded with fantastic photos that tap into the essence of what it means to be alive, turns away from soul-deadening modern trappings and rediscovers her creative, whimsical roots.

Of course, in that scenario, the heroine probably would’ve managed to tape up her film properly.

But of course I didn’t and it unrolled in the light and ahhhhhh half of it gone in a flash! Then later, when I’m trying to put it on the spool in the dark, I drop it and step on it, but I don’t tell anyone because a girl can only take so much humiliation and I figure if a giant shoe print shows up on my negative, I will just write an artist’s statement saying I did it on purpose to showcase the messy process by which ‘real’ art is created and submit it to a gallery. I decide this will win me awards and then I will get to be the next Annie Liebowitz except without all the photoshopped Vanity Fair covers because I will keep it authentic.

I develop it anyways because hey it’s a class and what else am I supposed to do and find myself thinking of all the useful things I could be doing as I pour chemical after chemical through funnels and agitate, agitate, agitate the film.

I squeegee off the negatives and look at the giant black boxes that make up most of our trip to L.A. and I wish I had brought my other camera so I could have that great shot I took of the road side fruit stand. I think that while my style tends towards the nostalgic and the whimsical, perhaps my equipment should…..not.

Three of the pictures actually show up, having managed to avoid the treacherous light and am glad that one of them was this one with the giant white plastic dog, which I was excited about and thought could be great in black and white because it was a white on white scene in real life and would be all shadow & texture in film.

Yesterday, I’m back in the dark room, learning how to print and I print the dog and when it appears like magic in the developer solution I fall in love a little bit and decide I actually adore the fine film grain and the vignetting and maybe even the image and I leave clutching a 7 x 7 square and think at least I can blog this.

But of course I can’t really blog it because when I try to scan it (using our not-so-lovely work scanner), it loses all it’s lovely detail and soft eeriness and becomes the super dark, grainy mess you see above because I’m basically making a photocopy of it. And then I think about all the work I just did to get one stupid photo and how it looks like a shell of its actual self and isn’t even worth posting but I’ve spent all this time on it and I want to scream a little bit but instead I sit down and write this post.

When I’m done writing, I find myself on ebay and steal a beat up Anscoflex out from under someone in the last 20 seconds of an auction ($12 shipped!). Now I have another delicious, rusty piece of junk on its way (sorry again, Steve) and frankly, I really cannot wait.

I keep trying to get under Steve’s skin by widening my eyes and saying things like TWENTY-FIVE and QUARTER-CENTURY and REAL ADULTHOOD BOOGA-BOOGA-BOOGA and it’s totally not working and internet? this is making me mad! How am I supposed to milk this when he’s so well-adjusted and unconcerned about his rapid descent into old(er) age??

Our last conversation went like this:

Me: So are you going to have a quarter-life crisis now?
Steve: What’s that?
Me: You know, where you freak out about how you’re already 25 and haven’t done what you wanted to do by now and omg you’re a MAN now and what are you doing with your life and where is all of this going??
Steve: What? That exists? Where do you come up with these things?
Me: Yes!  It totally exists! There’s even a book!
Steve: Well no…I’ve done all the things I’ve wanted to and then some.
Me: Seriously? No worries?
Steve: Nope, my life is awesome, why would I be scared of what’s next?

And you know what? His life is pretty freakin awesome and it’s that way because he consistently puts in the work to make it so. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the  instant-gratification-obsessed / everything-is-disposable label that my generation has been (probably quite deservedly) slapped with. I’ve realized that one of the things that I love so dearly about Steve is how much he eschews those values. To Steve, anything worth having is worth working for – period. When the going gets tough, he digs in his heels and fights – it wouldn’t even occur to him to walk away. (Seriously, he pulled a tendon in like mile SIX of the Marine Corps Marathon and still ran/limped/hopped across the finish line)(then he had to do physical therapy for months before he could run again)(sometimes this characteristic works against him).

Given this whole marriage adventure we’re about to embark on, we’ve been talking a lot about our relationship – what kinds of vows we’d like to make, the values that will ground our marriage & family, and a lot of it ends up being about how we’ll deal with the great unknowable. And for me, the great unknowable boils down to this: we are so solid and so happy – ridiculous, can’t stop smiling, miss you when you leave for work omg gag me happy – but we’re both also realists and know it won’t always be so. We’ve hit a few rough patches on our way here and we’ll hit many more over the next decades of loving each other. As someone who likes both to plan and to have control (ahem, just a bit), the whole jumping-in-with-both-feet-no-guarantees side of lifelong commitment terrifies me.

But Steve? Not so much. His faith in our ability to weather anything has been unwavering. When I start fretting and what-ifing he says this: I am always going to love you and what we have is once-in-a-lifetime and it is sacred and it is lucky and it will be work sometimes, of course it will be work, but what good thing isn’t? And we will work as hard as necessary through those times because it will always, always be worth it. We have fought for each other before and we will choose to fight for each other as many times as we have to.

Because I believe in you and you believe in me.

And that? That has gone a long way towards assuaging my fears. Because that? Well that right there is the mark of a damn good man.

I’ve realized my needling falls on deaf ears because Steve has been a man for a long while now – because he’s already well-versed in figuring out what he really wants and making it happen, because he communicates his needs and works hard to balance all the loves in his life, because he’s already grown into himself and found his strengths and strengthened his weaknesses. Because he sees this as a lifelong process and will continue to do so.

Steve, If I am lucky enough to wander this world with only your hand in mine, it will be enough.

Happy Birthday Love. xoxo.

A treat for the new year! 2008, in photos, set to music. Includes many, many never-before-published photos. Enjoy!

Music: Silver Lining by Rilo Kiley; Fans by Kings of Leon

*RSS readers, I did my best to embed, but I think you will probably have to click through today in order to see the slideshow. My apologies.