my friend joel has been making amazing timelapse photography videos. They're really beautiful.

I don't remember who sent me this video but it's pretty great. The beginning part is sort of infantile, so just wait it out or skip ahead about a minute, and then when the actual yellow ribbon song starts, you will enjoy.

Last night I went to the second co-counselling discussion group at Dry River. I missed the first one but I'm totally psyched about it now. Basically co-counselling is just listening and talking to each other about personal stuff, rather than, or I guess in addition to, paying some psychiatrist $80 and hour to listen. We live in such a repressed society that this idea seems revolutionary, but its natural for community to support us in our struggles through life. Of course i keep mentioning as an antecedent the project done by some friends a few years ago called unlicensedtherapist.com,

In addition to that, I've been thinking about and appreciating all the other things I've been doing in an effort to work on myself as a person. Back in late June I made a pledge to do that, and I'm making some progress.

I've been going to this great meditation class called "Meditation for Drunks, Rockstars, and the Rest of Us." It's a really down-to-earth class without all the new age trappings and the guy teaching it is really funny and great.

I've also been going to yoga again, though not as often. I'm doing stretches every morning, or almost every one. And I have plans to do some dietary stuff that i think will make me a lot healthier. Oh, and I pretty much cut out caffeine since early July.

Lots of work left to do but it's a gradual process.

Today is Jessica's 26th birthday, so I thought I would post this incredibly cute photo of her recent meeting with a new suitor:

I guess I could get jealous but I feel that I'm likely quite capable of having a radical relationship involving myself, her, and this prince. One never knows what the future may bring.
Happy birthday, Jess.

I'm appearing at a screening of my film on the U of A campus tonite. Three of the interviewees will be there too. Should be cool.

I also recently got confirmation that it will have its Juarez premiere soon, at the Border Social Forum, October 13-15. This is exciting.

I'll also be showing it at Arizona State in a couple of weeks. There are various other potential dates too. keep watching the film's site for news.

In personal news, things are starting to get a little better, gradually. Whew.

What a perfunctory blog post. sorry. too busy today. gotta get out of the house. now.

Well, stuff kind of sucks lately. Like, in the last week things have just suddenly taken a downturn. It was so sudden and all at once, I'm just kind of reeling with shock, especially because it and the resolution of it are pretty much completely out of my control. I Ultimately think it will turn out okay. It's just bad timing and so sudden, and I'm so totally helpless to effect the outcome, that I am having a hard time dealing with it. My concious mind says, yeah, ok, i can understand and accept this, but my lizard brain, my gut-brain, is saying oh god this is horrible i don't think i can live through this.

It's not stuff I want to go into detail about. I guess if it wasn't for the fact that I haven't blogged for a week, I would not even bother with this. But I have nothing else to blog about because I'm so upset. And yet I don't want to do that whole public moaning and whining that I did before back in June. It's not as bad as that, anyway. Although compared to how GOOD things have been up till a week ago, it's relatively pretty damn bad.

I guess the positive things to say are:
i'm having a little last day of summer mojito micro-party at my place tonite. it will be the first gathering of more than 2 people in my apartment. Should be fun.

Also, I have to mention that I am completely knocked off my socks and brought to the edge of tears just by the trailer for "Science of Sleep". Maybe it's because of my currently emotionally raw state, but I just think it's so touching and beautiful, I can't hardly wait to see it. And I'll probably cry all the way through it. What's wrong with me? And I never ever feel this way about mainstream hollywood films.

Godfuckingdammit I hatehatehate how every time I put up photos on Flickr, any shot that has a woman in it gets at LEAST about 1/3 more views than ones that don't, and often twice as many views or more. So fucking predictable. C'mon, you stupid horny internet photo dweebs. Get a fucking life. God dammit.

This past weekend I and 4 other Tucson activists drove to San Diego for the Roots of Resistance Summer Camp. The Organic Collective had organized it to get people, mostly border activists, to come and share skills and talk about plans.

It was a really great time and really inspiring. I now feel re-energized to get going on a few new or neglected projects, tho i also feel a little like these things, if i go through with them, may wind up making me feel overwhelmed, overobligated, and possibly even burned out, along with all the other things I'm doing or getting back into doing here in Tucson, now that I'm back. Need to work on finding balance and prioritization.

I took a few photos, not only of the camp but our brief visit to the border wall on the beach - where there are gaps in the wall right now big enough that people can easily squeeze through, and do. Mexicans were casually slipping over and wandering the sand, but a border patrol truck on the hill was making sure no one went too far. We played soccer and talked with some of the Tijuanans for awhile. It was really cool.

The whole weekend was just really really awesome.

Sorry for that silly reference to the Wall of Voodoo song. I just had to do it, because I was just interviewed for a college radio station in Mexico City, talking about my Juarez film. It went really well. She spoke excellent english, luckily. I really wish I had been keeping in practice with my spanish for the past year. Anyway, the station is Ibero 90.9 (because the school is the Iberoamerican Unversity, I think). I'll try to link to their stream soon. They also want to try to bring me down there to show the film and talk about it. Exciting.

Jessica wrote a short but good article in the new issue of the NYC Indypendent about Rising Tide, a new group focused on slowing global warming by slowing its source: fossil fuel use.

"...most other organizations who say they work for climate protection merely promote technological reforms to the capitalist economy, and shy away from demanding deep changes that address the common causes of war, social and economic injustice and ecological destruction."