©Crystal Liepa

Sometimes before I fall asleep I like to listen to these talks.

©Crystal Liepa

Monday will be the Winter Solstice and I have a request will you readers and friends (the few) send me a poem or image or drawing or link to a favorite artist or song to celebrate  another season’s beginning? The Winter Solstice is one of my favorite times of the year, snow covers the ground, fires are built, friends make excuses to drink more whiskey, night-time skiing becomes regular, reading inside all day becomes justified.

©Crystal Liepa

Last Summer we were young and in love. Swimming at the beach, some with out underpants. Taking pictures with plastic cameras, being pseudo hippies waiting for our shifts to be done at the co-op, passing time by eating cherry tomatoes and soaking kale. Last Summer my husband was in China and my heart was exploding with longing but these folks kept me company. So much vibrancy!

©Crystal Liepa

The pure joy of play and discovery. The awkwardness of being a young girl trying to be older and sensual. The expansive possibility of the landscape and the world. The pull from uninhibited childhood to cautious adulthood…

©Crystal Liepa

I’m going through thousands of photos that I have on my computer preparing for a website for the new year. Finally making prints and archiving photos that have only existed digitally. Trying to find some sort of consistency and methodology for cataloging photos. I also just deleted e-mails from 5 plus years ago-sick. Why am I holding onto to all this stuff? So my goal is to post everyday on my blog with photos that I drum up as I clean up.

Of course when I deleted e-mails from 2002 I had to read them and see what my 18-year-old self was like, spelling errors everywhere, I was overly romantic and long winded (some things just don’t change). And this was a poem that ended a lot of my e-mails (the romantic thing).

WHEREVER

Wherever I am, at whatever place on earth, I hide from people the

conviction that I’m not from here. It’s as if I’d been sent, to extract as

many colors, tastes, sounds, smells, to experience everything that is a

man’s share, to transpose what was felt into a magical register and carry

it there, from whence I came.

-Czeslaw Milosz: New and Collected Poems 1931-2001: 2001

I never thought dogs would be prominent in my life. I was severely mauled by a dog as a child and developed neurotic behavior around dogs (like hyperventilating, unwillingness to enter into someone’s house until they lock up their dogs, irrational screaming, lunging onto the top of a car while a dog circles me–somewhat humorous). And now I have two dogs, I’m constantly mouthing in the mirror ‘calm assertive’ ‘energy and body language’ (thanks to Cesar Millan) and dogs are cropping up in my photography frequently.

Everything I learn about communication with animals I transfer to people. I am a stronger photographer because of lessons dogs have taught me about energy and body language. The phrase ‘calm assertive’ really comes in handy when organizing group shots at weddings. I predict that I might have a new niche in 2010 photographing people and their pets.

So here is to a new year of dog portraits and dog therapy and watching the Dog Whisperer.

©Crystal Liepa

©Crystal Liepa

Directions

The new road runs into

the old road, turn

west when your ankles hurt.

The wind will be thinning itself

in the grass. Listen, those thuds

are bees drunk with plunder

falling from the minarets of flowers

like ripe prayers.

Follow the path

their bodies make. Faster.

The dirt in that wineglass

came from Chateau d’Yquem.

You’re getting closer.

That pile of clothes

is where some women

enter the river. Hurry up.

The last hill is called Sleep’s kneecap, nobody

remembers why.

This is where the wind turns

back. From the ridge

you can see the light.

It’s more like a bright soot,

really, or the dust

a moth’s wing leaves

on the thumb and forefinger.

This is where I turn

back–you go the rest of the way

by eating the light until

there is none and the next one

eats along the glow

of your extinguished hunger and turns

to the living.

-William Mathews:Search Party:2004

© Crystal Liepa

Walking the Iowa farm fields with my husband never fails to lift my spirits. November was a quiet, calm month. I read nightly, made dinners with my husband, built fires, snuck into a hotel pool with my mother for a nice relaxing swim, and ate a lot of buttery warm yams. I will share more photos–first I have to pack up to photograph two sisters’ holiday cards–it should be fun. Last year during our shoot I drove to their house in a snow storm and we embraced the white all around us by putting an ottoman in the snow next to a huge pine tree where we created the best shots. This year we don’t have the snow, but I’m feeling very creative…

I appreciate people who pursue nonsense.

Oct. 31st, 2009 was a night of hot cider with whiskey, a night of moody projections and music, a night of bold costumes and pure silliness. I need more people in my life who take action and have fun, who get over themselves and enjoy being with other people.

Above are a few experimental pictures from my night at the West Bank Social Center . We had so much fun channeling spirits through our orifices.

For those of you who create into the wee hours of the night I solute you.

click here for your plans on Oct. 31st: http://westbanksocialcenter.org/