Sambalina for The Jungle

Life
When the wheels fall off I'm normally going 90.

21 hours from Marseilles to Seattle.  We wake up at 6:30 in the morning after a restless night packing, and laying on mattresses that I think you could compare to a wood floor.  I have too much anxiety to travel with any sort of risk, so we show up to the airport two hours early for a flight that gets delayed an hour.  Amber is already starting to come down with the flu, and I  know I won't be far behind.

I catch everything that goes around.  I almost died from pneumonia when I was 12, and I don't think my immune system ever bounced back.

We fly, we land, , and we wait for another delayed plane in Frankfurt Germany.  There isn't much left of the energy I mustered in the morning, but there is a free scotch tasting at the duty free.  We try them all.  Free samples might be one of my favorite things in this world.  

Finally we board our last plane.  We hang in the air as what feels like a building carries us across the atlantic, then across North America.  We land and I can feel the wheels are falling off, and no amount of free airplane food can save me from whats coming.  Rachel picks us up from the airport, we rush home, and I fall into bed.  Its been three days and I haven't left.  

We paint this picture of travel as magic, and parts of it are, but I still haven't seen a painting of a dreary face listening to the coughs and sneezes in the rows behind him on a airbus knowing what is coming.  

I want to do be doing more right now.  The mountain of editing has never tackled itself, but reluctantly I'm going to finish this blog post, and crawl back into bed.  

Art

I've loved flowers since I was a kid.  Once a year I would get dropped off in a bank parking lot for the boyscout flower sale that fell sometime around Easter or Mother's day.  It was one of many hustles the scouts had to fund activities and keep us busy, and unlike slinging shitty popcorn door to door this one was fun for me.  Surrounded by pots of lilies, hyacinths, and tulips felt a little bit like the natural world the Mormons had slowly been removing from scouts since they took over.

I think I've carried that joy with me.  Bouquets have never done much for me, but wild flowers on the vine, trees, or bush pretty much always fill me with a contentedness difficult to describe.  It makes my photos feel calm...at least for me.

They aren't something I chase, but when I find them fresh bloomed or petals dark and bruised it always feels right with the season, and the shoot.

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