Beginnings

History section
Originally uploaded by sarahkatina

One might wonder why I took a picture of this. It's a shoddy photo, although I think it turned out kinda cool - my hands are far from steady and I haven't gotten the hang of my shiny new camera yet.

Anyway, this is a doll sitting in front of a book entitled "The Powers That Be," one of many books in what one could call the "History Section" of my living room. I've been taking pictures around the house like crazy. Part of this is a self-imposed initiative - even in obviously casual situations, I always feel like a tourist whipping out a camera. Since I will be doing so many New and Exciting Things and exploring so many Nifty and Beautiful Places over the next few months, I am trying to shed myself of this reluctance to photograph so that I will have some memories in hand when it's all over. I learned the hard way that one has to take matters into one's own hands if one wants pictures of things in one's life when my resident photodocumentarian/best friend went abroad for the semester, and I emerged with approximately ten photos to show for six months of lived experience.

So that's what I've been doing these past few days- documenting my surroundings, from cats to doorframes to cakes to piles of yarn strewn all over my bedroom floor. It doesn't hurt that each time I come home, I become increasingly fascinated by the idiosyncracies of 523. It's an amazing house full of amazing things. Books and music in spades, certainly, but also knick-knacks. Walking from room to room in this place is like a series of reminders and history lessons. Frankly, it makes me want to never throw anything away (danger, danger)! I've lived here my whole life and I still find new things all the time. Today I spent a long while staring at the wall of buttons that has accumulated above the full-length cupboard in the backroom. I thought I had seen these buttons a million times, but I swear there are new ones! One that says "Attica Is All Of Us," which drove me to dig out the Prison Commission's Report again and read some more about the riots (which, for those of you who don't know, JW and Martha were involved in prisoner's rights work in the aftermath of). And one of Good Dog Carl which I'm pretty sure I've never seen before. What my parents have infused this space with is incredible, and I'm glad to photograph it, amateur though I am. I could just take pictures of the books for days. Books are really photogenic.

This photo craze, the creation of my Flickr and this blog, the obsessive packing and re-packing of my bag, the frantic search for clothes that are both chic and practical, are only some of the more obvious and material manifestations of my particular pre-departure brand of crazy.

When I was smaller, I spent hours upon hours planning imaginary trips. The number of coverless Lonely Planet guidebooks stacked up in my bedroom is astonishing, considering the farthest flung I've ever actually been, culturally, is Quebec. The penchant for imaginary trips has resulted in some useful things for me - most notably, a thorough grasp of Southeast Asian geography (can you find Vientiane on a map? I sure can.) and a keen eye for budget airfares. But it hasn't really sunken in that I'm going on a REAL trip now, that I have to REALLY prepare for. Or rather, it's making me antsy and giddy and all kinds of excited and doing strange things to my head. Where I would normally hesitate and retreat, I am currently hesitating and then plowing recklessly ahead. "Who cares! No consequences here! I'm leaving the country!" seems to be the name of the game. Fear not, though, reckless for me is tame for 97% of the population. Ironically, given my extensive background in Imaginary Trip Planning, the only things I have a clear idea about thus far are the people I'm seeing and the planes,trains, and buses I'm taking hither thither. I should get on that. Onward!