Less Than 24 Hours.

halmakeup Mayıs 29, 2022

This past August Brittany and I drove east to visit my family.

We left her house and returned to her house in almost less than 24 hours.

I originally planned to order these photos -- almost every image I made and some made by others on my camera. However, when I added them to this blog, they showed up in such a random, spectacular order that I now cannot fathom undoing what chaos done.

I've been about fragmentation meaning more than the whole lately.

In part because it slows down the story, and in part because it slows down life.

Mostly because it's my best truth.

My sister Cindy and I. Shot by Brittany as the sun set in the bathroom at the front of their house.

Brittany and I were both a little obsessed with this staircase shadow so we took way too many photos of it.

My niece Brandi was homecoming queen. She still maintains control over any situation. And she loves to drive.

I always manage to get dirtier than everyone else. Though they try very hard.

Brandi brought facial washes and facial scrubs and facial sprays and facial detergents. We went a little crazy.

My sister-in-law Rene. Her daughter watched me take this from the backseat of the truck.

The highway that leads to Cindy's house.

Cindy successfully organizing the rest of the world. At minimum the whole of Saratoga.

We stopped at a roadside knick-knack store built inside a wooden house. It was next to a Dollar Store. We bought a mirror.

My niece Brandi. And a lot of woodchips. She tried to climb this mountain right after this. Tried!

Blood grandniece and non-blood grandniece. As close as I can get to slow motion with a camera. So far.

Something caught on fire within our first fifteen minutes in Saratoga. My family runs (and is) the fire department for the County.

My sister cooked: fresh peas, mashed potatoes from scratch, fried chicken and greens. Plus she made sweet tea.

My nephew Mikey. Everyone develops a crush on him. He and his wife have the exact same birthday. All of their children are blonde.

Cindy and I were born 15 years apart. We have the same two biological parents.

In the window of a glass store in Liberty, Texas. We were not very popular in this town.

Gary let me ride in the firetruck on the way to the fire. It was far more surreal than this photo begins to suggest.

Much of the foliage in their neighborhood is bejeweled. It's a kind of light that hits a town with an open horizon.

We stayed out of the way. Not because we wanted to.

Bishop owns the roadside knick-knack store. His brother's name is also Bishop. One grandma named him; the other grandma named his brother.

Cindy and I are oddly alike for leading entirely opposite lifestyles.

The fire was not the biggest spectacle. If nothing else, we can make fools out of ourselves! And have fun doing it!

Rene from the front. Neck scars.

Mischievous. Obviously.

White bark, green leaves and sky. A lot of that in Southeast Texas. More common than churches and trailer parks and gas stations, believe it or not.

Brittany made cobbler to bring as a gift to my family. She also brought two spoons for us to 'sample' it on our drive.

Arianna is my favorite grandniece.

Cindy and Gary. They met when I was twelve. They are the happiest couple I know.

Brittany saving the dog from being tortured by four blonde children.

Driving down Bragg road where the 'Saratoga Lights' often expose themselves to highschoolers on the way to prom.

Arianna showed Brittany and I around their new home.

Look at her face! A camera-lover but not a camera-poser. Meaning she, certainly not I.

Brittany and Gary almost at the end of the first night. Cindy often falls asleep in that chair while reading recipes under a home-sewn quilt.

Brittany, Cindy and I took a walk around their town's three-block downtown. We were asked if we were tourists.

Gary's youngest son, Derek. He had the quintessential chubby cheeks as a child.

I never get tired of driving down dirt roads. I spent the first fifteen years of my life living on streets with only dirt roads.

Family fighting on the new carpet.

Brandi thinks I'm crazy when I turn the camera upside down between shutter-clicks.

Brittany getting a Mary Kay makeover. Really. Mary Kay.

Every spot in the woods looks the same, and yet Ive photographed this very spot more than once before.

A Fill-in-the-Blanks sort of memory.

Derek's wife's newest tattoo. She blushed while I took this.

Brittany in the backseat while my niece drove us to Bragg Road.

All kinds of suspicion. Even content suspicion.

I was the first person in my family to get a tattoo. I was eighteen! Now they all have more - many more - than me.

About a year ago my sister and I took a drive to Lumberton, and I suddenly said, "Stop! Look at that gorgeous plant!" She has never let me live it down.

We walked down the street while Brandi followed us with the car.

Some dirt road in some nearby town. My own feet.

I love being in the passenger's seat.

Drinking juice like a badass should, right?

It's a new occurrence, my family's obsession with digital cameras and facebook. They barely have internet!

There's quite a bit of hyper-real when I visit my family. Everything has a black outline around it, like in coloring books.

Self-portrait early in the morning. I think.

A small piece of a negative. I hope to make a large and omnipresent book of her one day.

Cindy and Gary's backyard. Shot from the laundry room. Handmade curtains.

Taken late at night in the bathroom at the back of the house. The closet behind me was given to my brother when he was a child. Now it is my sister's.