Jamie Klinger

Congrats to all of us crazy canucks! Helluva game! And good on you, USA! You really gave us a run for our money!

I want to chase you.
And catch you.

I’ve been me for nearly 24 years. And in my ripe old age, I’ve come to accept that I am just a splice of a moment of my entire existence. I am everything I have ever been compacted into a line that is at 2:45PM on a Friday afternoon. Sunny and beautiful outside, I am seeing a world…while it may appear that everybody else sees the same world, or looks up towards the sky and sees the same cloud if I point out where it is…Nobody else will see it from my eyes and nobody else will see it from my exact angle at the exact point in time that I am seeing it from. Even if someone else can step into the same step I was standing, they’re seeing it at a different point in time, even if by a second, and it’s not the same thing.

That. That is precisely why I value photography. It is a staple of existence that we can share our viewpoint of the world exactly as we intentioned it with another human being in a way that nobody can ever reproduce exactly. That’s actually why I not-so-secretly hate my Montreal photograph which most of you (who have already seen) seem to adore. It is easily reproducible if I ever want to retake it and it is nice and pretty, but it’s just a landscape and it’s simple and doesn’t make my heart pitter-patter. I want to capture an image that you can’t see ever again…Maybe because you didn’t know it was there, or because it only existed once in a lifetime, or because you never looked up or down, but one that’s there…Fragmented from the rest of existence, for one point in time. Ever.

Here is my capture. A gloomy San Diego day peering over a cliff, holding onto the engraving of a bench marked ‘Enjoy’. The peaceful serenity of an uncertain, overcast sky. A valley of houses, and trees, fertile life and possibility.

The rest of this set is available in smaller resolution here.

I am currently sitting in on a 100 level gen ed social philosophy course. Last week, we discussed stem cell research—this week—the world. Ok, probably not.

Regardless, maybe we can learn something. If not, there’s always I Am A Strange Loop, which broke down consciousness to thinking, but spoke against a further reductionist view because it is infinitely recursive and ultimately gives you no answers as compared to giving you a similar answer to that of Descartes in saying ‘I think therefore I am’.

I have a fair bit of catching up to do with you (blog). I owe you arboretum photos and a slew of San Diego zoo photos.

Judge Judy made a claim that said that raising a child today is likely more difficult than when she was a child because of the Internet. She gave the example of watching pornography for seven hours of the day, and while I agree with her first idea, the second is a tad misguided; so let us focus on the first.

Patrick brought to light the idea that today’s youth are satisfied with continuous instant gratification, and therefore, moments where nothing is happening are boring, and we’re uncertain what to do…And I couldn’t agree more. Social conventions are too often filled with complicated thoughts of, “ok, now what do we do?” and has such difficulty letting things be. I wish I could stop over-thinking and just start accepting the way things are. And unfortunately, because of the desires of instant gratification, finding a fulfilling job is even more difficult if not impossible. We’d need to find something that we can do non-stop for forty hour weeks without wanting to rip our own heads off. And I get that. Doing little bits of nothing is incredibly fulfilling…until you’re finished and realize how much you’ve accomplished. Sure, I’ve watched a dozen funny videos, read about three breakthroughs in the fields of geology, cognitive science and physics, seen a heartwarming duck leading her ducklings and read a public interest story or a story about a callous murder or the story of a man who fixes roller coasters for a living…but WHAT IS THAT?! I have more inane information that satisfies my mind for the meantime, but I’ve added nothing to the world…Unless you count this, my inbound filter reads and reads and my outbound filter writes and writes and gives you all my inner workings and thoughts and philosophies. This is my multimedia philosophy book; my filter; my viewpoint obfuscated through yet another filter and presented to you through your filter; your perception and understanding. Enjoy.

After an incredibly pleasant flight (I still have to call SouthWest and let them know that the staff on that flight deserve accolades for going above and beyond the call of duty), Meg picked me up and showed me the ocean. Who knew! There’s more than one ocean!

I now understand the appeal of In-and-Out burger. It is quite delicious, and its naturalness is clearly the appeal. It tastes like a delicious homemade burger whereas fatburger is delicious grease-city. It all depends what you’re in the mood for, but I see the quality in both.

After crashing out for a few hours of napping (wow was I beat!), her friend Fred introduced me to some fantastic music, Telefon Tel Aviv, the new Groove Armada’s darker tunes, some other great shit that I can’t think of right now too…But after that, we went to a pirate punk show, checking out Satan’s Dance Party. They put on a pretty great show busting out a stand-up bass, a washboard and a saw with a bow. I love the saw. Afterward, I found out that I probably have relatives here. I met Goata whose grandparents have the last name of Klinger. And there’s totally some resemblance…which made me really happy. We’ll have to do some backtracking and figure out where our lines cross, because it certainly is somewhere.

Today, the plan was to go to the zoo. We were going to pick up some tickets we found off craigslist and make our way there as it sadly closes at 5! This plan happened to fall through and we made our way to arboretum instead, so I’ll have loads of photos from that coming up in the next post. Zoo is rescheduled for Sunday.

So here are a few more shots from the Hoover Dam. And let me add that Alyssa, Debbie and Daniel were amazing company and do things the way I want things to be done in this world. On the hike back towards the car, we picked up garbage that we found as an attempt to re-beautify the incredibly natural surroundings. We really do have to create the world we want to live in otherwise we genuinely will be living in someone else’s. If we don’t litter, but someone else chooses to, we are forced to live in their mess.