Will Smith says....

I got this video from the great TRUE ACTIVIST, here.

I am a brand new Will Smith fan. :)

Reminder to self... :)

Your thoughts...

Explore, dream, discover

Copyrights: Tina Puksic

★ I'm Still Here

★ A working day in the life of Tina P. ★

It begins at 6 or 6.30 (or 7, if I only brush my teeth, hide those pimples and run da hell out of my apartment). Usually, it begins with a shower, where I also drink my first cup of coffee, a very very urgent cup of coffee with lots of coffee grains and very little water. I then, all freshly showered, wearing freshly washed clothes ( but all wrinkly, because I do not have an iron ) start my 30 minute walk to work. It's always freezing cold at the beginning. By the time I reach the bridge crossing the river, sweat is running down my spine and by the time I reach the office, I am soaked in sweat and the clothes lose all the wrinkles because the sogginess straightened them out.

The next thing I do at the office is - I make another cup of coffee, (I should really drink one in the shower) again, an URGENT cup of mainly coffee and little water. Then I start working - with numerous pee-breaks.

8 hours are gone in a second and I feel like I spent them in the toilet, and again, I embark on my 30 minute walk home. It seems like DAAAAAAAAYS OF WALKING before I reach my appartment, which is in the 5th floor. I reach the apartment after climbing a GAZILLION STAIRS and the first thing I do is - I try to catch my breath, which usually means I need to run to the window, open it and fill my lungs with air that is not infested with cat shit and piss. (bless the cat's heart for having to use that shitty toilet).

Then, I am confused for about half an hour, not knowing what to do with the time that is left before I go to sleep. It is not enough to finish a project I so carefully planned at the beginning of my walk home and suddenly lost all interest in. It is not enough to run outside before it gets dark and play with my camera, which so patiently waits in the bag, begging to be used again (and often). It is not enough time to have four beers with friends. It is not enough to ..... So, I waste the day cleaning the apartment, lay down in my bed and fall asleep like a dead old man.

The next morning, and every morning, the first thought that appears is wanting to shoot the goddamn alarm clock with a MASSIVE RIFLE for disturbing me at an unimaginable hour that feels like THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT. But then, I manage to lift my body and I try to picture a meadow filled with daisies in the sunshine....Sometimes it works, sometimes I want to shoot them daisies too. :)

But, oh, life...and death and taxes. And bills....and life....and spring....and rain....and life....and and and.
A day is too short and there's so much to do. All those plans made while walking....and not enough time and/or energy to give them life and purpose. ... Perhaps I should wait to get in that perfect "working-shape" first and then I will be able to MOVE MOUNTAINS after work. Does that ever happen? I mean, do we get in shape after a while of regular 8 or more- hour work? Well, if it doesn't I might as well shoot that goddamn alarm clock and never get up at all.....

But I think I will go with a "yes" and continue picturing them daisies in the sun. :) Projects will be given life when the time is right...

Until then - chop chop, work, work and smile, smile. ;))))

★ I recommend socializing :)

So much shit has gone down in the past few days, maybe months, that I'm beginning to wonder I'm doing something wrong. But I've come to realize that the "filter" I've created for protection sort of crashed, vanished, so I need to create a new one. My head is alright - getting there, loving the positive vibes, so all i need to do is not let other people's troubles hit it and set it in the wrong direction. I've got some MAJOR FILTERING TO DO. :)

Recession has certainly drained spirituality out of people. It's really showing in the everyday life. The air is packed with stress and tension. Most of the time everyone minds their own business, trying to survive. The "attack" element is always present in conversations. One must think carefully before an even vaguely personal utterance, or else fire breaks out.

I recommend socializing. As much as possible. Talking, playing, laughing, being creative. That does it for me, anyway. :) well, and maybe a sip of good whiskey a day (it's good for veins and blood circulation)

Photography has been my main occupation in the past two weeks. Mostly the "ABOUT photography" part. I've gathered so much information that a photo shoot is inevitably necessary:) ambitions need to be realized. and soon.

We are f *****

I found this poem I totally "agree" with. It was posted here. Written either by
Ohad Ben Shimon or Sander Uitdehaag.

We are fucked.
We are a generation of fucked up people.
We, the young
the misfits
the retarded
can’t get it through.
Can’t live the life we are supposed to.

We try.
We cling together.
We look up and down.
Here and there.
Take this road and that road.
But we never really get there.
We never make the point.
We never score.

And it’s not that we don’t want to.
We do.
We have an image of how it is supposed to be.
But it’s not over there. It’s not in front of us. It’s not in front of you.
It’s in the back of our minds.
On our internal desktops.
In our little diaries.
In between the celluloid of our negatives.

We sketch the life we dream of until our dreams become sketches of our lives.

We go.
We no go.

We have no financial crisis simply because we have no finance.

Are we abnormal?
Are we really that different?
What is difference?

Is there such a thing as being normal?

So why ask of me what even you can’t portray?

I will tell you this:

You can go and fuck yourself.

If you can’t help me you can’t help you.

The guilded age

What if my subconsciousness is in a dark age? It shows in my photography.

Perhaps not. To think about it, it really seems to be more of a light experimentation than anything else.

I've come to accepting the digital world and even appreciating it. I view the grand Photoshop as one of my favorite places (THE favorite place, of course, is BEHIND THE CAMERA). The more I play with it, the more it has to offer. Not only does it give me the opportunity to improve my images most of the time (which is due to not knowing how to use my new camera properly), it also gives me good lessons on what a good image should be. Hell, I've always loved spending time in the darkroom. LOVE IT!

Other than that, I still collect old cameras - my "collection closet" is almost full of different formats and camera gear from several different decades of the 19th and 20th centuries. The look upon the gear sometimes gives me the creeps, because film is so hard to get these days. Don't even let me start on how difficult it is to get POLAROIDS. As I hear, Polaroid has stopped producing polaroids. Then a guy I bought an old Polaroid from in Graz told me that a bunch of guys in Amsterdam bought the whole factory and are planning on producing them in 2010. Hope it happens!

I'm also GRADUALLY buying gear for my Nikon D80. I've been trying to get an AF lens for it, but am not sure it will work. I believe that the D80 has the AF motor in the body, but I'm still not sure whether it would work. Some say it would, others say it wouldn't. Hopefully, there is a store where they let you try the lenses out before you buy them.
My digital Nikon needs to work a lot like the analogue SLR. That is a must. So I need a low-light lens!

Well, that's all for now. I need to go find that new lens now. :)

CHANGE

Life is mysterious, unpredictable, and yet, all the life's paths, or some at least, come together at a certain point. Always.

Professor Frank Newman gave me a great tip - to read MJ Ryan's book "This Year I Will...", which offers just the kind of insights into my problems that I need. Two blogs ago, I wrote about how I need change and I can't carry it out because of certain obstacles I also mentioned. I even said the obstacles are not lame excuses not to get down to it. But then I came across this thought in Ryan's book:
One of the tricks about change is that we have to figure out how to do it in the midst of everything else.

Easier said than done, right? NO! Now, THAT's an excuse right there! Here one has to focus on the "figuring it out - part" and work on that (not for ages though. :-) However, just like discovering who you really are, figuring out how to make a change is a process. How to go about that? Making a list of possibilities would seem like a good idea and then seeing how probable things are and then just go for it!

Another thing happened last weekend. After all week of feeling unstimulated and unmotivated, I met a friend from Paris, whom I haven't seen in ages. I was drinking coffee in Maribor, suddenly I had to pee. Someone was in the toilet, and I waited for ages for this, probably, woman to finish peeing. She peed and peed for so long I started giggling. In the end there was a sigh of relief and then the door opened and she came out. We glanced at each other as all women do when they pass on the peeing facilities to another. Then she was about to turn to wash her hands...our eyes stuck out - hey! we know each other. It took a second to place the familiar face into that "drawer" in the brain, which is labeled with "knowing people". haha. To meet a friend in the toilet....Of course the plans I had in Maribor changed, we went to a bar and had a few beers, a few laughs and talked and talked - mostly about life and finding yourself. Of course, I knew who I was before the conversation with her, but this was the first time someone asked how I'm getting along with myself. And for the first time, I knew what to answer. What a good feeling. To be able to answer that you are pretty much sure about who you are and what you want out of life. (I need to say that for me, that is a life-lasting process) If you don't grab life, life will grab you. We all know that, but we should say or hear it every day, all the time.

So, I've had a good week's start. Feeling all stimulated and enthusiastic about the numerous possibilities.

WISH YOU ALL A GREAT WEEK!