"Don’t ask a writer what he’s working on. It’s like asking someone with cancer on the progress of his disease." Luke Angel

And neither should you ask how she is doing. 

Especially when there's a deadline fast approaching.

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via Misswallflower

Library Books, I Heart You!

I haven't gotten around writing about it yet, but last week my long anticipated stack of Sylvia Plath books finally arrived. Yay!

Conclusion: it takes ages at least a month (which practically feels like ages) for books to be delivered from the US, should they be sent by ordinary postal service. 

Anyway, I was glad to finally have my hands on them, and take a closer look before reading the volumes. Two of them are ex-library books, with pretty stamps and typewritten info on the spine and in the back.

Ariel Ascending is from Houston Public Library...

. .. while Janet Malcolm's The Silent Woman is from Dubuque Public Library. (No photos, sorry.)

I love second hand books, if I had to choose I'd rather buy a second-hand than a new one. (Like I do most of the time.) I like the fact that old(er) books have a history, they have been owned, held, and read before. I always wonder why they were given away and who could have owned them before me. Well, if it's an ex-library book with stamps and signs in it, then it is fairly easy to find out where my newly acquired volumes had lived before. As always, my good old know-it-all friend Google, helped me out again. 

This is Dubuque Carnegie-Stout Public Library:

photo via flickr

Now that's what I call a decent library! It would be great to see how it looks on the inside...

...and this is how the building of the Morris Frank Branch of Houston Public Library looks like:

photo via

That was the only photo I could find. Probably because it is not as decent and historical as the Dubuque Public Library?

The building may not be, but their stamp is really cool. Isn't it?

"Damn you: procrastinator!"

via the trapdoor under my chair

At the moment, no other words could describe me more than these five.

(Quote in title is by Sylvia Plath.)

Word of the Day

anxiety

anx·i·e·ty
noun /aNGˈzī-itē/

a. A feeling of worry, nervousness, or unease, typically about an imminent event or something with an uncertain outcome

b. Desire to do something, typically accompanied by unease

c. A nervous disorder characterized by a state of excessive uneasiness and apprehension, typically with compulsive behavior or panic attacks

At the moment (and all day long) I have the symptoms of the first definition. Let us hope I will not transfer to definition C any time soon...

I also have a pretty chart to accompany the word feeling of the day:

chart via I Love Charts

I must be performing very well right now. Let's hope (?) that the feeling won't go away until I am done with my beloved behated thesis.

Do you know...

...what this is?

(Hint: nope, it is NOT a superlong fly-catcher.)

Actually, this is a roll of 120 mm film. 

The one that I bought a few days ago, and screwed up. I decided not to throw out  this first roll of mine though. The proof of my learning process shall remain right in front of my eyes from now on. It looks really good on the wall, doesn't it?

So I had some trouble loading my Fotobox camera - after all I am the poster child of the digital age, and Fotobox is pretty much the most manual camera you can ever have. It took me some time to figure out how rollfilm works, and how I should (have) load(ed) it in Fotobox, and in the end it got some light (did it? I am still not entirely sure...) because most of the roll of film unrolled at some point of the loading process... So I decided to take this roll out, and not to shoot on it, because I will probably not be able to have it developed. I highly doubt anything would show on the film upon developing. 

So there goes one excellent roll of 120mm film down the drain... but that's how I am, I prefer learning in practice and not from text books. By the way, the exact same thing happened to me about 11-12 years ago when I got my first analogue camera: after loading the roll of 35mm film and taking a number of photos with it, I kept opening the door of the filmcarrier (I have no idea how that door and that compartment of the camera is officially called, I'm afraid I have got no training in photography at all...), just to make sure that the film was loaded properly and everything was all right inside. Naturally, the film caught some a lot of light, and most of the photos were either rubbish or could not have been developed at all. But, by the second roll, I knew how to load a camera, and how the whole process of taking photos worked. The case is the same this time: I will have to buy another roll of 120mm film, but next time I will be super careful, will be sure how to load the Fotobox, and will not make such a mistake again. 

Well, hopefully, I won't, 'cause Fotobox still feels like a toy camera, and not a real one. It hardly makes any noise when I push the exposure button. Is it how it should work? Shouldn't it make more noise? Does it able to take a photo by making only that tiny little clicking sound? Plus, it's so weird that I have to forward the film manually by turning a handle on the side...this is so weird. Hence the numbers on the back of the roll: a little red window on the back of the camera shows how much I have to forward the film and what shot I am on. Sooo much has changed since 1960!

Anyway, 120mm roll film is not that rare, as not only such vintage cameras use it, but some of these new, lomography toy cameras too, such as Holga and Diana. Plus, I think I found the best traditional photoshop in town: it's Soós Kereskedés in Wesselényi utca, 5 minutes walk from Astoria metro station, right across  the back exit of Zsinagóga. They don't only offer 35mm films but a wide range of roll films too at a reasonable price. Not to mention that they can also develop and scan the photos for me.

Even if you don't plan to buy anything, it's worth to walk by and take a look at the shop window at least. It's filled with beautiful vintage cameras, all for sale. But don't stop there, in front of the shop, once you're there, don't be afraid to go in. They not only sell all sorts of analogue films, but they have a wide range of vintage cameras, photo accessories, typewriters, books, old photographs, postcards, all sorts of nick nacks and bits and pieces. It somewhat reminds me of an antique store (well, actually, it is one, partly) and a history museum of photography. Well, it is the combination of both. I guess I'm gonna become a faithful visitor/costumer of theirs in no time.

My New Companions

Last week I gathered two new companions that, I am sure, will become faithful and pretty close friends of mine in no time. One of them is a vintage camera: 

Isn't it the cutest camera ever? This is how it looks from sideways (*caugh*caugh*, it's a lousy photo):

One of the interesting things about this so-called MOM-Fotobox is that it was made in Hungary. Yep, believe it or not, cameras had been made in Hungary until the 1960s by Magyar Optikai Művek (MOM - this is where this advertisment comes from. Did you know it?). This particular box-camera kind was produced from 1959-1962, 20 132 Fotoboxes were made. It it thought to be of high-quality and long-lasting. One other interesting thing that it works with 120 roll film, which is different from the widely-known and mostly used, "usual" 35 mm film. If you are interested in Fotobox, you can read a detailed review here.

You can also find some more photos here.

...and my other new companion is:

It's the long-awaited Gilmore Girls companion! It finally, finally, finally arrived. It should have been delivered by March 22, and it only came 2 weeks later... I was getting seriously worried and afraid that it had been stolen and I would never get it, but in the end, it did arrived. To be honest, I haven't had much time to read it yet, I only flipped through it, it's 480 pages of background stories, interviews, photos, lots and lots of wonderful stuff... I only wish it was colored inside, and not only B&W, as all those photos would be more enjoyable. Nevertheless, I can still hardly wait to have some free time on my hands, and indulge myself in the wonderful lives of Stars Hollow residents.

What are you grateful for?

This morning (and all day long) I am was meant to work on my thesis... but I am exhausted and useless, and once again (as always) I got stuck in front of the internetz... and in the end I decided to start something new which is kind of simililar to Project 365. Meet Me At Mikes is a blog that I have been following, and where yesterday there was a post about a girl named Hailey who is making a film about gratitude. There was also a video included:

365grateful.com from hailey bartholomew on Vimeo.

I was so moved by the video and inspired by those beautiful polaroid photos, that I decided to join in and do my own 365 Grateful project. I would love to take one polaroid shot every day for an entire year, but films for the otherwise quite cheap and easy to find Polaroid cameras are rather expensive. A pack of film (which allows me to take 10 photos) costs 10 Euros (and I have to order and have them delivered from Holland), so the entire project would cost me €365. That's a whole lot of money that I could spend on so many other things, for example on a DSLR camera... So no Polaroids for me, unfortunately, but instead I am sticking with my good old digital camera, for the next few months, anyway. 

As I have mentioned, the Grateful project is quite similar to Project 365, however, this time the emphasis is not on photography, but, obviously, on gratitute. Each day I will write a short post about what or who I am grateful for on that particular day, and a photo will accompany the words. However, the picture will only be a visual aid, documenting/illustrating the grateful thing, hence it will have less of an artistic and more of a documentary purpose. There will probably be days with crappy photos with absolutely no artistic/aesthetic value, but that's normal, since this time the point is to find the beauty in the tiniest details, to find the source of joy in places you never thought they would be. 

I think I am a grateful person, I love life, I am totally aware  of how lucky I am to be where I am now, being surrounded with so many lovely, inspiring people. Yet, I fill that this new project can bring me new things (if I am patient enough to hold on and hold out for an entire year), and by next April I will have found out a lot about me and the way I perceive life... well, we will see.

Anyway, I have already created a blog for the project, you can find it here: http://365thingsiamgratefulfor.blogspot.com/

This is my 5th (:O) blog, actually. I take up way too much space in the blogosphere, but just as I have several separate notebooks for different kind of notes I take, I like to keep my different online thoughts, musings, photos, and projects separated.

If you are interested in the original 365 Grateful project, please visit 365grateful.com where there's a lot of useful info about how the idea had came about and how it has developed into a world-wide project. On this flickr page you can view each and every one of the photos Hailey took during her year of Gratitude. 

There is also a thing called Gratitude journal, you can read about it here.

How many do YOU do?

via

I do, more or less, 20 out of 29. 

However, apparently, in order to stay creative, I should:

• Get away from the computer (yep, that's sooo right)
• Sing in the shower (never done that, I'm afraid)
• Be open (tell me about it...)
• Surround myself with creative people (I kind of do)
• Get feedback (I kind of do every once in a while)
• Collaborate (there goes my lone wolf theory)
• Get lots of rest (in the summer, maybe?)
• Take risks (I certainly should)
• Read a page of the dictionary (sounds rather boring, but probably useful, right?)

I should try to work on them. 

'nuff said

via

"I can resist everything except temptation"

I sooo sooo should not be here blogging, but I just cannot resist. I have only four weeks left to finish my thesis, and I am freaking out. I think I am positive I have done quite a lot of work so far, I have read enough reference books, I have taken several pages of notes, I have all these thoughts zigzagging in my head. I do know what I want to write about, I even know how I will organize the essay. I also have the abstract. But the actual, real writing during which I am sweating blood as I give birth to every single sentence is yet to start. Although I know it's high time I started it already (hence my freaking out), still, there's a part of me that would keep putting it off... but there's also another part of me that just wants to get it over with, be done with the bloody thing, get rid of the pressure and the never stopping anxiety. I want go out every other night, go to the cinema, see the exhibitions, wander around in the city, and take photos for hours without having bad conscience and feeling guilty. So I guess I should just sit down, write the damn thing and get it over with...

There is beautiful spring outside, and I feel like I am wasting every single second I spend chained to my desk or captured in the stuffy air of the library... I find it so hard to resist to go out in the evening and enjoy the ever so marvelous Budapest night. Somebody please take away my camera equipment for these four weeks of April, so I don't even have to fight the temptation of going out... 

This week I have been a naughty girl, for I hardly spent any time researching/writing the thesis. I worked quite a lot though, I gave 13 lessons which is more than I usually do, I also had a big mid-term test on Friday that required a lot of preparation. Not to mention that on Monday and Tuesday I wasn't able to fight temptation and went out in the evening. 

On Monday I had a couple of friends with me who were more than happy (?) to assist me and carry my tripod. 

We started off on Batthyány, as I wanted to take a good still shot of Parlament. Well, to our great suprise, it was sort of unlit, or at least it wasn't as lit up as it is usually. (Did they forget to turn the lights back on after Earth Hour?) Nevertheless, I did take a few photos of the building, but it's kind of lousy, don't you think?

Then we walked along the river bank, first down on the embankment then up on the sidewalk. I am  more amazed by the incredible architecture of Budapest by each day. We couldn't get enough of the sight of Lánchíd, I still think that it's just simply marvelous.  This is probably why I set up the tripod on every 5 meters and took a bunch of photos as we were nearing the bridge... 

Although I enjoyed having company, I realized again that photography is a solitary activity, for I am able to take really good pictures only when I am alone. Just me and my camera, no distraction, no one to keep pace with, that's what I need. So on Tuesday I went alone, that time to Margitsziget. I was hoping to see and catch a nice colorful sunset which would have made a rather cheesy and ever so beautiful/unoriginal "foot of the bridge  in the front, sunset and the city in the background of the photo" composition. However, I guess it wasn't windy enough, for the sunset was hardly colorful... Still, I managed to take a few nice shots as the sun was setting, then all the lights got turned on, and all of a sudden it was dark all around. 

There is something unique about sitting on a bench right next to a river bank at the foot of a bridge with the bright lights of a metropolis in the background. It is like hitting the pause button for a few minutes while the rest of the world rushes on. Whenever I see and take a photo of such a sight, the poster of Woody Allen's Manhattan comes to my mind. 

Oh, how I wish to take my very own photo of the Manhattan bridge!

(I know I will, just give me time, just give me time.)

(The quote in the title is by Sir Oscar Wilde, and source of Manhattan movies poster is this site.)