My pictureless photo essay

I certainly never claimed to be a photographer, but I at least thought I had the pointing and shooting down. Well, looks like I'd have saved some time, trouble, and money if I'd have just chucked my two Rite Aid brand disposable cameras out the window somewhere along Highway 40. I took picture after picture of flat blurs framed by my car door.

Here's a quick tour with words of what I wanted to show in pictures to avoid conveying what I saw over 2100 miles of road in words.

Virginia: Virginia never never ends when you're going southwest. It has this big green tentacle reaching towards Tennessee. Not that you could tell either apart. Mountains or hills, covered in trees. Trees trees trees. I believe it's somewhere in this deciduous mess that there is a sign, which I scrambled to photograph, in vain, for "Troutville," right next to the exit for "Fincastle!" A little fishy fiefdom up in the hills.

Right around Memphis I stopped for the night, and had my greatest inspiration: I would write where I was on the hotel room's mirror and take a funny picture of myself. Well, I must have really done it up in Memphis because those photos are just plain missing from the pack. The ones from Amarillo are hazy and abstracted, and not worth a goddamn.

I took blurry pictures in Arkansas, in Oklahoma, in the Texas Panhandle, and couldn't snap them off fast enough between Albuquerque and Las Cruces. There were just beautiful rocks, piled up, fallen down, vast stretches and sudden peaks. Ghosts everywhere.

If you really want to see the pictures from my trip just shake your head all around and say "Oklahoma," or "mountains," or "desert." I'm here now, come visit and see all the pretty blurs for yourself.