“Seriously?” I cried. “That guy is getting danced all over by that gorgeous near-naked woman, and he looks like he’s in some angry coma? What’s his deal? That doesn’t even seem polite. There are boobs in your face! Smile about it!”

“I think it’s a power thing for the guys,” Macon said.

“Yeah, this isn’t like burlesque, Adrianne.”

“Well I’m going to look interested,” I declared. “Because I am. Those people are naked, and they are doing crazy things with their butts.”

Walking around someone: “sorry.” The sound of your cough: “sorry.” It becomes a part of you, it’s immutable, until the night in the Hannaford’s parking lot when you’re pressing the lock button to a friend’s borrowed car to hear a gentle “beep” and flash of the lights. “Sorry,” you mumble into the darkness. Then, “wait — what?”

1.) We drove three hours through a blizzard to attend a community dinner in Central Maine. This is what you do when you study documentary-making. “So this is kind of awkward, guys,” I said as we buckled seatbelts. “But I’m going to need to grab a pregnancy test on the way up. Cool?”

This is one of my new favorite ice breakers, because it sounds so much more alarming than it really is. I can’t even count how many pregnancy tests I’ve had to take over the past few months, just because my period is going through some dumb unpredictable phase. High five!

2.) I ate a pile of plain noodles. This was more difficult than you’d think, just because of how sticky noodles are in their unadulterated state. What, community dinners at the rural Masonry don’t have vegetarian options?

“We didn’t sleep together in those days, we got married!” the elderly woman next to me cackled. “That’s why I made so many mistakes! Ooo, here comes one of my ex-husbands, I’ll introduce you. You’ll regret this.”

“I dragged that boat all across town to get it fixed,” ex-husband grumbled. “One little diaphragm, it needed. Four hundred dollars. Can you beat that.”

“Get a slice of that cake before it disappears,” she whispered to me, nodding toward the buffet. “I know all the good desserts in this town. The coffeehouse after this, you’ll want the pie.”

3.) I crouched at the bottom of a stage, and took pictures. Sometimes I propped the camera on the stage itself, to steady it, because my hands are constantly shaking (“Drink a lot of coffee?” my professor asked a few days ago, zooming in on a photo. “Ah, no,” I explained, “I’m just . . . usually terrified”). Meanwhile, Madeleine crept into the balcony and shot from there. This actually was not related to our project, but the guy was really good, and we thought we’d experiment with the whole “if you have a nice camera you can do anything” theory. Success. Also, cute musician. Cute musician!

4.) I finally learned how to play darts. It was in the middle of the night, and we were lurking in a bar while the snow poured and poured outside. A 67-year-old man approached us at the pool table, and proceeded to tell us everything we had come to find for our story. So we challenged him to a game of darts. “You’re standing all wrong,” he told me. “Hmm?” I said.

“Like this.”

Fwop. My dart landed in the second inner circle. Fwop fwop. “Oh my God!” I said. “Do you know how many people have tried to teach me that? I thought I just sucked.”

He shrugged. “You were standing all wrong.”

5.) I rediscovered “Separate Ways” by Journey. Jukebox, two pitchers of cheap beer. Secret to happiness.

“Want to play pool?” J asked.

“I would like nothing more,” I said, “than to take pictures while everyone else plays pool.” O camera, perfect, endlessly appropriate excuse; I am wretched at pool.

If he / ever hurts you / true love / won’t desert you! AHHHHHHHGGGHH!

6.) More lessons from old men in bars: PMA, that’s all you need. Positive mental attitude. You wake up in the morning, you look in the mirror. If you don’t think you’re great that day, you don’t leave the house. PMA.

7.) Five people, two double beds, the smell of stale cigarettes. We were going to arrive after the front desk closed, so they left the key in the door. “Christ. There’s going to be like twelve murderers in there, waiting for us,” I said.

“Nah,” said everyone.

It was still snowing. We squished together under the covers, all of us still in jeans, sweaters, clunky belts, and played Two Truths One Lie until we fell asleep: the five of us with our slowly uncovered histories, of arrests, pet trouts, proposals, but not webbed feet (lie).

“How about we go to the cemetery tomorrow,” Janaka replied. “Bam. Time, place. You’ll be all ‘That’s right. One picture. What. Next assignment.’”

thickness means / worlds inhabited by roamingly / stern bright faeries (Larger)

Here’s a neat thing about e.e. cummings grave: it has books hidden inside it, carefully sealed in plastic bags. More whimsical death photos below the break.

Your funeral. (Larger)

Grief over Page (Larger)

“You want to try it? Check it out.”

Thick Maine accents from questionably comedic duo “Burt and I” wandered out of the speakers and we reveled in them. “And the next morning . . . his trousers were so full of fish . . . a button popped off, and killed a partridge.” Long pause. “Wait,” J asked hesitantly, “so was that . . . the punch line?” Throughout the night we’d repeat this, over and over, attempting to master its timbre, the deliberate tempo. “And the next morning . . . his trousers were so full of fish . . . a button popped off, and killed a partridge.” “And the next morning . . . his trousers were so full of fish . . . a button popped off, and killed a partridge.” Madeleine’s 50mm made the rounds around the room, from radio producer to writer to photographer to radio producer (there are so many of them), so that underpinning everything, even the occasional soft metallic click of a popped beer tab, was the shutter, always the shutter, click click click click click.

“These will be the best documented four months of our lives,” I said. “We’ll never forget, even if we want to.”

At the end of the night, we all bundled into our coats and hugged goodbye: the first physical contact I’d had with anyone in weeks. I struggled to contain merry chirps. “Hugs!” I said, still somewhat intoxicated. “Hugs!”

“Strip club tomorrow? Yeah? Who’s in?”

Nothing sketchy. This is schoolwork. We raised our hands.

I am officially of the age that causes 19-year-olds to say “oh my God.”

I put my head in my hands, and she added  – “but you don’t look it!”

The defining mark of literary journalism is the personality of the writer, the individual and intimate voice of a whole, candid person not representing, defending, or speaking on behalf of any institution, not a newspaper, corporation, government, ideology, field of study, chamber of commerce, or travel destination. It is the voice of someone naked, without bureaucratic shelter, speaking simply in his or her own right, someone who has illuminated experience with private reflection, but who has not transcended crankiness, wryness, doubtfulness, and who doesn’t blank out emotional realities of sadness, glee, excitement, fury, love. The genre’s power is the strength of this voice.

– Mark Kramer, “Breakable Rules for Literary Journalists“

The train ride from Boston to Portland, I realized the only previously-owned-by-a-loved-one article of clothing I had was my ex-boyfriend’s belt. And I didn’t wear it, because — completely unsymbolically — it didn’t happen to go with the rest of my outfit that day. I sat and looked out the window, and when the meaningful music became too much, I put on La Bouche’s “Another Night Another Dream” and closed my eyes.

Erik licks my boot (Larger)

I love you (Larger)

Full album: (somewhat unsafe-for-work, especially if you’ve got your Flickr preferences set correctly) here.