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Sigh. How does one manage to write coherently about death? I want to write about our hedgehog, Yozhik, who died over two months ago. I want to commemorate him – and Oksana’s and my relationship with him – with eloquent language, but even two months after his death, painful emotions accompany the search for words.

Sometimes I think I would willingly abandon my memories of Yozhik, if given the choice. Oksana, without saying as much, would do the same. “I don’t ever want another pet,” she told me. “It’ll just remind me of hedgie, and that hurts too much.”

Wouldn’t it be easier to think about sometime else; to turn the mind away whenever thoughts of Yozhik materialized? Not that he’d care, but I don’t think that’s fair to the pet we loved and cared for for four years. (You see what I mean? “…for for four…?!” These are the words my brain supplies me with when I try to describe my feelings!)

Death affects us in such profound and personal ways that it’s hard to imagine that anyone else could ever have felt similar sorrow, anguish, and confusion. But that’s stupid. Practically everyone who has ever lived on this planet has lost someone close to them; it would be callous to think that they wouldn’t have experienced the same emotions. In that respect, what seems profound and personal is actually common and shared.

So even if you didn’t know Yozhik personally, perhaps the memorial video I put together will resonate with you as strongly as it did with Oksana and me.

My luck in photographing lightning seems to be improving.

While in Moscow, Oksana and I hooked up with Vika, an old friend of hers who used to be a fellow Russian exchange/international student in Juneau. She and her boyfriend, Vanya, took us out to a restaurant on the 22nd floor of a university building. As the sun set, all of Moscow was laid out before us.

Just before dinner arrived, at Vanya’s insistence, I attempted to capture a lightning strike from a fast-approaching thunderstorm. Only three shots into my attempt, Oksana called me back to the table; dinner had been served. “Last one,” I called, just before a bolt shot down.

During dinner, the storm built in intensity. As soon as I finished my meal, I excused myself for another attempt. The very next photo, the one pictured above with two almost-simultaneous strikes, was the result. Seconds later, the wind and rain chased us inside.

By the time we settled the check and made it downstairs, a good-sized pond had formed in the building’s courtyard and doorway. Vanya and Andrey bravely sacrificed their aridity (but not their shoes) in a mad dash out to the car for the umbrellas stashed within.

Canon Digital Rebel XT
Date: 15 July 2006
Focal Length: 18mm
Shutter: 25 seconds
Aperture: F/20
Photoshop: Minor color correction, minor cropping
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Some of you may have been watching the news and heard about a fatal plane crash in Russia. Rest assured, Oksana and I are fine. We arrived in Moscow three days ago and have been seeing the sights. We’ll be leaving to St. Petersberg on Sunday night and we’ll return home on the 25th of July.

More then.

To me, this photograph represents patience. As a thunderstorm brewed around us on the beach in Nags Head, NC, I sat on the porch and snapped photo after photo, trying to capture a bolt of lightning. I took seventy photos in all, each one exposed for 30-seconds. This was lucky number 57.

I didn’t have a tripod (I used the railing on the porch), and the strong gusts of wind meant that I had to hold the camera down with my hand. That, or the multiple flashes of lightning, must have been what caused some strange blurry artifacts along the right-hand edge of the house. They were easy to Photoshop away, though, plus it gave me an excuse to remove some telephone lines on the left and level the horizon while I was at it.

After looking at all the other pictures, most of which have nothing but black clouds, I find it amazing that this lightning bolt struck so perfectly in the frame. And to think I almost gave up and went inside around picture #45…

Canon Digital Rebel XT
Date: 29 June 2006
Focal Length: 18mm
Shutter: 30 seconds
Aperture: F/3.5
Photoshop: some cloning, wire removal, minor rotation and crop

Just for fun, two more variations can be seen after the jump.
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Four months after we created the Post-It Note mosaic of our boss at work, we decided to take it down. Ever since I published the accompanying time-lapse video, ideas have been batted around on how to memorialize its removal. When the big day came a few weeks ago, we didn’t record another time-lapse video… though you wouldn’t know it, looking at the final video. You might like to watch it without spoilers before I start talking about it.

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Okay, so yeah. The broken wrist thing.

The morning of my doctor’s appointment arrived, two weeks to the day after the Turkey Bowl, and I still had a significant amount of pain in my wrist. I decided to go in and make sure it wasn’t broken.

The office was busy and although I arrived right on time, I spent a considerable amount of time, first in the waiting room, and then sitting in my own little disinfected compartment. Eventually Dr. Schwarting had the time to see me.

He had me take off the brace and began poking and prodding, looking for tender areas. With one exception, I didn’t feel much of anything at all; the swelling had long since disappeared. It wasn’t until he started in on the twisting and bending that I made the pain face.

After just a couple minutes, he decided that more X-rays were a good idea. Just like when I hurt my knee, I got the impression that he was asking me for permission – not everyone feels good about spending money to irradiate their body. I do. Or at least I felt that the merits of knowing for sure whether or not I had another broken bone outweighed the risks.

He left me alone again for a bit and I went back to reading my National Geographic. Before long, one of his assistants showed up and ushered me into the room with all the bulky machinery. She took four X-rays of my wrist in various positions and only one was excruciating (palm and forearm flat on the table, with the wrist bent about 45 degrees clockwise). While the images of my bones were developing, I was back in my room reading again about places in the world I’d rather be.

Before long, Dr. Schwarting came back in with the X-rays and popped them up onto the lighted wall panel. It seemed as though we were both looking at them for the first time. My eyes sought out the scaphoid bone, looking for the telltale signs of a hairline fracture. I couldn’t see anything, but that didn’t mean the guy with all the experience wouldn’t.
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When I first read about “flashbulb memories” in Psych 101, I immediately understood the metaphor. Sometimes an event occurs that is so perfectly captured by the mind that, in retrospect, time seemed to have slowed down and the tiniest detail can be recalled…

I sprinted off the line as soon as the ball was snapped. It was fourth-and-long and the cornerback, as usual, was giving me plenty of cushion. Without cleats, I didn’t bother to offer a fake. Eyes on the quarterback, he let me pass unhindered. The gusting wind was incredibly strong that Thanksgiving Day (benefiting our team that half) but the accompanying rain cast any throw in doubt. The defender must have decided that I was outrunning the quarterback’s arm.

With the gap between us widening with each step, our QB launched the ball into the air. It arced too high, giving the defenders time make a play, but at least it had some semblance of a spiral. Still, it wouldn’t reach me.

I reversed direction as quickly as I could, the rubber soles of my court shoes almost skidding out from under me on the hard-packed dirt. Now advancing on the backpedaling cornerback, I could tell that he could have a chance a intercepting the descending ball. I ran farther back than I needed to, consciously making the decision to block him out with my body’s position. But now the ball was sailing over my head.

I barely had enough time to think that I had made a mistake; this would be one of those difficult directly-over-the-head catches…

In one motion, I jumped and twisted my body around, losing sight of the defender. I saw my arms out in front of me, coming together from odd angles, and then football was between them.

There was a fleeting moment of surprise, and then the cornerback’s arm was wrapping around my waist. But his center of gravity diverging from my own, and as I spun away, his hand failed to find a purchase on my muddy sweatshirt. The end zone loomed in front of me; I ran.

We were evenly matched in speed, but I knew that his cleats would give him and edge in both acceleration and cutting. It was a footrace, plane and simple, and I put everything I had into stretching my legs for the orange cone that marked the goal. I crossed the line barely a stride or two in front of him, scoring the winning touchdown.

Without fanfare or celebration, I looked back down the field to see almost every other player near the line of scrimmage, some 60 yards back. I hadn’t realized it, but it was to be the last play of the game.

As vivid as that play is in my memory – illuminated as though a “flashbulb” went off, freezing each motion and thought in place – it’s an earlier play, one in which I may have broken my wrist, that I keep going over in my mind.
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