New Roll / Coming Back To Cars? (Patreon)

Hello! Here's this roll (which I shot... I think in late April). It's "Fuji" 400 through the Nikon N60, one of the last rolls I had of it before I ran out and, in an incredibly dumb attempt to "save money" and "take fewer pictures", started working through my medium format rolls. (Taking fewer pictures when you get eight shots a roll does not, in fact, save money.)

Here it is on Flickr and Drive.

...

I have had some fun stuff happen since I last posted (I went to the zoo! I took an entire rolls' worth of Tahoma photos on Velvia for 36 Views!), although I still feel like my/society's long-term prospects look very bad right now. It's weird to have fun with a looming sense of dread. My coping seems to come down to "don't think about it".

In that vein, I did get a chance this weekend to work on a car that, maybe, if I can get together some parts some insurance money, and we get lucky, might be ours. (It's a 1992 Subaru SVX my friend has offered to give me, because people are way too nice to me.)

It's an objectively terrible vehicle for a single-car solution (they sold 14,000 of them in the states and parts basically don't exist for it), but it's free, and I'm madly in love with it. It was instant. The second we got it running I imagined ripping down a backroad with those little windows rolled down, fresh air in my face, boxer-six singing, and I was intoxicated.

That experience was instructive, because despite my best efforts to stop enjoying cars—they're not practical in Seattle city limits, they're more expensive to own and operate than ever, I've had enough repeated traumatic experiences with them I largely was scared off owning one—I still, apparently, really like cars. Wrenching is fun (at least for the first 12 hours), even if I'm not very good at it. Driving is fun. Cars are interesting.

This is probably very obvious to many of you (and should be to me, given the four-year-long stint as an auto journalist), but I needed to go actually put my hands on one to remember why I loved them so much to begin with. It's difficult, because I'm so scared to be optimistic, but I'd really love for this Subaru to work out so I can rekindle that passion.

I've tried to do this same thing with photography before, where I realize it costs too much, it's pointless, and it's not worth it, and I quit... and I can never stay quit for long, because I love it too much. (I think my record in the past ten years was a two-month break from taking photos.)

Sometimes I just really like stuff, I guess, despite rationality or responsibility screaming at me to just walk away. I suppose sometimes it feels rebellious against the AI-slop-driven era we live in—how often are we told creativity and human drive is going to die off to make way for this shit?—but a lot of it simply feels like it is why I wake up in the morning and continue living.

I simply have to take this photo of these garages, or obsess over this 33 year old Subaru, or work on my novel project, or I'll die, etc. It might all be a distraction, but I really don't know what else I should be paying attention to at this point.

Anyway, if the SVX gets running well enough, there will be a shoot of it, I can guarantee that.

Happy Pride, btw!

Vicki <3