things i think about while powerwashing 114

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A third yellow taxi lines up right behind two more, leaving me with a vaguely interesting composition. Wow! I think. Time to take a pic!

I hold my camera up and hit the shutter button. I stop. Something tells me to stop. I fiddle with the settings — one stop down, one stop up. I go to take the picture again. I turn the focus ring a quarter to the right, then a 90 degree turn to the left.

In 30 seconds, I have changed nothing. I attempt to take the picture.

The scene is gone now.

What was it that needed me to change the settings so much? I am using a manual camera — modern cameras have brought many technological advances into the fold where I wouldn't even need to think about taking the picture. No thoughts on the exposure, aperture, focus — just clicking the button. But I know. I would have hesitated all the same.

hes·i·tate
/ˈhezəˌtāt/ - verb
pause before saying or doing something, especially through uncertainty.

It's a familiar place. My sentence will be caught midway through at a certain speedbump of indecision, wondering if this next word is the right one to use. My pen will dive towards the paper to sign my name but stops midway, as if it had sunk its tip into an invisible mound of clay just a few inches above the x. I can't move. I'm not sure I can even breath.

I float weightlessly through the half second, but nothing can move. I'm stuck in the sand, knee deep, like a wanderer in the jungle who has fallen into quicksand. Except the quicksand is just one phrase: what if. The possibilities race through my mind. What if this apartment is terrible? Did I tip correctly? Was that the right word? Did I just make an incredibly terrible joke?

After that eternal moment, my mind gathers all an immeasurable amount of confidence. I push through the barrier somehow, overcorrecting my probably healthy amount of hesitation into some immoveable force forward. I carve the final flourish of my signature into the lease. I snap the picture I've been setting up. The word stuck in my mouth leaps out into the void as a terrible "yo mama" joke.

As hands meet foreheads, a single thought again reverberates throughout my mind. Maybe not next time.

museum of the week

This week, we return to museum of the week! Sorry friends, I've been going to so many museums that I really needed a break but we have been brought back in a big way with THE MET (featuring esteemed subscriber Junghyun Choy)!

I have historically not been too big of a fan of impressionism until esteemed subscriber Junghyun Choy and I found ourselves wandering through a room of Camille Pissarro's artwork.

Looking from afar, Pissarro's A Cowherd at Valhermeil, Auvers-sur-Oise has all the detail that you'd expect from the naturalist landscapes I love from the Hudson River Valley. But moving closer, you can see that your brain was just filling in the details between the strokes.

Another Pissarro I liked was Rue de l'Epicerie, Rouen! This one has a bit more detail than the other. I was mostly drawn to the nature ones but I liked how the sun looked on the buildings.

And now, some scenes from The Met!

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• The talent show went swimmingly, I juggled three things for maybe fifteen seconds and people clapped! (:

animal of the week

Thank you esteemed subscriber Jennifer Wang for these beautiful gators! Or ... crocodiles? What's the difference?

Send me your animal photos at ryan@torrtle.co!