I took the photos in the section found on the "Soundtrack" page, way back in 2009, when I still had a job as a solar electrical installer. The president of the company I worked for lived in Oregon. He invited me and my girlfriend to stay at his house while he was away on business. He also helped us construct the path we would take when we arrived in Portland, and it sure didn't involve spending the whole week in the city up there, or looking for treasure ships in Astoria, where Goonies was filmed. I grew up on the East Coast in New Haven, Connecticut, so I had never really seen Oregon before. It was a truly eye-opening experience.
Turtle Mountain is acutally Mount Hood. It's out in the distance, there in the shadows. A wonderful place. I see clouds, I see snow. This photo was in April. We drove by on our way from Portland to Bend. We took the Columbia River to the Hood River, and then drove south along that until we got to Mt. Hood. After that, it turned into High Desert until we reached Bend.
I miss my job. Used to think I was pretty good at it. Things didn't work for the better in that field, I guess you might say, but that's okay. Maybe it was for the better. This vacation was taken during a time when I was typically working 50 to 60 hours per week, often only being paid for 45 of them. I was accepting of this because it was more important to me that I did a good job than I bankrupted the company by charging them more than they could afford for the labor. Plus the hourly was good. It was all fair, in my mind, but this week was the first week in my life, at age 29, that I had a paid vacation. It was the farthest away from home I had ever been, and also the most beautiful. The colors were more bright than I can remember, and the natural beauty around me was more detailed than I had ever seen.
I stayed at places I could afford, with money that I had earned by working hard in the hot sun and freezing cold. I was really into construction although new to the field, having only been in there for 2 years. So being in these locations made me curious as to how they were built, and I learned tons of information about building treeforts from real experts, and expect at some point to dig into actually building my own someday. Mike over at Treehouses.Com actually manufactures these parts he's engineered, for their structural support. The bits look like an augur with a hole saw attached to the back of it. This pulls out a chunk of tree. Another part fits into it. It's threaded at the end, but it has a bolt on it that turns and tightens into the tree. That part has been signed off by an Engineer and is getting treehouses passed by building inspectors in many jurisdictions around the world. Their website might say some of this, but it's part of many bits of obscure information that you cannot find on the internet.
Crater Lake was among the places I had seen on this vacation. It stands out in my mind as the most remarkable because of a thought I had, while standing there in awesome admiration for its purity. I thought to myself that I was meant to do something different. And it was a voice in my head that was a little bit difficult to believe, because at the time my job as a solar electrician was quite secure and I had no intentions of leaving. But I felt a presence tell me that I was meant to be doing something else, more directly involved with my creation and purpose as a being. That's why I associate these images with flip books. And perhaps I will create a place as pure. If I am successful, it would be called "Flipbook Island."
More has been done with less, but the important thing to remember is that we are all here for a reason. If you work at Walmart, I want you to know that you were not put here to work at Walmart. Maybe you were meant to draw flipbooks, like me. Maybe you were meant to see Crater Lake, only if you have the common sensibility to leave alone the things that you cannot touch without compromising the purity of. Certainly that's not a lesson ever learned by the United Corporate Entities of Romstar. We're here to teach that lesson. Learn how to draw awesome flipbooks with me and let's start this counter-culture. I will never sell out to anything people aren't voluntarily buying into. That's why I love Kickstarter.
Kickstart this revolution right here. Get the engine revving. In the end, all we have are achother and the stars at night when the lights are off. There's no sense in feeling afraid for the movies that you've watched about the frightening things that happen in the dark; there's nothing to be afraid of at all out there. We have no terrorists, no bogeymen. But the TSA would have you imagine them until they become real, all while making you feel really insecure. It's not that their bosses are evil or that the government wants to feel you up. All it's based on is irrational fear, just remember that. We can counteract all of that by making it clear that there's nothing to be afraid of, especially us. We are only living creatures, alive beings walking this land. Government infringes on the right of personal sovereignty by claiming rights over our own bodies, and stuff. So fight for your right like the Beastie Boys, look to the stars at night, and never forget the story that was told about Flipbook Island.
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