I’ve recently fallen in love with the National Cathedral. Walking up Massachusetts Avenue, past embassies and mosques and the woods of Rock Creek Park, I feel like I’m taking a walk through history. I pass the Naval Observatory, where some swanky event was taking place last night. Turn the corner and the majestic towers and buttresses rise up, looking out over DC.

Over Thanksgiving weekend, I inadvertently found myself attending service with Sara’s family. The original intent was just to  show them our newfound Fortress of Solitude, but I somehow neglected to realize that on Sundays, folks tend to go to church. I spent a good part of the service taking in the sweeping ceilings above me, lost in thought. There is true beauty and faith in the mortar of cathedrals. These are those rare times when I begin to understand the nuances of honoring God.

Here I was, attending service, meditating on life, humanity, and faith. Maybe I did get something out of that accidental trip after all.

I sometimes wish there was a way to manifest the flow of my creativity as a physical object. A tap that I could turn on or off when needed, when convenient.

As of late, I find myself inevitably seeking creative inspiration and finding none. And strangely enough, I have absolutely no excuse for this absence. I’ve found balance, a purposeful job, room to breathe financially. The sky is the limit and yet I gaze at this white hallway of doors, waiting for a door to open and the colorful burst of creativity to pour out.

There is no rhyme or reason to creativity. Any artist, musician, writer, poet, thinker, chef, or businessman knows this. Creativity, by definition, is not purposeful. It is innate. An uncanny ability to be suddenly inspired, so much so that the only response is to manifest it in some physical form.

So now I’m sitting here, waiting for one of those doors to open.

After wandering through a new exhibit featuring art from Pompeii at the National Gallery of Art, Sara and I exited by the glass pyramids between the two Gallery buildings.

Now that the cold weather has scared most of the tourists off of our turf, it was much easier to play by the installation. I especially loved this one because you can’t actually see her shadow, so she appears to be floating above the cobblestone.

If you look closely, you can see me snapping the photo in the reflection.

Photographing Sara in front of a projection. Our eyes didn’t see what the camera did - the rapidfire flashes of color that made up the muted skintone of the film.

One room featured a blue glow, giving the space an indiscernable depth. There were footprints leading back, relieving us of guilt for our awkward steps into the piece.

I love neon signs. I will continue to place a neon “AWESOME” at the top of my Christmas list until one finally adorns my wall.

This guy was not a part of the gallery, although he did set up his home nearby. Perhaps a mere appreciator of the arts, we do know that our rodent friend was upset at our presence as he tried to find his evening meal among the crumbled remnants of tourists’ lunches.

Fall is easily my favorite season. Not only is it the birthday of one of the greatest men to ever grace this little blue planet (me), but the crisp air and warm colors always bring me back to growing up in the foothills of the Appalachians. While the city is no substitute, it’s nice to find little reminders among the orange and red treetops and the rusted breeze.

(Obligatory picture of Sara because of her orange hair.)

Sara and I returned from a bit of a vacation to Florida, visiting my best friend from college. It was a weekend of  science and partying (those two not mutually exclusive, of course).

We were waiting to be picked up at Miami International, looking for Adam in the distance. Moments later, we realized we were actually in the drop-off zone and rushed below to the arrivals pick up. Whoops.

I shot this series today while wandering back from a long walk to the Mall. I thought Jens Lekman’s song “New Directions” fit nicely with the set, not to mention it’s aptly-named title with regards to my own recent changes.

It is hard for me to look at the next two months and not be intimidated. It’s as if I’ve been floating above it all, watching myself scurry around, picking up puzzle pieces and frantically find the place for each before arriving at the next.

I’ll find the Calm soon enough, but right now it’s hidden in fleeting moments, flanked on all sides by excitement, nervousness, and anticipation.

Before thinking too much about the above image, allow me to explain both it’s backstory and the reason why I am the greatest person alive.

First, the backstory. I was at Sara’s apartment waiting for a Craigslist stranger to come by and buy her computer. Because apparently it’s a requirement that in order to buy something on Craigslist you have to be either a) foreign or b) insane (lest we forget the obvious c- all of the above), I was on boyfriend duty. That’s where you are there acting much more manly and generally un-murderable. Specifically, we were selling Sara’s computer, which I had recently set up with a clean, untouched version of Windows. This leads me into the second point from the prior paragraphy: Why I am the greatest person alive (repeated for emphasis).

I am the greatest person alive (again, emphasis) because I drew the above in Microsoft Paint. For context, that’s like driving a car with your feet. As to the reason for the penis? Really I drew it because I realized at some point during the drawing that, wow, this man is naked. And what do all naked men have? A penis. The only reason I kept it, however, was really to spite Sara.

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Sara and my mom at the National Portrait Gallery. It’s not strong from a compositional standpoint, but I like the lone moment that it grabs; each of them distracted by the surrounding artwork, tucked away in unseen corners.