July 4

Had in interesting conversation last night about some Buddhist teaching/philosophy. I will for sure be purchasing some of the recommended books on the subject for further reading. I've been trying to meditate, and I can actually “feel” a tiny difference when I’m in the process of doing it. Doing this more and more will be interesting. I can’t wait to know more and experience more in this area. I've also been thinking about caring and hoping. I've hoped for so much and cared to make good things happen. My hope is what is bringing me down. I’ll be learning to turn the hope off and just try to care and make good/positive things happen, but I’ll try to teach myself not to hope. There is also a good quote, “abandon all hope”. Without hope there is no pain. If I don’t put my hope into something and it fails or disappoints, I’ll have no pain. I’m positive that this will be a permanent quote/saying to my life, so much so i will either tattoo this on myself, myself... or I’ll ask someone else to do it. It will be in a kinda weird spot so I’d be better off having someone else do it. ABANDON ALL HOPE

Woke up early as usual thinking about everything. Killed some time in the morning and found some food to eat, clearly not much to choose from...

Unless you like lime juice that expired several months ago and tomato, that’s all yer gettin.

The plan was to go and check out a ghost town in the mountains with J and A. I packed all but two cameras just to put some stress on them. We took off in the morning and made our way to Leadville and then to Stumptown. The drive to Leadville was pretty straightforward. The drive up to Stumptown was a bit rough but the car handled it like a champ. There were cool spots for sure. Near where we parked I found three Heinekens, strange coincidence...? maybe not. Drinks of destiny.

The place was cool for research and future photo possibilities, not so great for a tour kinda place and also good for just seeing something different and new. I think I took enough pictures that I won’t have to return to get stuff. As usual, get off the trails to find cool shit. Since I took a lot of cameras I was in camera overload and it kinda weighed me down. I wanted to test two of them, one has seen two rolls of film, the other in its first roll. I could only get so adventurous but as usual, i’m all about adventure. I’m still looking for my own Goonies adventure out there in this big fucking world. I got into some of the buildings and they have been pretty picked clean. They are just structures at this point so it makes sense. I was in secret agent mode because there were two newer building and signs saying some kind of warning with the threat of fines. I haven’t been fined yet and this won’t be the beginning of it. Got into one of the building and explored a bit more- I think I saw just about everything there was to see for the hours we were there. I don’t feel the need to return, I feel satisfied with the adventure.

We made our way back to Leadville and parked. I saw an estate sale in progress, so of course I had to check that out. Got a bread maker for $10... I mean, c’mon... ten mother-fucking bills! I've been looking for a bread maker on the cheap, and there it was. Continued along the main street to see what the town was all about. We stopped by one of the local art galleries and some of the pieces were not bad at all, emphasis on some. I’d say there were five worth seeing. After that we grabbed some smoothies and saw the average price for homes there were 23k - 150k. If I never worked again, I might buy a home in some little shit town like that. I think the key word there is MIGHT. So having seen and done enough for the day we made our way back to Denver in one piece. Saw a car in shit shape all fucked up on the eastbound I70. From what I could see almost all the panels on the SUV were gone. I don’t know what could have possibly happened. Soon after I spotted a fire in the forest. Two small disasters in less than a mile on our way back.

When we arrived back in Denver we ended up swinging by the store and getting sushi supplies then trying out the goods from the estate sale. I've got to try mine soon but i’m told it works, assured it works! Watched a cool documentary about the Barnes Art Museum/school getting screwed by politicians and lawyers... so not cool. After the movie and getting ready to leave J and A’s house, we could hear booms from fireworks. Oh yeah, it was the 4th of fucking July! I hung around and took a bunch of pictures and headed home. On my drive back to my place, there was no shortage of fireworks from any given angle. After everything that happened, i’m was so beat, and i had to work the next day. Talk about a distraction for the day. This has cleared my head a bit and with all the reference pics I think I have plenty of landscape and general “Colorado” elements that I can use for compositions. Not a bad day by any means.