Fuck my life...

Okay so by the time I was ready to leave for Boston, I was most excited about this super sweet project I was gonna do. It was the whole reason I wasted my life away for 2 days straight on a train.

The project was that every person I met on my trip, I would ask to describe their personality in a word or a phrase. Then I would have them show me this and take their picture. I planned only to use the old canon A-1 for this.

Unfortunately,I am left with only one photo. The one I took with my digital camera because I couldn't find my flash at the time. Something went wrong, and the role seemed to never end...it was blank when it was developed...not gonna lie...i cried...


*Note* if you don't feel like reading this whole post, that is fine. Just be sure to read the very last part about Lorenz.



My only photo.

Sarah Cohen-Bacry. "Dreamer"
Sarah was on her way to Holland to visit family at their lake house. She was born and raised in France and came to the US to attend Arizona State University, where she is a junior in film studies (She just finished an internship in CA). Sarah kept going on about how she loves Michigan so much because the people are so much more friendly and smile much more than the people in AZ.



Wade. "Sports Fan"
He was taking the train from Fremont to Wisconsin to begin his 9 day trip which included 6 MLB games. He was most ecxited to see the Yankee stadium before it is torn down. When we reached Union Station, I took his picture and he asked to do the same for me, except he chose my word to be "Focused" as a pun for my personality and being a photographer.



In Chicago I met up with living city Piotr, who was randomly visiting a friend.

Scott. "Mysterious" (a word chosen by his friend Ashley)
Scott is a firefighter who applied to work for the secret service and is still waiting on a reply. He spent his Jr year of high school playing pro soccer in Mexico! Needless to say, we hit it off right away, and the 1 hr ride to go get Piotr from his station wasn't the least bit awkward.



Ashley. "Fantabulous" ... also "Indecisive" fantabulous was about the eight word...
but it is suiting for her bubbly personality.


~What I realized while these two were trying to come up with their words is that the better you get to know someone, the harder it is to find one word to describe them~



Kourtney. "Weird"
This was her first time traveling alone. She was returning to Massachussetts from Louissiana where she had been visiting her mother for the past month. Kourtney is 18 and just out of high school. She is big on animae, and is really talented in drawing these characters:






















Jason, you will be happy to know that she has big time "Yellow Fever". She has a huge crush on an asian guy she met on myspace...basically this is all she talked about on the trip that was supposed to be 16 hrs...but somehow turned into 20 hrs. She acted a lot younger than she was which made me think that she had some struggles in her life, which I later found was true.



Richard W. Crocket. "Tolkein Hobbit"
Hannah might have called him a creature...
Retired polysci prof, and writer for a weekly in Illinois, he was on his way to visit his son in Utica, NY. He kept going on about how humans are basically the root of all problems but especially global warming.



Kevin "Rob" Studer. "Interesting" & Bobby. "intellectual"
Rob was a youth mission leader from Ohio on his way to Albany with a group of kids, including Bobby, to help inner-city kids. I bumped into Bobby again on my way home which was kinda funny.








The last guy I am going to tell you about is the sole reason that the absence of photos has made me so upset...

Lorenz. "Me"
Lorenz is a drifter. He is on his way back to Boston, which he left 14 months ago, to travel all over the country...and the world. He keeps a minimum ammount of money on him and once his funds fall to this level he will stop and pick up some odd jobs to build them back up.His favorite animal is a cat because they resemble his attitude. If they want to be around you they will come to you, otherwise they want to be left alone. His mottos: enjoy life & what is meant to happen will happen (you would've loved him Sam). Georgia, you might find this intersting...this is the only black man I have ever met who is a vegetarian.

Now, the reason this project was going to be super cool was because this was the only person who was not going to have a photo. He was the only person who wouldn't let me take his picture and here is the profound reason why:
( Nick, keep this in mind. I'm hoping you can laugh this off by now...)
Lorenz said the best thing that ever happened to him was that he lost his camera. My immediate reaction: *gasp* "that's a crime!"
Lorenz continued by telling me that once he wasn't so worried about capturing the moments through his camera, he began to discover the moments he was missing in life.

Although I would never give up the task of trying to capture the moments with my camera, I really respected the fact that he didn't want his picture taken because he had such a cool reason.