Corner view of Palais de Justice, Paris. Photo taken 10/16/06. Applied black-and-white and graphic pen screens using Photoshop Elements on 7/30/07.



One of the streets near Hotel de Ville, Paris. Photo taken 10/16/06. Applied sepia tone using Photoshop Elements on 7/30/07.

Assignment #4: Photograph a face that mysteriously appears

At Bandelier National Monument in New Mexico. Photo taken January 1999.


Yet another photo from my archives that meets Superhero's (August 20) challenge. I am 99.99% sure that this was not a human-carved rock, but instead a natural rock that looked that way in that angle with that light when Trish and I were hiking up the cliff. But if Trish still checks out this blog she can correct me. I could have sworn the reason why I took the picture was because it suddenly looked so odd and came out of nowhere.

Oh my god, as I write this I just realized: TODAY is Trish's birthday!

I am stunned beyond words. What are the chances I'll be writing something that mentions Trish, which I don't often do, on her birthday of all days? The Universe is laughing right now.


Happy, happy birthday, o wonderful, beautiful babe!

I stole this picture of the birthday girl right off her kick-ass website while creating this entry. Photo taken by hubby Jon, I'm guessing, on 3/9/07.

The beautiful Lily. Photo taken by either mommy Amy or daddy Peter in April 2007, when she turned one.

"Assignment #3: Photograph a heart that appears on your path"

At Cape May. Photo taken 7/9/05.


I was all ready to go to bed and just happened to check out the latest entry (8/13/07) of Superhero's photoblog and suddenly my sleepiness vanished. For I too have a photo that meets the challenge she poses.

The original photo challenge appears here: Hearts that you've come across while walking around in this galaxy.

So I dug up this photo from 2 years ago. Hope you see what I saw. (From my monitor here in Teaneck it comes through.)

The heart is everywhere, even when it doesn't seem that way.

"Mel, don't you want to join us?"

Photo taken (surreptitiously) on 7/8/07.


As a present to my friend Strelecktology who not only did further retouching of the 1970s photo below but also called my dad "debonair," I'm sharing here something I wrote a few months ago. I wrote it during an in-class exercise assignment in a Memoir course I was taking at Gotham. The task was to write for 10 minutes on a character you've picked, and to give it some telling info, quick lines, showing the class the scene.

Here's what I came up with. As a general rule, I don't like to post crafted, more serious pieces on this blog since I like to keep it fun and silly, but I am aware this excuse is yet another of my many excuses that keep me from publishing my work.

So here it is. It's a gift to my buddy Strelecktoshop; to whoever is reading this entry; to my father who does not know about this blog and who will never know about it (if I have any say in the matter); and of course to myself and my scaredy cat ways.

------------------

(the sketch)

When my dad was laid off at the law firm he worked for as a paralegal, the firm did not know he himself was a lawyer for over 20 years in Manila, and that he in fact knew more about old-school legal interpretations than they did. But what they did know was that he had a very thick accent when he spoke English and that he refused to say good morning to the partners, and eventually they just got fed up enough with both factors to permanently kick him out.

So my dad spent the following months sitting on one end of the couch, smoking as he gazed to his right, which was where the living room windows were. Except he wasn't really looking out the windows. He held on to a wine glass and nursed his drink for about two hours, and when he was done he refilled it and nursed it again for another two, sitting near the windows and appearing to look past them.

"Mel, don't you want to join us?" my mother asked every evening as we gathered round the dinner table, but my dad never responded to this question. He would just shake his head and continue smoking, the ashtrays filling up. He would get up only to empty them.

But once in a while he would walk over to the piano and then he would play, one song after another, the notes filling the house. "Moonlight Sonata" or "Speak Softly Love," which was the love theme to the Godfather, or even a slow, unrecognizably elegiac version of "Macarthur's Park." In between songs he took a drag of his cigarette or gulped his drink, sat quietly for a few minutes, before playing again.

He never waited for the phone to ring. My dad didn't apply for jobs, not for a long while, and we all just moved and lived around him, waiting for him to finish biding his time.


(copyright © 2007 Theresa Montoya)

my parents on Golden Pond

Kayla's Lolo and Lala. Photo taken on 7/8/07 at my dad's birthday party in Wyckoff. Btw, I love this li'l raccoon streak thing my Mom has going on. And I'm in this shot too. That watch is the one I got him at the Zurich airport when we were marooned there for 4 days during 9/11. My dad has been wearing it everyday since he receivedt it.


I count this as one of my lucky shots since my Dad is not a smiler. When he laughs, though, it's pretty infectious, and usually he's laughing over some wry joke he made or something Kayla said.

My friend Strelecktomisis made a comment on a photo I found of my dad taken 30 years ago (posted somewhere in this site), which made me realize that that this photo posted above makes a nice before-and-after contrast. Attorney Dad versus retired Grandpa. Serious and inscrutable, versus mellow and content.


(Original post of this was in April 2005). Photoshop adjusted on 7/11/07 per Slick Strelecktor's advise (thanks much!).

dog-tired

Barney boy takes a breather. Photo taken 7/7/07 at his home in Wyckoff.


Until further notice, this puppy will be posting just photos.

Enjoy the silence.