things fall apart

The way I remember the line?

Things fall apart
The center cannot hold.

Consider, that is flawed human memory from near thirty years distant. Still the notion, rebounded here, yet again, when I would think of it as an ‘art project.’

Not quite half a lap of Saturn. Not done, just withering, unattended. There are a few scattered images that carry great significance, like the early Car Crushing Bump, and one, it was a heron with a snake in its bill, the snake wrapped around the bird’s beak. Cartoon image, sort of, only, in real life, along San Antonio’s storied and fabled riverwalk.

• May 17, 2007. 13 years. In the last few months, and especially with the the pandemic and subsequent panic, I lost interest. Not so much lost interest as the media and medium have changed. Another shift. Posting an image of “Limit one package of toilet paper per customer” lacks an immediacy.

13 years of a single image a day. I launched that site, the original side-project before there were many image-sharing sites. One other earlier site, though, was named something like ‘500 pixels,’ and for the first couple of years, I ran images that were just 500 pixels wide, as a matter of space and bandwidth, and even then, it was more about trying to learn about websites, photography, and digital images. Imagine that, an art project that was a teaching tool, too.

Like the intended image irony.

What I did learn is that I wasn’t a professional photographer. Nor would I be one. The original premise was cameras that cost less than $100, ubiquitous point-and-shoot, but those were replaced by phones. By 2010, it was all iPhone images, pretty much, and postproduction following Apple’s various iterations of consumer-grade digital photo tools. No extensive Photoshop, nor any high-end software.

Digging around in my archives, I found my own discussion about getting the upgraded, “pro” software, from Apple, which I did, eventually. Useful more for a growing catalog rather than image manipulation. There was one quote, near the bottom, perfectly summed up, “Results aren’t worth the expense in time.”

I did, with the advent of iPad tools, play around with more filters, but eventually, I surrendered to just point, click, post. Excellent experience.

When I lived downtown, I was in the midst of a city in transition, years behind Austin’s explosive exponential growth. Then, too, San Antonio always struck me as Austin’s older sibling, way weirder, where the weirdness quotient runs bone-deep, not just some affectation. Better breakfast tacos, too.

In San Antonio, I encountered an absolute reverence, an obeisance towards two institutions: church and Spurs. The San Antonio Spurs evoke a kind of local spirt that goes far behind any normal sports franchise, with a nod towards Mark Cuban. “Two favorite teams, The Spurs and whoever’s playing Dallas.”

Women are angels, wooing:
Things won are done, joy’s soul lies in the doing.
Cressida in Shakespeare’s T & C (I.ii.154)

I post images infrequently, now, and when I do post, most pictures go up in some portion of the social media feeds. It’s worth noting that numerous sites have come — and subsequently disappeared, which is why I ran my own site for the repository of my images. Can’t trust anyone else to do the work.

The name is for sale.

Name: BexarCountyLine.com

ISSN: 2150-685X

(Includes an ISSN serial designation, like, how cool is that?)

New Media (old) | Post-Modern conceptualism

things fall apart

Looked it up in my own source, Pink Cake…
“Things fall apart—“
W. B. Yeats “The Second Coming”

Two books that the website spawned?

San Pedro Creek (temporarily free e-book)

Bexar County Line Best of the Double-Aughts (temporarily free e-book)

Hard copy versions of the books are available at astrofish.net/books.