Here's the "Twin Peaks Sign Spot" where we hoped to get some flashing pictures:



Unfortunately a variety of circumstances conspired against us. Like how I forgot that things have changed a lot since I was a teenager from two towns over driving around the area; now there are thousands of yuppies crawling around in and out of their weird, flimsy, housing development hives. There was TRAFFIC and stuff, even before school/work got out during the middle of the day in the middle of the week. Like how the sun was shining so it sort of ruined the mood, as far as I'm concerned, of capturing the Twin Peaks feeling of that particular shot - I think we'd have had to wake up really early and get out there right when everyone would have been driving to work to have gotten the right light.

There were also work crews out in a lot of places tending to damage done by the flooding. We wound up shooting on the riverbank further down the road and getting there was like walking through the sand into a weird post-war scene sort of like after Mount St. Helens exploded and covered everything in grey ash.



In the winter when there are already bare branches and less green, when the floodwaters recede they leave behind extra greyness and washed-out debris on all of the low branches and trunk-bottoms.



A fifteen year old girl was brought up on first degree murder charges around the same time as the most recent flooding here in Washington. Apparently she gave birth to a baby (fathered by a man in his thirties) at home in the bathroom where she let it drown in the toilet, and with (at the very least) the knowledge of her meth-head dad she'd only been living with for a few weeks, placed the body inside the rest of their garbage on the curb.

This news broke at the same time I was looking at pictures of the valley where I grew up with most of it covered by floodwater. I remembered the times we'd be trying to come home from somewhere, caught by rising water, and my stepdad would drive through standing water on flooded-out roads even after my mom begged him not to. I especially remember one of those times being at night. Pitch dark except for headlights shining out over water in places it shouldn't be, all of us screaming for him not to do it. Alone in the night surrounded by black water at the mercy of a motherfucking man behind a steering wheel.

Many people do this. Many people die when people do this. Kids and spouses and girlfriends, powerless in cars controlled by someone who assesses the risk as worth taking and makes the decision for everyone to plunge ahead. These deaths are almost always called "accidents". Tragic accidents. Even if the people were screaming and crying and begging the person not to do it. People who have names and can talk and the person didn't just go through physical trauma to give birth to in the bathroom of a house with a drug-dealing dad with a gun. Driven by people old enough to have a driver's license as opposed to someone who isn't allowed to drive a car by herself but was fucked without a rubber by some guy over thirty.

First. Degree. Murder.

Do you know the sound of a car driving through deep water in the dark with your little sister sitting beside you in the back seat? And you can't do anything to stop it or create any kind of safety? It's a scary fucking sound. My stepdad never even got a ticket for any of the times he did that.



The River. "River" is a scary, dark, dangerous word in my memory. It was a place my mom was afraid we would drown. A place where men dumped women's bodies. A swift swelling uncontainable body that could rise up and burst out of its banks in a matter of hours just because the sun did too much shining too early in the spring. The river is a fucking menace and I can never understand it when real estate brochures list "riverfront" in the words to lure prospective buyers. But I still miss living by those rivers, even though I hate the nightmares I still have about them. They are never not flooding in my dreams.

*****

On a lighter note, here are a few of my favorite pictures we *did* manage to shoot (you can see all of them in Delia's members-only area or a few more samples on her blog):



We actually only shot two sets of pictures and a video (all of Delia) but it was worth it not just for the content but to seize the moment and enjoy a few hours away off cam to visit my mom on one day and just do NOTHING some of the rest of the time. Seriously, we played a silly computer game called Peggle Nights for hours one night, and it was totally cool because we NEVER do things like that. It was so cold outside, and there was so much junk food to be eaten, and we were away from home for the first time since I started feeling human again . . . I wish we could have spent a WEEK not shooting or doing anything work-related.



It seems like that happens a lot when we leave home for shoots; we realize OH MY GOD WE HAVE NOT TAKEN ANY TIME OFF FOR OURSELVES OR SCHEDULED ANY VACATIONS AWAY THAT WERE NOT WORK IN FOREVER/NEVER AND NO ONE IS WATCHING US ON CAM IT'S LIKE OUR PARENTS LEFT US AT HOME ALONE!! Let's discover all of the microwavable instant noodles for sale at QFC and slum around doing absolutely nothing productive! LET'S HAVE A PEGGLE NIGHT EXTRAVAGANZA!!!



Seriously -- it was bitterly cold outside. I don't know how Delia managed to achieve an erection out there. I would have cried my titties off. Next time I *will* shoot something on Ronette's bridge, though -- I promise! Unless a new Peggle comes out . . . (fyi: we downloaded Peggle Nights from Big Fish Games)

In the meantime I have no idea what to post for my members-only update since I *thought* I was going to have Twin Peaksy pics to post. I mean, I have many IDEAS, I'm just not sure what we can pull off quickly. Like, tonight. We'll see what happens.

Labels: Pacific Northwest, PHOTOS, Seattle, true crime

posted by Trixie at 2/22/2009 02:58:00 PM -