My generation finds itself in a fortunate position. As the 2009 comes to a close, most of us can look back fondly at a dramatic decade that brought with it some of life's most altering moments, decisions, and changes. For those of us who graduated high school in '00 or 01' and set out for higher learning beyond, the aughts represent the apex of our youth, the moment when vigor and passion and searching converged--and (for some of us) diverged--with commitment, responsibility, and time.
With all these things in mind, I'm offering up a photo essay that seeks to encapsulate one perspective of my experiences in a dynamic decade.
Year: 2000
Image(s): Lindsay and I at Sierra Ski Ranch (now Sierra at Tahoe); Chris and I after our final high school football game.
Explanation: The images illustrate how I managed to successfully straddle social groups during the last two years of high school. I played football, continued a dedicated campaign on the slopes, acted on stage, and worked as a sound technician behind the scenes.
Significance Then: I didn't realize it at the time, but I see in my day-to-day interactions as a classroom teacher how difficult it is to run with separate crowds. I somehow managed to slide between social groups with ease, feeling substantially invested in each. I think by that time of our educational careers, most of my classmates were seamlessly switching between various social groups. It is as if the shells of these groups were permeable, leaving us with the false understanding that they remained in tact as we moved between them.
Significance Now: The fact that I was able to dabble in different sectors during my time in high school certainly made me believe I could do it in college. Not that I believe everyone has to find a limited niche and be content in it, but it was clearly a freeing realization at the time.
Year: 2001
Image(s): Jamie and I at our high school graduation ceremony; me lying on empty bottles in Omega Essentials, an invented "frasority" at CSUMB.
Explanation: Jamie is saluting because Jamie is inspired by moments. I am embracing him because he inspired me. The bottles were a project undertaken by a number of college freshmen and sophomores in Res Hall 206 at CSUMB.
Significance Then: Jamie and I rekindled a friendship that sat dormant for 11 years. He was an assistant in my beginning drama class, and he made me believe that I could act, create, and believe in the possibility of all things. He's the reason I grew secure in a number of my interests. The bottles, on the other hand, served as a false wall built between the existing dorm-room wall and a bunk bed. It represented a lot of drinking, yes, but more the bonds that grew from the tumultuously wonderful period during our first year at MB. The bonds created there, for the most part, still exist.
Significance Now: Seeing both of these images makes me remember the difference between what I want and what I have. When I left Placerville, my relationship with Jamie grew in new and productive ways, but there were times when I expected more from him. As it happens with friends that feed your senses, I felt a need for his presence in more frequent quantities. I remember wanting something reliable. I look at the picture and think about all those times I wanted him to reach out, how frustrating it made things for me, and how the frustration was my own needy creation. Along those same lines, I didn't appreciate certain relationships forged in the frasority days of 206. Now that I don't have them, I play the What if game. What if I made an effort to contact so-and-so? What if I actually tried to hang out with those guys? Ultimately, both were valuable when they were valuable, and at least afford me the ability to pontificate on the impressions they left on me.
Year: 2002
Image(s): Mat (One T) and I taking a study break on Reservation Road. I'm pretty sure Joe took the photo. I remember Matt (Two Ts) sitting on my left playing another drum. Jenni and Melissa came out, and a handful of others.
Explanation: Mat and I jumped to Res Hall 208 the following school year, and to me this image represents the new things that came along with that move. We spent more and more time at beaches for the sunset. We ventured out and explored the coastline and mined the content of our studies for some philosophical fodder, and generally avoided barber shops.
Significance Then: Taking a break from school was particularly easy to justify, but going off campus without some larger plan in mind was difficult because of the isolation on campus (base). This excursion occurred at a point when I had been practicing the guitar long enough to feel comfortable strumming it in front of people--granted, I played the same 8 barre chords to different Jack Johnson songs, but still. I remember this evening being particularly beautiful. The bay was rough in the crisp wind, and for the first time I kept playing through the pain in my fingers.
Significance Now: This is my quintessential I'm in college photo. I'm with my roommate and best friend, I came to the beach because I thought nature could bring me closer to a girl, I'm not studying, my hair is long, and I'm playing the kind ubiquitous folky music that saturated the college and coastal experience.
Year: 2003
Image(s): Captured by Joe, I'm filming behind the scenes footage on a movie called The Mission, a piece created by TAT students and professor Hiro Kinoshi.
Explanation: I spent the better part of two weeks with Joe and friends as part of the production crew. The shoot took place the summer before Joe's senior year, and this marks a busy time for our apartment. Joe worked on three films, while Mat and I did some stand-in work and generally observed all phases of production.
Significance Then: This particular experience drove me to unofficially change my major (for a weekend). Joe told me, after a bit of wine, "Kyle, I think you could be a really good director." It didn't stick because, in the end, I didn't feel "film" was a good enough reason to spend four years in college, and I didn't want to go to Hollywood. But I like what the TAT program did for us as roommates and friends, and I like how it shaped our creative endeavors together at CSUMB. Essentially, I have a body of work that effectively documents my time at CSUMB.
Significance Now: It's really, really, really cool to have all of these artifacts from college that have nothing to do with teaching or literature. Knowing that Joe has gone on to live in Los Angeles surrounded by a network of talented individuals from CSUMB almost makes me feel like I know important people in The Biz. Almost. Amazingly, none of my school work suffered from these new extra-curricular activities.
Year: 2004
Image(s): This image was taken after Mat and Jaclynn's wedding reception.
Explanation: Mat's beginning was in many ways our end. This image makes me think of the joy I felt during the days surrounding the occasion.
Significance Then: For everyone, including Joe, Mat, and me, the general belief was that Mat would keep the girls wanting him while Joe married his long-time girlfriend Season. Before we knew it, Joe and Season split up, he graduated, and Mat got married. At the beginning of my senior year, I served as the best man in my roommate's wedding. It was a huge moment for me. The couple would soon have a baby, Mat had moved home, and all I'd built my college identity around changed. I moved in with Brittany, started working at a bar off campus, and tried to smooth over the bumps in my personal life while finishing school. At the time the picture was taken, I remember admitting I'd never been happier, and feeling joy in realizing that it was happiness for someone other than myself.
Significance Now: The last sentence really sticks, even now. Watching Mat become something new changed how I viewed my own plight. I remember resolving to let certain things go and start enjoying the moment. Subsequently, I ended up watching a lot of The Daily Show with my roommates in the fog.
Year: 2005
Image(s): Jamie called this a photo shoot for our band Spilt Tea. We grabbed old guitars and wandered down along his property while his mother snapped photos of us.
Explanation: The prospect of moving home after graduation, coupled with Jamie's return from Vancouver, spawned a creative explosion. We had high hopes that we'd be writing songs long into the night, recording and perhaps even performing. We thought time had given us a moment to make up for all that we'd squandered as children.
Significance Then: I like what this image--this whole photo shoot, really--embodies about how we believed in each other. We were hell-bent on exploring things, whether ideas or philosophies or literatures or landscapes. Not long after these shots were taken, we embarked on a week-long road trip through Nevada, Utah, Colorado, and Arizona. I really felt like I was on the brink of re-creating myself on completely new terms.
Significance Now: Part of me does see myself on the brink of something, but I see someone very content in being unfocused. I think Jamie once called us "The Questioneers," like we were out on a mission to just ask. I certainly embraced it, and it's affected how I view my impulses and thoughts now. This picture also represents the time I had to re-learn what I conceded in my thoughts about my friend Jamie in 2001 (above).
Year: 2006
Image(s): Noel took this photo of me at a turnout in Big Sur.
Explanation: From 2006 to 2007, there's elusive theme in the photos I took and requested taken. Many are like the one here; I'm staring off into some unknown scene scape. I think the goal was to both illustrate my positioning in a particular moment and place, and also reinforce movement and progress beyond. The other photos that show up a lot this year are pictures of my shadow.
Significance Then: It was clearly easier for me to avoid a confrontation with captured reality. To me, the shadow is just a semblance, and while it suggests that I'm somewhere, my condition, other than upright, remains uncertain. Similarly, I wanted to convey visually what I felt in 2005; I lacked focus, but I was willing to explore. I had no desire to look back a fresh mistakes (both a good and bad thing, one might argue, in terms of how I learn).
Significance Now: I think it's important that I turned my back on certain things, especially at such an awkward phase in my twenties. I like this picture now more than ever because, at the time it was taken, I was no longer a student in Monterey. Being a visitor in my old home reinforced that my view was clearly in other directions (though I recall now that the trip itself was a lesson in value). I was figuring out how to be a college graduate without a job, how to be a son newly returned home, how to be (or at least aspire to be) an adult, and how to rewrite guidelines for forming new human connections amid a new surge of uncertainty and impulsiveness.
Year: 2007
Image(s): Asleep on an ice chest in the middle of the northern-Nevada high desert; reading with a cup of coffee in Mendocino.
Explanation: These images nicely illustrate the year for me. At worst, I was an exhausted, moody, overworked first-year teacher trying to appease my employer's demands, my family's desires, and still charm my new girlfriend into believing I could pull off every impossible task. At best, I filled my moments with leisurely indulgences.
Significance Then: I spent some time butting heads with people around me over the effects of stress and the definition of health. Some of the conversations loved ones started with me during this period of time began with, "I'm only telling you this because you need to hear it... ." Despite straining the delicate balances between work, family, and play, I spent 2007 trying to convince everyone that I knew what I was doing. I recognized the effects around me, but I wasn't about to admit that I needed to reconsider what I was trying to accomplish.
Significance Now: Easily the craziest year in terms of new beginnings. I settled in my downtown apartment, actively engaged in a meaningful relationship with the woman I eventually married, finished my first stint as a full-time teacher, taught what I swear was my only summer school session, left Elk Grove Unified for Woodland Joint, opened a line of credit, and bought a car.
Year: 2008
Image(s): Stephanie took this picture at a fruit market on Hawaii's big island.
Explanation: This year had a lot to do with distance. I moved out of the apartment and in with Stephanie in May, and traveled to visit my mother and stepfather living in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Stephanie and I were able to spend a week on Hawaii and Kauai, and I rejoined my father, stepmother and brother on the Jeep Jamboree in August. I enjoyed my second year at Pioneer--my first without the "newbie" status, and began working on my master's in composition at Sacramento State. I ran my first half-marathon, then proposed to Stephanie before The Run to Feed the Hungry in November.
Significance Then: At the time I considered myself lucky to be traveling to such wonderful places with such easy company. The trip, our second major adventure together, was filled with hiking and snorkeling and cooking and eating, and permitted the kind of mutual immersion that life with a job cannot provide.
Significance Now: That trip stands out because we weren't married, but we had strong beliefs that we would be. As a result, I think we treated the experience like something more than just a trip.
Year: 2009
Image(s): Brittany took this photo of me bowling in my tuxedo.
Explanation: After the wedding ceremony, we left it up to our friends to decide how to keep the party rolling (no pun intended). Land Park Lanes won out, and although the time was shared with close friends and members of the wedding party, this image best represents what the decade has done to me.
Significance Then: This one's certainly easier to ruminate on because it's relatively fresh in my mind. I liked the way Ben and Carrie orchestrated not only the bowling lanes and the rides to the alley, but how they effortlessly involved a perfect blend of people and fun. After bowling, we went to Harry's Cafe and made the kind of memories that could never, ever be planned in advance.
Significance Now: Time, for me, is two things. For one, it is a continuum that feeds itself and forces those bound to it to acknowledge the connections across the continuum that work to render one's perception of reality. Time is also malleable, though, and the wedding, like so many other valuable memories, stands as a peak in the time line, a period in which progress and movement become, simply, "the now," and remain there, frozen and beautiful.
