ascimilate

so lately i have been completely redeveloping two HUGE passions of mine. one is photography. a couple months ago i FINALLY made myself commit to go out and buy a dslr, and i have been loving it. it's so amazing to get out and start shooting again. it's a feeling i missed so much. there's something so completely freeing about being behind the lens. i somehow just forgot it over the last couple years. there's just something so incredible about capturing a moment in history, a completely unique and original point in time, in a way that only you can see it. it blows my mind. it's been fantastic. so getting out and being able to shoot again inspired me to cough up some more money and buy a darkroom setup. it's not quite complete yet, but within a couple weeks i should be back to the point of being able to develop my own film and prints. which is great. i do like certain aspects of digital photography, but it will just never take the place of a darkroom for me. tweaking your prints in a computer program, and tweaking your prints with a set of tools and a light and a lot of paper are just so completely different. darkrooms are so much more real to me. when i edit prints on a computer i just don't feel like i'm actually doing anything. it's just not as gratifying. for me anyway. but all that is to say, i am loving taking pictures again. i have been starting to figure out that i think i would love to be a photographer later on in my life. i definitely still want to play music for a few years. because i love it. but after all that is said and done i would love to go work for a non profit and just do photography and traveling for them. to me, photojournalism is the ultimate form of photography. especially warzone and third world. there's just something about that form of photography that changes people's minds, lives, and hearts. at that point it's not just taking a picture, it's a documentation of the human struggle that no pen could ever capture. i want to do that.

which leads me to the second passion of mine that's been reignited. in figuring out that i would love to do photography for a non profit organization, i have gotten back into remembering that the biggest thing in the third world that i've seen that i have a heart for is the lack of clean drinking water. every day over 30,000 people around the world die from lack of access to clean drinking water. they die. it costs $1 to provide clean drinking water for a person for an entire year, and yet people are still dying from this. one of the leading organizations that builds and restores wells around the world has come out with a figure that has said that the sum total of $10 billion would build and restore enough wells to fix the entire world's clean drinking water problem. FOREVER. that blows my mind. our country is in the process of spending almost $800 billion dollars to fix a stupid economy that will fix itself in the long run anyway (it always has), and just $10 billion would provide clean drinking water and sanitation for the entire planet forever?!? it blows my mind. it completely tears my heart apart to think that people are dying from this. i guess it just shows the true colors of the human condition. here we are, living in a country where the poverty line is more money than most people in the third world will ever even see in the entire sum of their lives, and we're spending one of the most ungodly amount of money i've ever heard of to fix our economy so we can all make more money. it sickens me.

that being said, my dad and i have been talking about this problem for the last couple of months, and we have decided that we are going to raise enough money to build a well in a third world country. we haven't decided yet which organization we are going to give the money to go do this (there are several good ones, we are in the process of selecting an organization that works in the area we want to work in), but we have decided it's something we want to do. so, if you would like to contribute any money to this project (all money donated will be tax deductible), please get a hold of me via email at marcus.baney@yahoo.com.

i think that's it for now. those have been the two big focus area's of my life lately. that's pretty much what's going on with marcus.

vii

i stumbled across the photojournalism collaboration of fantastic artists at vii photo agency today. if you're into that sort of thing please check them out.

http://www.viiphoto.com

wind.

some days i feel like i'm becoming a ghost.

my transient soul floats aimlessly day to day.

and no one see's dead people.

or if they do they don't care.

some days i find everything i need.

some days i find nothing i need.

and some days i find that the people i thought i needed

aren't the people i need at all.

simply because they don't need me.

some days we belittle ourselves to the point

of no existence.

some days are today.

legit.

Life is feeling pretty legit these days. At least for now. Certain people are unquestionably out of my life. People that needed to be out of my life. That's a phenomenal feeling. I've been back in the word lately, which is awesome. I don't know how I let myself get on such bad lapses where I'm not in it for so long. But I finally made myself go pick up a chronological bible and I've been tearing through that. It's such a refreshing way to read. Reading about david's struggles and then being able to read the psalms he wrote during those times of trouble directly after, it just puts things in good perspective. I like it a lot. I've also just been having a lot of fun lately. Weddings, dancing, golf, making mario party into a drinking game, developing crushes (weird), volcano taco's (substitute beans for beef). Haha. Everyone always tells me my blogs are so negative and they make me seem like I'm super bummed out all the time (which I'm not), so here's a nice posi one for y'all. I dig life currently. So suck on that.

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPhone]

you are not the sun

life is funny sometimes. i had a good conversation last night with one of my best friends, that prompted me to make a decision to do something that i've needed to do for a long time. it prompted me to try and have a conversation with a person who i have desperately needed to have a conversation with for a long time now, and could never man up and commit myself to doing it. i would always think i could and then i'd just chicken out at the last minute. so after a good conversation with my friend (and a bit of liquid courage), i contacted this person who has contacted me about talking so many times, and said i was finally ready to have this conversation. and the feeling wasn't reciprocated. which hurt a little bit, i'll admit. but today i feel amazing. for the first time in the last year and a half, none of this is on me. i don't feel responsible for it anymore.

today i woke up to a new sun. a sun that isn't her.

i think i'm ready to just let that be what it is. finally.

oh life

Sometimes I wish I could figure out what you were about. I like to think that things would be more fun if I knew what was going on, but I don't think they actually would. Oh well. I wish I could figure out my heart more than anything these days. That thing is on a roller coaster for sure. Which isn't stressful at all, don't even worry about it.

Sigh. Breathe.
In and out. In and out.

This too shall pass. I think that's becoming my new theme for life. I don't know how I feel about that.

Emily, I'm glad you and I are real friends again and we can suck at life together. You're the best.

Over and out.

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPhone]