The Best Laid Plans o’ Mice and Men

Finally, I present the letter C:

My first professional camera: a Mamiya 645 SLR pre-digital film camera. How I LOVE this camera. How I MISS having complete and absolute control over the shot. How I MISS working with film in the darkroom!!!!!!!! I haven’t used this in at least seven or eight years, maybe more. I don’t even know where I could buy film for it, and since I no longer have a darkroom at home or have access to one via a community college, I don’t even know if I could get the film developed and pictures printed, at least not in the county I live in.

Film ~ Tri-X Pan Black and White Film (Claudia would like this!):

So here's the deal, I have been struggling in vain to come up with a good image for the letter C for ABC-Along.

The images should reflect something personal about the photographer, and if anyone knows me, C could only stand for chocolate.

When the weeks for C came around (yes, we are on a bi-weekly schedule), I tried all sorts of silly attempts at getting a shot of chocolate: chocolate milk, hot chocolate, Starbucks mocha/chocolate bottled drinks, candy ~ Snickers, M&Ms, Almond Joy, you name it.

But the weather was so jacked and overcast that none of the shots came out decent. (You may recall my continual bitching about my point & shoot’s weak to crappy flash system, so indoor shooting is usually crap.)

At the very beginning of ABC-Along, I immediately had no problem coming up with ideas for C or F, the above-mentioned chocolate and French Toast, my two favorite foods in the whole world. Other than these two foods which are absolutely identifiable with me, food would probably not show up being represented in my letters because I don’t care too much about any other food. Sure, I eat it, but we sort of have to, don’t we? But nothing else speaks to me the way these two things do.

So as I was saying, for the first six weeks of ABC-Along I had fantasies of stopping in at the local Godiva Chocolatier to eat everything in sight take pictures inside the shop, and perhaps, buy a few truffle goodies, including chocolate-dipped coconut haystacks and macaroons, and if that didn't pan out, then I would make my world famous chocolate chip cookies using semi-sweet chocolate so that I could photograph a cookie fresh out of the oven, broken in half so that the shiny, melted chocolate would contrast nicely with the golden cookie.

Okay, so C was smack in the middle of Lent, but I don’t observe, at least not that way. But once again, the weather interfered, making driving anywhere but for absolutely necessary ventures like going to work prohibitive or at least pure folly. Basically, we were stuck at home, low on groceries, ordering lots of delivery meals from the local pizzerias and sub stores. We ran through our entire cache of eggs: scrambled eggs, omletes, etc., so I didn't have the necessary ingredients for cookies. It was a pretty lousy time, but hey, not too many pots and pans to wash.

The absolutely worst miserable irony was that the very scrumptious and decadent Johnny Depp / Juliette Binoche film about longing, desire, indulgence, restraint, social pressure, self-knowledge, Lent, and of course, chocolate, was on television, and I, of course, couldn’t pass up watching all that extraordinary chocolate or as the shop was named, Chocolaterie Maya, being whisked into delicacies, poured into coffee mugs, heated, tempered, sifted, stirred, molded, drizzled, spiced, gazed upon, longed for, fought against temptation, and finally succumbed to in a Bacchanalian-like gorging, well, I was beside myself.

The long and short of it is I never made it to Godiva’s; the standard inexpensive chocolates didn’t photograph well in the light; I never made the chocolate chip cookies, and all I could do was crave chocolate and not figure out an offering for the letter C.

So here you have it. Onto the impossible D and very late at that!