i had one of those elusive great days at work today, they're the kind that come along just often enough to try to make me forget that it's awfully hard to pay my rent on my wage. fear not, tomorrow will probably be hell, but it's going to start with a prospective new coffee of the week, espresso roast.

i'm doing this for you. seriously. the week's screaming for an old reliable like gold coast (immaculate, perfect, resplendent), shade grown mexico (brilliant, daring, reliable), or serena organic (light, lusty, invigorating), but i elected espresso roast just for you, just to bring you something from outside the envelope. well, that and because, while i've not loved espresso roast from a coffee press before, i figure it's exactly what the shunned conservation colombia needs in a blend to make it not so bad. but tomorrow morning, it's straight up, in its own nutty, caramelly way, if it works i'll report from just past five am.

whut? oh you have too seen a naked girl before. it's been a bunch of months since i received permission from the subject to post this particular image on the blog, and i thought i'd interrupt my photo leave of absence with something that might just catch your attention. you see, there's a problem.

it's been a week now. i've told almost no one, perhaps out of shame, perhaps disappointment, perhaps and most likely denial. quite by accident, i killed my camera. it took nothing more than espresso, some vanilla, and about fourteen ounces of dairy; a triple grande vanilla latte met the insides of my kodak through the memory slot in a moment's careless inattention, and by all accounts the latte won. try as i might, i can't get the smoke back inside.

i've tended to keep a buffer of shots, a directory named by month of the underchosen shots each day waiting for a chance at the blog. some days there's nothing new to share, but there's always been something recent in its place, and that's when i've relied. there's still a bunch, but it still hurts just a bit too much. i'm cameraless and there's no new digital on the horizon. i can pay my rent and most months there's a pint or two, but beyond that lies nothing, i am for the foreseeable future a photoblogger no more. it just seems false to pluck something from the archives when there'll be no new shot to replace it.

the long and the short of all of this is that i feel i've lost a pretty big part of myself, i've lost a habit, i've lost a lover who fit comfortably in my pocket and pulled at my thigh everywhere i went. it's not that i cracked pixels everywhere i went, it's that i could have, and now that's no longer part of my world. my thoughts of sharing the archive now are of a dwindling vision as i exhausted what i wanted to share, followed by what i didn't think was all that bad, followed by what might not by some be seen as terrible. i'm not sure i can torture myself that way.

for now i need to write better, i need to entertain with nothing more than words, i need to skip those pints so that by christmas - say, 2005 - i can pull a camera again. it's a crusher, the blog looks twice as naked as the current picture without pictures, the whole design is made to be anchored by a 640x480 every day.

i disassembled the camera to see if there was anything i could do. it's sitting in the cupboard all terminator, its dead lens poking from naked circuitry when i'm brave enough to open the door. i don't open it often, not even once today, i guess until now i've not been brave enough to admit how much it meant to my world.

i blogged my first five months, way back almost three years ago, without a photo at all. but back then, i cared less what i shared, i held little back. these days, i've learned to hold back a lot of what makes up my everyday life, and i've used colour to make up for visceral absence. i can write better than i have in the last year, or at least i seem to think i can. oh crap, i'm missing spring, the emergence of all the colours of the world.