Filming

I stared through open trees at a horse-riding park in Virginia, where my cousins live, watching a few groups of riders galloping through the trees at full speed. My family had all taken part in an afternoon of riding, although none of them are horse people. If they did choose to ride horses (which they never do) they would sign up for a Western trail ride and be content to file along behind the other horses and probably pass on the opportunity to canter. But here they were, full English saddle, jumping logs through open trails in the park forest all day long. “We always do this,” my brother said.

On the way home I ran into some old film school classmates shooting a movie. A friend who now works as a DOP was directing the film. His girlfriend starred in it. I’d always had a bit of a thing for my friend, and now, seeing his girlfriend running to film a stunt, beautiful and perfect, I felt like I never could have measured up. I felt completely intimidated. I changed my focus to the school environment – the building had been renovated on the inside, leaving the exterior shell intact. The interior contained far more rooms, floors, hallways, staircases, vestibules, grand atriums, etc, than it ever had. I climbed through the building to the top floor, looking at the outside of the historical building and its original carved stone walls. I overheard a commentary about what a valuable architectural treasure the building was, and how important the decision had been to maintain the facade’s integrity.

Outside the building, I stood at the top of a hill parallel to the top floor of the heritage structure. I admired its beauty before turning back to see my friends still filming at the bottom of the hill. I needed to get back down but the hill was slippery and steep. I decided on a whim to try skiing down the pavement in my street shoes. The edges of my soles scraped the asphalt, but the oil slicks kept my momentum up. I successfully navigated my way down the entire paved hill road, hoping my friend would see my incredible skill at managing to not fall flat on my face and even get some good speed using only my shoes, because not only was I having a lot of fun but I was also really proud of myself.

Off-trail Ski Jumping

I was with a bunch of people I’d recently met (earlier on when a bunch of stuff happened that I don’t remember now, except that we all worked together or studied together) and we were hanging out in the forested glades next to some mountain ski hills. The season was pretty much over, ski-wise. The soft spring snow was so thin in places that the mud showed through. No one was really wearing their ski gear anymore – it was all street clothes and sun glasses.

I heard a whooping sound from nearby, followed by the kind of laughter that comes from relief after a close call. I looked over at the people I was with to discover that one of them had ski-jumped over a death-drop crevice from a cliff across the way. Two others had held up a red rope to catch their friend and had planned on catching the jumper at the feet but had caught them elsewhere and saved their lives. One of the older people explained, in a slow-motion replay, how holding the rope across at the feet would have flipped the jumper around in mid-air, causing her to lose her forward momentum, and therefore plunging her head-first down into the crevice below.

I lamented, as the rest of them skied around or climbed to the top of the cliff for a jump, that I didn’t have my camera with me because I wanted to take photos. But I did have a small cheap still film camera, it turned out, so I tried to take some shots with that. The leader in the group thanked me and asked me to get some good ones. We started talking cameras and I ran through a list of every camera I owned, surprised at the length of the list. It was too bad I didn’t have my little Flip camera to take video. I wandered back to the ski hills for a regular run and then back to the city where I lost touch with these people.