Argh. After struggling to finalize a narrative of last week's trip to Bowling Green and Toledo, I take the easy way out and will post a few pics instead.

I'm not completely backing out of my self-imposed duty to be creative; the pics were taken with the camera in my celphone and -- if not mentioned before -- I like the challenge of working with its tiny size and minimal pixil resolution.

As with most vacations I've taken this year, this was a working trip. As with Florida, Pittsburgh and Denver, I functioned as 'Number Two Banana' for the TIE5 Roadtrip, a show of audience favorites from the first five years of TIE - the International Experimental Cinema Exposition. Last week's destination was to here, one of Ohio's state universities.

My role has been: Be prepared for anything. On this trip I made sure all films were accounted for; served as consultant when one of the films was lost in transit; and was ready with a question when the roundtable discussions lulled. I made sure the laughter flowed easily and often when dealing with our faculty hosts.

The trip was a success.

I've noticed that the mood presented with my photos does not match the mood or presentation of my writing.

(Or do they?)

What I mean is this. The trip was a non-stop social activity: Talking laughing talking talking laughing laughing laughing.

And most of my photos have no people in them.

Maybe some of the photos have a feeling of alienation. Or maybe it is a sense of peace?

On that note, I'll end with photos taken earlier this year.

These final two were taken at this summer's opera rehearsals. I played a waiter at a lavish party and then a party guest who abducts a maiden. (Lavish parties and maiden abductions being two elements that all classic operas seem to have.)

It was the third year I volunteered. It was a beautiful production with a re-casting of the original story into 1930s Italy. The women wore slinky silk gowns and smoked cigarettes in cigarette holders. The men wore Fascist uniforms and drank out of cognac glasses. It was fun.

The last photo is a bit different; it has people in it -- but no faces. For some reason, I like this one best.