I’d like to spend more time here again, sharing words and images in a different format. INSTAGRAM currently feels like a carnival of cheap thrills; a side show where we peek and drool, stuff our faces with sugary treats, wipe traces of sticky fingers on our pant legs as we slip out silently toward the next glowing tent.
I’d like to create without that. I’d like to be able to share without that. Maybe the life we now live will never be so pure and kind as to allow us the space, but I’d like to try to exist there. Or at least create a space where words and images have more merit or impact. Where they can slow down and seep in over time.
So, I am here. As permanently or intermittently as my changing circumstances allow for, as my emotional/mental stability can handle. I have a few photo book visions I’d like to actually start crafting into something tangible and some print sales to get up on this site. In due time, I guess. I’m going to have to learn to be ok with that.
I truly hope you will stick around for a bit and I truly hope the connection offered through this is one that resonates, one that seems worth it.
New chapter, same ache. As much as I want to call it transformation, it may very well begin with death.
It’s been a long time coming and a long time since I have existed in this space, doing self portrait work. It’s not always the most comfortable place for me to be. Sometimes terrifying, actually. Scared to allow myself to be exposed. Scared to allow myself to embrace uncertainty, to sit in postures and feel feels I didn’t know where there, to see myself in pain and shame. To be so deeply sad. To own the ugliness of my actions and words at times.
To ache.
There are so many pivotal changes on this horizon and I feel it can only begin with a long season of darkness. A collapsing into myself, maybe. It is no longer a wallowing in self-pity (which I fully admit I have done at times), but an embrace of my shadows, a choice to feel that darkness in it’s fullest, listen carefully for what it has to teach me.
Who knows how long this lasts? Death, transformation, change, healing? None of it is linear or chronological. And (aside from polaroids), nothing of value I’ve ever created has been instant.