If there were another time of day to take a photo, I wouldn’t know it.
Our former neighbor Robby showed us how to get up on the roof our building about a week before we moved out. We would have spent many more evenings up there had we known sooner.
27
This is a theme that’s persisted in my life for as long as I can remember, but it was only a few years ago that I started to recognize my natural disposition as a recluse. I realized that other people were more open and that I was a bit more internal. That thought really hit me about two years ago, just before my 25th birthday. At that time in my life I was completely bored and looking for *something*. After months of restlessness, I made a mid-year resolution to “share more.” (I’ve often made birthday resolutions, as opposed to New Years resolutions. Having the landmark as my birthday has always felt more personal, and there’s something about the spring we all associated with new beginnings.)
Sharing more not only brought me in touch with a different side of myself, but of a different side of my relationships, as well. It led to an emotional growth spurt, change of careers and better sense of my rank in the world. Reflecting two years back, I realize I was a wholly different person then; I was completely cracked open, an effort of my own making. I needed a change and I found it.
Now, I’m not sure that I am quite comfortable (bored) enough with my current surroundings to propel myself into that same state of openness, but it is something I would like to challenge myself with again in the future. Even if I don’t act on it again in the year ahead, I recognize when I close myself off now more than I did a few years ago, and that in it if itself seems notable.
There’s no pressing “thing” I hope to change in my 27th year and it feels...weird. When I turned 25, my resolution seemed like an obvious challenge to undertake. And now, with my early twenties under my belt, I’ve turned just about every coin of my personality over and examined both sides. There is a persisting contentment I feel approaching this birthday that I haven’t felt before, and I’ve resigned myself to riding the smooth water of that wave while it lasts, resisting the impulse to make a change.
I’ve always associated nice feelings with getting older and hope that sentiment sticks around. I feel more like the self I was a year ago than I have on any other birthday. That said, I hope to stay in the general realm of who I am today and was then, while remaining open to new experiences in this next year as I spin around the sun.
anthem
I’ve edited the content of this post a couple times. I keep thinking I’ve gotten my anthem right, but I read it a few days later and what I’ve written no longer fits. Regardless of if I am able to find the right words, it does seem fitting that I would have some sort of anthem that strings throughout my days. I think the sentiment is always the same, it’s just the words that are different. My anthem extends beyond the walls of words I suppose. It’s a feeling, it’s actionable, it’s a color.
self doubt
We all have that one thing that feels inexplicably “ours.” For me that thing is self doubt. It is the most reoccurring theme in my life. I wish I could claim something more positive or honorable, but truthfully I doubt myself more than anything else I do. Sometimes it is subliminal, while other times doubt is the only thing I can hear. This is not to say that I am not out there doing shit, that I am just wallowing; but, let it be clear, I do it all with this loyal friend by my side. In the bouts of this familiar negative self talk, saying rational, logical facts and listing all the quantifiable things I have accomplished fall on deaf ears.
Maybe one day I’ll look back on this old friend, self doubt, and not know who she is, but ever since I can remember she has been loyally by my side.
photo taken by Miriam. unintentional light leak by me. on expired film.
self history
I want to write something now so I have something beautiful to read later.
maisie and miriam in august
two summers in a row now I’ve put off editing the photos I took then until the fall. reflecting back to life in ohio.
fable
fairytales and fables with Alison in Triberg
paris in pink
late june in paris. colored in pink with expired (1992) slide film.
summer solstice
a lonesome, but beautiful celebration of long days in Annecy, France.
comfort
I think I am on the other side of the most substantial bout of inspiration I have ever experienced in my life. I fear that what has just passed will also serve to be the biggest bout of inspiration I shall ever receive; that what I worked through in my 25th year, and the conclusions that I landed on will in fact be the very most pivotal moments of my life. period. There is no way to hide that I have turned my life on its head within the past 12 months. I devised a way to change careers, I met a loving partner, I started taking classes again, I started teaching a whole different type of class....
Through all of this change, though it was completely necessary, I worry I will have nothing left to rewrite in the year ahead. I have simply changed everything about the way I conduct my life in the past 12 months, so much so, that I am concerned there is nothing left to change.
I also worry that I am too comfortable with change. Change is my comfort zone. What happens if the changes I have made this year don't stick? How will I continue to evolve and incorporate my new life into the equation? My fears are not that of change, but of stagnation.
seeing the wind
in march, Anthony and I drove down to the north carolina mountains. the trip began with a blizzard as we cautiously wound through appalachian highways. at first, we marveled at the beautiful snow covered trees in west virginia, not knowing what laid ahead; however soon, we were driving 30 miles an hour and wondered how the conditions kept getting worse. we eventually arrived in boone, nc to three inches of snow coating the ground with it still coming down. the next morning, we drove into pisgah national forest through five inches of snow and little hope that we would be able to camp at all. after some setbacks (i.e. driving a honda fit on snowy gravel roads), we eventually made it to the trail head. though we weren't able to hike in as far as we had planned given our late start, we were still blown away by the trail we covered.
the wind struck me most about the hike. it was loud and relentless; you could see it rustling the trees before you felt it. and now looking back on the photos I shot, I am again able to see the effects of wind. the few trees that were able to out-fight the gusts clung to the exposed face of the mountain and show what years of rugged conditions look like. it felt natural to call that mountain home for a night, to experience a part of the earth where humans don't live.
meet in the middle
In the white-washed world of western yoga (you see, I can't just simply say, "in yoga" because this experience can't possibly be yoga's purest form), there is a lot of talk about the present. I think this obsession with the present while we are on our mats is a simple overreaction to the times we live in: they are fast-paced, future-focused, and tell us to fuck our past. While I understand the importance of being present, it is equally imperative to make peace with our past and acknowledge the present moment is truly all we have as we work for the future. We must know and respect that our past has in some way informed our present, and our present will in some way inform our future.
These thoughts come to me with the start of a new year--a jarring time where one foot is in the past, reflecting on the highs and lows of another year passed, and one foot is in the future, creating plans that will never see the light of day. We forget that with one foot behind us, counting every embarrassing thing we said in 2017, and one foot out ahead of us, agonizing over every goal we've set out to achieve, we a little bit even out--we find ourselves in the center of our mat, the present. Regardless of whether we are still going to the gym five months from now, I think the biggest achievement is that we have taken a second to let our previous experience and future expectations jolt us into acting in the moment.
In some abstract way this balance of past+future=present mimics my feelings when looking at a Rorschach painting. Perfectly symmetrical, sending identical information to both eyes and both sides of the brain, but creating an entirely new picture had both halves been separate. Some kind of absolute lies in the middle of these famous works; the left has informed the right, and the right the left, leaving no longer two halves but one complete picture and a sense of ordered chaos.
moons ago
erin, maisie and miriam moons ago (august)
certain nights
there are these certain nights, where I've put in the whole of the work for the day. and all day it felt like the grind, and I was maybe reluctant to do the day, but then the night happens. all the work is over, and I never set out to 'achieve' this feeling, but I am hit, slammed, overcome by gratitude. funny too that this feeling of fortune doesn't have much at all to do with the work, but rather with the people in my life who I cherish.
transformation, a season
the time in between taking a photo and seeing a photo holds many things. sometimes that space is just a couple days, other times a whole season has come and gone and a layer of me shed, flushed down the drain along with the film's chemicals. the latter is the case here. I took these photos in may, it's now nearly september. I knew a different person would return from that time in the woods, I just wasn't quite sure how she would get here.
I'm crying as I write this post. it feels like growing up. for every one sad tear, there is one shed for fear, one shed for hope and another for relief. never one to shy away from change, I've turned my life into a new thing this summer. full speed ahead, don't care to look back, but now I force myself to think about every little piece of life that passed through my senses and took me along for the ride during this time in between. I now carve out an evening (a life) to reflect on how I could have even managed to get to this moment.
I'll always come back to nature to learn and remember where I come from. to shut up for a minute and listen to swaying trees and to hear about my brother's life on a trail miles up a mountain. to watch the eternal fearlessness of my brother steer him down a path no one else sees. to listen to my father share about how he's made his dreams come true. and to touch my mother in a compassionate exchange. together basking in the glory of intentional human experience in five very separate, but similar ways. sharing blood in our quest for transformation, carrying each other along the way. I come back to family and find comfort knowing we are all lost in the same way.
reminder
in a world of so many opinions, I'll let these impromptu self portraits serve as a reminder that the loudest voice in my world should be my own
a thought story
when current events weigh heavy and loom in the air we breath, every question comes to mind. I wander through feelings of anger, confusion, disappointment and guilt. as I continue down my trail of thoughts, I pass that indication of awareness and acknowledge that through this tragic moment truth has been illuminated. I pause and remind myself that truth is power; that by knowing the true thought processes of others, we can continue to sharpen our tools to better harness our power.
the second trail marker is more puzzling and speaks to how I will act on that awareness. my tools for action are different from yours, and the diversity in the methods we leverage are an asset to our fight. your weapon is a protest demonstration, a run for city council, a facebook post, a sign in your front yard. and, our weapons may change depending on the day and subject under fire. this blog feels like the most useful tool for me at the moment; a minuscule contribution, but not nothing.
Tyree Guyton's weapon is his art. Guyton is the mind and artist behind Detroit's Heidelberg Project, a battle in the war on urban blight. This work is an example of fighting with the tools of hope and empowerment, as opposed to anger and violence. From my few moments walking through those couple city blocks, I found that his work enabled people walking on separate paths to intersect for a brief moment; a true artistic feat.
"When you come to the Heidelberg Project I want you to think-really think! My art is a medicine for the community. You can’t heal the land until you heal the minds of the people."
watermelon daydream
midsummer shooting, wide awake and dreaming
I am grateful that with the help of my friends and our collective imagination and creativity, we can revisit the lives that used to be ours. it was a life spent rummaging through the dress-up bin and eating ice cream cones with rainbow sprinkles. growing up is a complicated mess of a thing; for an evening at least it didn't feel inevitable.
all the love and more for the women in these photographs. they inspire me, and through their laughter and honesty I stay present in every moment we share together <3
ruth
outtakes from a shoot for Creative Babes' Babes of Summer show up at Blockfort through July 2017.
woman is a word
I'm only an image of what you see.
You don't know me.
I'm only a figure if you can see my frame.
Fire with no flame.
I'm only a struggle if I get in your way.
You made the road, made the road one-way.
I'm only a woman if woman is a word.
You don't know me.
(words that are not mine. select lyrics from Woman is a Word by Empress Of.)