looking out

From Ross Gay’s Book of Delights

_______________

I suppose I could spend time theorizing how it is that people are not bad to each other, but that's really not the point. The point is that in almost every instance of our lives, our social lives, we are, if we pay attention, in the midst of an almost constant, if subtle, caretaking.

Holding open doors. Offering elbows at crosswalks.

Letting someone else go first. Helping with the heavy bags. Reaching what's too high, or what's been dropped.

Pulling someone back to their feet. Stopping at the car wreck, at the struck dog. The alternating merge, also known as the zipper. This caretaking is our default mode and it's always a lie that convinces us to act or believe otherwise. Always.

(Mar. 2)

poetry & photography

“I see poetry as the medium most similar to photography… or at least the photography I pursue. Like poetry, photography is rarely successful with narrative. What is essential is the ‘voice’ (or ‘eye’) and the way this voice pieces together fragments to make something tenuously whole and beautiful.”

Alec Soth

Marco Polo

I ran into my friend Mark in Banff while I was making my way out to Alaska. Completely randomly, he happened to be there with his family on a vacation. His family offered up their spare bed for a couple nights (the first real bed I’d had in a month) and fed me good. Mark’s soon-to-be Brother-in-law is a filmmaker and we geeked out over camera stuff together. Mark and I got to go on a nice long hike together, shooting photos, building cairns, and watching an 800lb grizzly sniff around across the stream. I’m forever grateful for the hospitality that his family offered me, and the company they provided on a long solo journey.

Gratitude 3/17/23

Grateful that it’s the end of my first week back and that I got through it despite being sick. Grateful that we always get through it, although we never think we will. Grateful for the cold oat straw infusion that is infusing the air, water, and sun of the earth into me. Grateful for The Book of Delights and going out of one’s way to find delightful moments (like picking up this book for 4 minutes each morning). Grateful to wake up to a clean kitchen where my countertops are clean. My kitchen table is a still-life of my mind— last night it had bills, 1099s, Tupperware, and flower petals. Today it is empty. Grateful to get asked out on a date this weekend and to share in good food. Grateful to be in love with the woman who’s taking me on that date (she knows, it’s not a secret). Grateful to breathe, grateful to be here. Grateful to feel free.

how to bear the unbearable

“To be broken is no reason to see all things as broken. This is the trick to staying well, isn’t it: to feel the sun even in the dark. To not lose the truth of things when they are out of view. To grow just the same. To know there is still water, even when we are thirsty. To know there is still love, even when we are lonely. To know there is still peace, even when we are suffering."

-Mark Nepo

finding it again

I am always drawn to the skaters. Certainly there’s a nostalgic pull, a remembrance of my teenage years where, for the first time, I was allowed to roam the streets with friends or escape into my own world. But there’s something semi-sacred happening as well. A loosening of the body. A dramatic movement of the limbs as one’s center of gravity hurls forward. The body’s adjustments in the name of balance. The humbling (a pebble once sent me so hard into the concrete I thought I cracked my hip).

It’s a dance, truly, and not a type of vulnerability that’s normally seen in adolescent teenage boys. Skateboard Photography is it’s own unique subsection of Street Photography. It’s random, but it’s also a performance. It’s mostly failures. It’s gritty. It’s a challenge against one’s self, and yet it’s a community. An outcasted community. Because who in their right mind would choose to sacrifice balance, for the mere sake of finding it again. Who would trust themselves that much?

Or maybe I just like photographing people who are finding it again.