I haven't updated this in quite a while, but life is pretty different since my last post. I've had my usual ups and downs. Surviving as an adult is harder than it looks. But we gotta hold on to what we've got, it doesn't make a difference if we make it or not...

I had to :3

Anyway, I thought I'd just give a little precursor to the photo dump that may be happening in the next few weeks.

Proud Decay

Over the last year, I have tapped into a very textural vein in my work. Obsession with layering and combining these textures has led me to taking targeted images. As I began building an archive of these degraded, rough, tactile photographs, I started thinking about what texture means to me. I realized that the aspect of texture that I enjoy so much is the way an object’s surface displays the passing of time. A building can show how it has survived hardships through its’ marred exterior just as a scar or mark on the human body can. The hand of the world presses into everything, leaving its impression on surfaces and objects as they interact with the sands of the hourglass.

Particularly in my new town, Elmira, the passing of time in the textures and landscapes of buildings and objects can be plainly read. I don’t know anything about the history of this place, I have only interacted with its houses, its streets, and its people, crafting my own ideas of its past as I wander the once-proud streets. Sprawling townhouses with decorative gingerbread accents slowly melt into the ground, paint chips flaking like old scales from the carefully constructed facades.

Every time I mention to a long term resident of Elmira that I relocated here by choice, I get strange looks, guffaws, and the inevitable question: Why? I haven’t spoken to anyone that seems genuinely proud to live here. The times seem to have beaten them. They appear just like those buildings, once raised up with high hopes and dreams, bolstered up with balustrades of hard upbringings, now with the texture of time worn into their souls.

Elmira, NY

Soft spot for 18% Grey

Some of my favorite beasties are 18% grey. Does that make me too into photography?

Inspiration

Find it, reaching upwards.

Coming now into this new place, this new life, startlingly brings to focus the vastness and infinite nature of living. This void is empty, like each way that I look, I have no options, but yet I have all options at once. I am the center point, from which I can walk in any direction, yet there are so few directions that I want to start stepping towards.

And I hate the feeling of being pushed. Go this way, do that thing. But how is there a way to exist in this world without it? There are no gentle mentors for me. I don't know how to seek them out, how to find them. My role models are lofty and far off, dreams of the unattainable. Seeding in me now are only sneers at the inequality of the world. Its like I've reached that point of knowing too much, with no direction on how to employ that knowledge.

Its human nature to need something to cling to. What if I had just kept on clinging to the creeds of my childhood? Would I be happier now? What have I really learned in all this time? I've filed away all these things, but nothing useful. I might have attained the few goals I had through sheer inertia. A snowball of a human being, absorbing things into my cold shell before crash landing at some far away basin.

Dreams of Shrines

I am walking down a hallway in the house that I have never been down before. It is creaky and dusty. I open a red wood door. the roof is slanted, there are cobwebs dusting down from the ceiling. My perception of time slows to a crawl. I see a rat trap. A rat walks over it a few times, sniffing, not touching the trigger. At the last second, his toe brushes against the right spot and his neck is trapped inside. I look up and away, trying to escape the sight briefly. My grandfather's name is on the wall. The rest of the room is dark and unused. This area is bright and well kept. His name is hung from those strings you can get that usually say "Happy Birthday" or "Congratulations". There are some objects on a low shelf against the wall. I think one of them is a box, but I can't remember what the other things are. I begin to clean the rest of the room. When I look up from my broom, I am cleaning something much bigger. I can't remember what happened after that.

Frustrations Exposed in Dreaming

I am a man in this dream, a doctor. Another doctor needs my help in order to make a man's death appear to be of natural causes. I am laying on a small hill, amoung a stand of autumn trees. Down the slope a short distance is a lake, large enough to have its own waves. There are three people swimming in this lake, a man and two women, a blonde and a thin brunette. Observing them, I pick up a brilliant red leaf, which has two holes in it. I let it rest on my face, and it contours to me, becomes the most beautiful and elegant mask. Through this mask I watch as the brunette swims further and further out, desperate and frantic almost in her motions, popping to the surface to take the briefest of breaths. The man is chasing her, he is more clumsy. He is getting tired. The blonde watches, smiling at me out of the corner of her eye. The man begins to drown, and the brunette leaves him. I am frozen in observance by the mask, it is a window behind which I am trapped. I retreat to my room. I become the brunette. The man I was is my lover. We are very in love. The blonde is trying to seduce my man. I come home and find her sleeping on our couch. She claims it is hers, that this is her home, not mine. I drag her from the room to the hallway by her hair. I smash her face into the concrete over and over again, feeling in myself the frustration of the man at the blondes psychotic obsession with him, and my own anger at her presumptions of the two of us. Her head bounces up and down on the concrete, I am mashing her face into mush, using her hair as leverage, smashing until my arms are so tired that I am forced to wake up.