Bleach Headaches.

My mind is just buzzing right now. More so because of all the bleach I inhaled this morning. I went into the condemned building across the street, stole some stuff and some pictures. It was so... It was beautiful. Everything in the world will eventually end up like that, decaying, torn apart, furniture cast aside and ceilings caving in under the weight of their years. Everything in there was not so old, but it was all very much full of artifacts of people's lives. Its all been locked up since 2007, but they are just now going through and gutting it. If it was locked up for ten more years, even five, it would all seem so much like pieces of ancient history.

It makes me think about all my things. All my photographs. In a few years, even now for some of my images, I can look back at them as a history of my life. Instead of memoirs, my face is ingrained in a hard drive. My friends, people I know, places I've been, they're all logged and filed, gathering dust, waiting to be rediscovered, maybe deleted. What is a life without that repeated rediscovery?

I'm gathering all these images, so someday, someone will look back through them and recreate my life, just as I did when I snuck into attics and basements of relatives houses and rumaged through their boxes. Just like me when I poured over books gathered over the years and wondered who's tastes brought these titles togther.

Someday I'll be a condemned building, and someone will go through my stuff and make it part of their own life and memory.

Hidden

Full view is probably going to make this easier to understand. For the sake of my handwriting I'm putting the lyrics here.

Hidden:

Erupting from myself
The animal inside
Coiled and wrapped within
The place I hid inside.
Cactus skin : On fire
As I recite my hymn.
Taken all this time,
Still you will not see this monster
that peers out,
This thing
I call me.

Me.

Crawl out of my mouth
And kiss the sky.
Oh monster of mine,

You shouldn't have to hide.

By: Brittanie Jones

Just don't know what to do.

My life is full of circles and mirrors. I faced my fear of the ocean's waves, and I faced my fear of a person who was trying to control me. In the end, both just washed over. I felt the force of them from beneath the water, a rippling, a crushing force over my back. Pulling at my hair, my clothes, my soul. There was terror, and I stood firm. Then I danced in the freedom of the emptiness behind the breakers. The sweet release of buoyancy. Surrender to the cold contours of pure solitude that enveloped me.

This instant, this feeling of acceptance, the feeling that, like the waves, some things will just happen. You can't stop its force, only flow with it, dive beneath it.

I just want to be happy. And its so tough, because it makes me happy when I make other people happy. Hence the circles and mirrors involved in my life.

I feel like I started this year of my life off right, despite what's happened since I came home to the city. I followed my heart. I spent time with my best friend, the person whom I would do everything for and who I know would do the same for me. I spent time with my family, who I love despite their quirks. I went to a bar two blocks from where I was borne to have my first legal drink at midnight. I spent a beautiful time in a room almost exactly like the one I grew up in. I walked the paths of my younger years, I watched the trees dance, and I felt the wind sing to my heart just as it used to. I stood face to face with the first person to cause my heart real pain, and I was able to smile and walk away.

Then I came home and cut out part of my life that everyone around me has seen cause me pain for almost a year. It was like all the good things were a pillow that lifted me up, cushioning me, and preparing me to face down the end of something with strength, with calmness, and without breaking down. All these spiritual things fortified me, even though they wouldn't be religion to anyone else. Its really going to stick this time. I've done it in such a way that it can never be taken back. And I've come face to face with the knowledge that, as I move on in life, things can never be the same for me.

I'll never let them be the same.

Cherry Fu

www.meetcherryfu.com

Alicia

practing light stuff

Self Portrait Splurge

I can't help it.