Infinite space

I could spend all my time alone, inside my head. Stopping and slowly smelling, discovering every curl of every bloom of every idea that pushes through the fleshy undergrowth. I could walk through the infinite space of a feeling, testing out the words to describe it by rolling them around my mouth like marbles. Left to my own devices, I could wander there and never come up for breath. Buried deep, secrets to make the heart burst, the mind shatter, the voices howl, whisper, mutter, moan. I could keep them company. Find the secrets to make the heart whole again, piece the mind back together and soothe the voices to silence.

I could paint the underside of my skin forest green, my ribcage a stone gray, my hands a deep vermillion. I could obsess over the memories of places I’ve never been before. That time we never floated on the mist shrouded lake, flame torches in our hands with honour on our lips and murder in our hearts. That time you never said you loved me and meant it.

All this in infinite space, alone, inside my head.

What it means

To be free.

I remember being young. Nosed pressed up against the glass. Breathing mist. Heart beating in earnest as I imagined the myriad of lives and adventures to be had beyond the twisted sycamore trees, past the monopoly houses of the burbs, track-suited moms with their porn star nails (it was the 90’s). I would feel my nose itch as the tears pushed through. “Please get me out of here”, I prayed. The tiles were cold beneath my thighs as I sat cross-legged on the floor, pushed as close against the outside as I could, eyes half-mast and dreaming. Time spent at my bedroom window.

My dreams were extrapolated fragments taken from Hollywood films, novels. Lives made fiction by their authors, ensnaring me nonetheless in their ideas of a world filled with long roads made for exploring and young men with a fire beneath their feet and questions in their hearts.

All road trips have a beginning and this is mine.

California, USA | July, 2011

Singularity

A singularity. Our personal universes, wholly consuming, vast beyond perception, revolutions performed around a single axis – I.

I am amazed at the haze, opaque nothingness that separates my world from yours. Thick like a forest fire. We stand parallel but unable to see what the other sees. Is that why photography never gets old? Is that why we write? A transference of thought and vision… A continuous and futile journey towards the mind and experiences of our parallel and eternally separate companions.

What if we stopped? Would I forget that there was another way to see the world? Would I feel like my own perspectives were less real? Temporal, fleeting as the mortal coil. Traversing our life spans, each wrapped in our own cloaks of smoky trials and tribulations, unable to cross over, reach out and touch the other.

Yosemite, CA

July | 2011

Road trip journaling

Slide out of the city on those hot, sticky wheels. Grey ribbon of road and a blue sky so bright it seems white. Throw your head back and howl at the freedom of a horizon unencumbered. Marvel at the little things, the perfect mathematics of cumulus clouds and wheat. Bare your skin to the sun and be lost for a while in a place that doesn’t belong to you. Fall exhausted in a heap at the end.

Flight distance

you came too close and broached
the line I drew in the sand
came into flight distance
forced me back

Submerge

I know these people. I know their lives. Photojournalists, photographers, visual story-tellers, however you want to put it, they see life, often the darker side, and bring it to the rest of those who do not travel and do not see.

The consequence is a solitude and a dark shadow that flits within the dim retina of their eyes. The solemn Onlooker. Submerged beneath the surface of raucous laughter, devil-may-care attitudes and sunlit smiles are memories that can’t be let go of. Vast journeys that sear the skin and the appraisal of a thousand strangers, locked in their own battles and greeting the Onlooker as they win trust and weave intricately beneath the surface… a poem, a story, an idea… with images.

FLASH

Objects in the night. Running feet. Rapid fire heartbeats.

Charlottesville, Virginia

PM

My wanderings in the PM.

(A lonely place to find yourself)

Somewhere along the Dan Shui River, Taiwan.

AM

My parents recently bought a holiday apartment in Taiwan somewhere along the Dan Shui river.

I’ve called it “A lonely place to find yourself”.

My wanderings in the AM.

 

Modern Romance

Baby I’m afraid, of a lot of things but
I ain’t scared of lovin’ you
Baby I know you’re afraid of a lot of things but
Don’t be scared of love, ’cause

People will say all kinds of things
that don’t mean a damn to me, ’cause
All I see, is what’s in front of me, that’s you

Well I’ve been dragged all over the place
I’ve taken hits time just don’t erase
And baby I can see that you’ve been fucked with too
That don’t mean your lovin days are through, ’cause

People will say, all kinds of things
that don’t mean a damn to me, ’cause
all I see, is what’s in front of me, that’s you
Well I maybe just a fool, but I know you’re just as cool
And cool kids, they belong together.

~ lyric excerpt from “Modern Romance” by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs