Down Down Under the Earth

In the process of remodeling my website, I sorted through some archives. I've been thinking of Athens lately, maybe feeling too fixed in the life I have here in Chicago, which in turn makes me feel a little old and a little sad. I've been graduated for three years this week, which is totally mind-blowing in the way that it feels like so much longer.

My grandma is moving out of her house this weekend -- the house where she lived for 45 years. My dad grew up there, and because my parents were either both working or just generally unavailable and ill-equipped most of the time, I grew up there, too. And without me even getting to say goodbye in person, it's all gone, and not on happy terms. Growing up for me has meant gradually witnessing all the fixtures of my childhood slipping away into the deep and dark distance where I can't get to them. The bank foreclosed on my childhood home right after I graduated high school, and for four years of college I returned to my hometown and slept in a big, cold house that never needed to be home. Right after college my parents were forced to move again. I haven't been back to my hometown many times since. There's no place for my things -- no bedroom and no bed for a bedroom, even. Just random and lost relics of my youth, shoved in crates and boxes and stacked on the front porch.

It seems like we're always trying to go back to the places we've been. It's important to feel like the places are still intact, patiently waiting for us when we're ready to confront them. Maybe we're looking for comfort or resolution. Maybe we always feel estranged from the love we had and the time we let waste away feeling like we had all the time we needed. Or maybe we're always running away to start over and stake our claim on a life that never feels any different.

That's All I Wanted

from what feels like the ancient archives, Marc in November 2010

Autumn in Athens, 2009

Paying homage for no reason in particular.

Time, It's a Crooked Bow

In time you need to learn, to love
The ebb just like the flow
Grab hold of your bootstraps, and pull like hell
Until gravity feels sorry for you, and lets you go
As if you lack the proper chemicals to know
The way it felt the last time you let yourself fall this low
- Andrew Bird

A Matter of Perspective

I am learning to live without desire. This brings me to the doorway of uncharted territory. They say the only unexplored area left on earth is the 140 million square miles of the ocean floor. All things considered, I find this hard to believe.

Most of what we think is essential to our survival has been blown out of proportion. I used to think I would die if I couldn't dance. I have finally agreed to stop wanting what I can't have. Everywhere I go, the earth seems to be tilting away from me. If the sun were the size of a basketball, then the earth would be the head of a pin.

I am learning to live with the paradox that the horizon, when I finally get there, is not likely to be at all the way I pictured it.

There must be more to life than love. There must be worse things than being alone. Perhaps the trick is to remember that even the angles and shadows of a small empty room must operate according to the protocol of perspective. Examine the absolute inertia of corners where all three right angles must converge.

From my kitchen window I can see brick houses, yellow tulips, my neighbor's pink flamingo, and a blue car traveling north. I can even see the back of an apartment building three blocks over. I can see a small brown bird in a big green tree. I can see those many electrified wires by which we are all connected to each other and to the rest of the world. But I cannot catch even a glimpse of the horizon from here.

- Diane Schoemperlen

Where Was I

"Life would be infinitely happier if we could only be born at the age of eighty and gradually approach eighteen."
- Mark Twain

There's the kitchen. I spent the last year falling in and out of love with the water stained table, the warped linoleum tiles, the cobwebs in the corners, the rows of empty wine bottles, the rumbly washing machine, and the angsty faucet, screaming like a newborn. For most of twenty-two, I entertained guests with fried egg sandwiches and cups of coffee. Plates of re-heated spaghetti and pieces of cold pizza and stir fry over brown rice and homemade mashed potatoes and pools of melting ice cream and wheat toast with butter and tortilla chips and salsa and hot tea with milk and sugar and beer from the back of the fridge. Thanksgiving dinner, pumpkin guts, candy canes, birthday cake, wrapping paper, sappy cards, soggy Kleenex, junk from the bottom of my purse, junk from the bottom of my heart. Breakfast in silence. I look down into my cereal bowl, tears splashing into my Raisin Bran. Dinner with laughter and happily cramping bellies after drowsy days of snow. Drunk and nauseous, whining incoherently for my bed, for a glass of water, for a hug. Grocery lists and sticky notes and Oprah Magazine and Victoria's Secret catalogues and utility bills that I want to shred apart with my teeth. In February, I hated the plastic coating disallowing me a clear view of the outside world. In June, I sat and watched the early morning sun pour in through the glass, leaking all over the floor. I wrote a letter that I never sent. I took out the trash in contempt. I overloaded the dishwasher. I put my face down on the table, my cheek cool against the smooth wood, and listened for the ocean waves to sweep us up and away. I held your hand and told you it would be alright; and it was -- and it is, but it isn't the same.

"What's too far?" said he. "Where you are," said she.

(words by photographer Rodney Smith)

You see, to be a photographer requires an openness and an ability to look deep into someone’s eyes, to regard them with care and affection, and to ultimately fall madly in love with them. There is some discrimination to this, but as I usually choose my subjects, for the most part, it is uncontrollable.

It begins with attraction, and ends with an intimate knowledge of their soul. It involves letting them speak to me, watching carefully, and finding their specialness.

With men, this seems not to be a problem. They quickly become like good friends and confidants. We are able to laugh together, and enjoy each other’s company, but for women (for me), this is a different matter.

I find myself pulled in, looking ever more closely, finding their strength, their delicacy, and their beauty. If they are willing to return the gaze, the game is afoot.

In order to succeed, I must slowly disrobe my emotions. I must slowly unveil my feelings, and for the portrait to be successful, she must be willing to do the same. There is a far greater intimacy exposed, although not necessarily in the touch. There is a connection, an openness, an ability to reveal both of ourselves completely, with all our strengths and vulnerabilities.

This is a very difficult thing to do, both for me, and for her. It is what distinguishes greatness from mediocrity. How far you are willing to emotionally travel is as important as your talent.

To succeed, we must fall in love, take the pictures, and then slowly take deep breaths, realizing who we are, and walk slowly away from the edge.

Love

I have been thinking about permanence a lot lately. When you're young, I suppose, you treat relationships poorly. Maybe you always do this. I have tried earnestly to set my life right, to make clear my feelings and intentions, but even I have been careless in showing true love and appreciation. You fight with your parents. You are unfair to your friends. You are painfully casual with your lovers. You hold back. You take love for granted... and other people, because, at times, it is less messy to just cut everyone out. It feels like an accomplishment to go it alone. And you do this because, I guess, you assume you have time to come back around and, say, fix it all, or at least tell everyone how you really feel... what they really mean. Maybe we do have time to sort everything out. Maybe we don't.

I hate saying goodbye to love. I am scared to be alone. Most people will not admit this to you. And most people will say: "You start over. You meet new people. You'll be fine." I guess those statements bother me because they seem to establish people as temporary accessories to our lives. And though temporary is the mode of life, I don't want to treat other people that way.

I can make all of the most beautiful photographs in the world... and that can be my sort of permanence. As photographers, we treasure moments and capture whatever moves our hearts. And there aren't any rules. Most of the time, we make these photographs for ourselves. But what inspires us to keep going? Who do we look to to see the world in a new way? I think one of the only things that has kept me going through it is love... and falling in love has filled my life with beautiful photographs. I have a life that has been, in the past year especially, heavily documented. These photographs remind me that, even on a bad day, someone thought I was special enough to take my picture. I look through this blog. I've only had it a year. Most of my photographs are of the same few people. Maybe that is all I've really seen. Maybe, more than the flowers and the birds and the sweeping landscapes of Southeast Ohio, that is all I've really cared about.

I think I might've lost the point of photography if it isn't to share love. If your goal is to tell a story, what about the story of your own life? I didn't really have a point of view until I started really seeing what was right in front of me. The world is beautiful. Dare I say, it is people who make it so.

I am here. At some uncertain time in the world, I won't be. "If you love someone... never let them go," you say. I realize that an online blog hardly seems like the place for this, but why not? Why do we take these photographs? And what is our point in sharing them? What do we hope for, in our own lives, by taking pictures? I look at photo blogs everyday. Now, perhaps, you're looking at mine.

Maybe I have found comfort in the photographs beyond what they really are. I am young. Life is in flux. But I am someone... I have something to offer. These photographs are the stories of the people that I love. That, beyond whatever my education and skills profess, is what matters to me. It has defined me. I absolutely could go nowhere without love to give me all of my reasons. No matter my eventual profession, I care about using my craft and my gift as a communicator, in whatever form, to share and experience something so rare, yet so profound, it stops me... wherever I am, whatever my worries.