"To exist is to change, to change is to mature, to mature is to go on creating oneself endlessly." – Henri Bergson
The breeze is blowing, the rain is tapping, life is happening, and the time has come to get reflective. Or ramble clumsily.
One year. One year can go by in a blink. One lifetime can happen in one year. It is amazing how much one year can change you, your being, your outlook, your personhood, and yet go by so damn quickly.
This time last year I was living out of a box in New York City. I moved on from tripping through city streets to walking through snowy woods in silence and milking cows in Vermont, lived in an ex-hippy commune in the woods of Athens, understood what it meant to feel home, lost love, gained love, felt humanity, felt the world turn, felt awake, felt dreams, felt high and stared into solitude. It has been a year of drifting into quietude and explosive moments to break the silence, always when the time was right. It has been a year to let go. It has been a year to make peace. Heaviness and loss are some of the best lessons in life, I’ve found.
As a young photographer… or artist… (these words seem shallow.) What is a better way to say it? As a human who desires to share something, something beautiful, something meaningful, and has chosen try visually.. This year has been a whirlwind. There have been so many moments where I have asked myself “why am I doing this?” so many moments of self-deprecation, so many moments of thinking I’ve found peace and then on the drop of a dime feeling overwhelmingly and perpetually not good enough, like a waste of everyone’s time. Fear.
These last few months I’ve been quiet, sinking back into the home within myself, the home I knew before, the home I know now, and most importantly the home within others. Layers lift all the time that I didn’t know where still there. I feel the page turning and the new chapter beginning, and in my heart I say Yes Life. Yes. With open arms, yes. As a woman, as a child, as a spirit, as an artist, I will walk boldly into the future. As a human with a camera, who is to say – what is good enough, what is right, and et cetera… We must be bold. Allow the world to change you and you can begin the change the world around you. Let there be hope. Let there be love. And maybe, if you are lucky, it can flow through you somehow in your photographs. Here’s to being alive. There is nothing to be but thankful. There is nowhere to be but here, now. And there is nowhere to go but forward.
So, “…my left foot says “Glory,” and my right foot says “Amen.” – Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
olivia, moonlight, trees.
town meeting, vermont. (valley news)
blizzard at the atlantic, maine.
somewhere in new hampshire.
self portrait at window. hartland, vermont.
noah's car. burr oak lake parking lot. athens, ohio.
cameron with bubbles at the cabin.
late at night outside of my bedroom.
allegheny mountains.
jenna. allegheny mountains, pennsylvania.
dan laughing. athens, ohio.
zena. summer.
unnatural nature.
east village. flesh.
cheeseburger in the sky. coney island.
noah and ryan. burr oak lake.
mother in the secret garden. chatham, ohio.
welcome home.
johnny and larry.
the giving tree.
golden afternoon. athens, ohio.
sophia.
ryan at strouds run lake.
american escape.
celestial.
caught star. nyc.
first snow. athens, ohio.
