know • grow • transform • expand
on wednesday, after a mere 20 inches of snow blanketed denver in the most glorious way, the storm broke, and as if by some deep and primal calling, we all emerged from our warm cocoons and into the wilds. i took out one of my all time favorite camera accessories: my lensbaby. true love.
the snow swirls, the tea steeps, and i’m wrapped in the cozy sounds of sinatra’s velvety croons emanating from my grandparents’ vinyl. i close my eyes and conjure up the joy of their 5 o’clock ritual. of husbands and wives and sisters and brothers gathered together and celebrating life. scotch splashing, ice cubes tinkling, as they glide merrily across their newly installed and oh-so-trendy linoleum floor with their highball glasses filled all-too-generously.
papa in his monogrammed golf shirt. gama, in her smart red nails and superbly chic polyester suit and pearls, carefully selects another cigarette from her case, and with a flick of her floral brass cloisonné bic, she inhales relief. tricks are won, tales are told, ivories are tickled, and everyone’s glasses and hearts and bellies remain generously full. they. are. living.
and with a drop of the needle, i’m living right here, right there with ‘em.
fierce is the longing for my home place,
an intangible ache marrow-deep.
shaped by her fields and her bayous,
her mysteries and misfits and beasts.
borne of her soil,
married to her seasons,
my rhythms shift and change
in her absence.
her likeness haunts me,
ablaze in the kaleidoscope of colors at sundown
or the song of the red-winged blackbird.
a hollow yearning swells,
and i cry out into the void.
desperate
to see the last glorious improbable light
of a delta day
bathe the alluvial plain
with shades of me.
“perhaps all the snow in the world will fall, burying everything, such silence, and then i will come out of it in the spring, different, cleaner, not born again so much as built up.”
-rick bass, winter
i’ve always marveled at birds on a wire.
envious how they float
just above this rational world.
do they mourn our cluttered lives?
are they saddened by our cages?
outraged at our tail-chasing?
do i alone dream
of being luminous?
vibrant and tender and open
to the richest depths.
with no purpose save for radiating beauty
and a quiet, effortless grace
that offers a brief respite
from the crowded mess.
unearthing things and unfolding them softly into the world.
the undiscovered regions
and the hopes and fears that petrify.
no choice
but to bravely bring into being
these delightful little abstractions
with their pleas and imperfections.
we’ve been bamboozled.
we’re being controlled
by a bunch of greedy suits
and the electronic idols
they dangle in front of us.
it’s preposterous.
we spend twelve hours a day with media. twelve. that’s half of our daily allotment of life. not to mention that we’re subjected to over 5,000 ads and brand names during that time. preposterous.
are we but dimwitted mules trudging toward the carrot? habitually consuming virtual sustenance? looking for love and happiness and validation where it can never be found? living carefully curated online personas that are sleek and smooth—not messy and innocuous like our real ones.
it’s quite peculiar. this information age. feeding us mostly useless and false intelligence with plenty of illusions. of control. of intimacy. of knowledge.
it’s misleading, and we know it. the willed spontaneity, the feigned self-deprecating talk, the incessant need to justify oneself and one’s actions to the [virtual] world. (note: the very definition of virtual is “almost or nearly,” with its antonyms being actual, authentic, real.)
but it makes no difference whether or not our lives are as perfect beyond the screen as they are on it. what matters is how it makes us feel.
how it’s grasping our throats and tightening ever so gently. sneakily. so we won’t realize we’re asphyxiated until it’s too late.
don’t get me wrong. i have a lot of love for many aspects of [social] media. but, as a whole, it leaves me feeling somehow deflated. so many lovely and varied possible existences presenting themselves on a neverending reel. subtly planting the seed that i don’t have enough. am not enough.
and we’re trapped. in our minds and our devices. and we covet and resent and devalue.
we’re being conditioned.
to consume. to create patterns of habits and artificial reactions that allow us to be controlled. by the suits who build the things from which we need to escape.
but we’re in luck, because i know the antidote for the social-media-addicted-sick-man. it’s a little avocation called being alive. reading a real book with real pages. going to a real coffee shop made of real bricks and drinking real coffee with real friends. loafing through some real woods full of real trees producing real living, breathing oxygen.
revolt. do something. anything. real.
“are we misled by the fact that we move freely on the earth and are not rooted to it in the same way as trees to the ground or fingers to the hand?”
-alan watts, cloud-hidden, whereabouts unknown
because there’s something
so satisfying
about knowing you’ve reached
the highest point.
of anything.
i have a requited love for colorado. i belong here. i feel like i’ve lived thousands of years and thousands of lives here.
and that’s not true of every place i’ve called home. i knew some were temporal.
but not this one.
on any given day, i can open any one of my maps, put my finger on a point, and with relative ease, slip off to that place. a place i’ve never been. to do things i’ve never done.
pure frontier freedom.
and that’s not even the half of it.