i am unravelling like a grey woolen sweater with bits of yellow yarn snuck in between the layers.
it’s okay.
the sweater didn’t fit well anymore anyway.
(polaroid spectra / impossible pz 600 silver shade film)
i never grow tired of capturing the trees, the trees that line my street and i can spend whole days just gazing at them and letting their wisdom soak through me. the trees speak to me in stoic stanzas of strange settlings telling me what has been forgotten in the ways that we live and the ways that we endure and the ways that we celebrate our losses and gobble up the pieces of peace that find us reaching out to grasp the root.
i hold on tight to the slow sleep of the waiting. the january trees and their icy roots grown warm deep under the layers of ice where the earth’s fire pulsates. they are not lonely or isolated because they choose the other, the quiet and the peaceful rejuvination. after the parties and the twinkle lights and the brightly arrayed bulbs are pulled off of icicles, the loner in me reaches inwards, grasping for solitude, for slumber. i have slowed down so much that i can feel time stretch out before me, a blue softly lit horizon that waits quietly for me to decide to live.
and finally. i am ready to join the trees. and a fire warms me deep down in the core and i feel the vibrations holding me gently and i have slowed down enough to know that i am living.
she is a poem
waiting
for you to witness
her ways
she is icy drama
turned to fire
burning your ears
as your eyes
turn away
averted in a shame
you should never feel
words that curve
endlessly longingly
thoughtlessly drip off tongues
fingers dug into nails
and quilts frayed with worn guilt
she is a poem
left out too long
in muted light
dusty and drawn
like a curtain
in the night
while tomatoes grow wild
under the sage sun
and your teeth sink in deep
and corn husks litter
that dirt road turned highway
and you are lost
in the red cheeked
ways of a prairie wind
that song
stuck in your head
as the dinner burns
and your thoughts fall away
again
and the frost
drips down
bare wood
rots
and she reminds herself
to give it a lick
of paint
before you next fall
into the winter snow.
(polaroid sun 660 / polaroid 600 film)
I used to walk along this promenade, heavy with child and dreams, stuck in the waiting of all that would be. And now I am here, 18 years later. And that is that. I shot the very last of the last of my expired polaroid 600 film. And yes, I felt it right there in, a pang and a tear brought on by lack of food and too many walks down the grocery store aisle as I made my way through the softest of sundays. Mostly, I held the last two polaroids from my very last pack of 600 film in my hands and marvelled at the colours and smiled as I walked past the end of an era and blessed the snow that crunched beneath my feet and the girl walking with the coolest shade of green pants I had ever seen and wondered at how last week it was so mother fucking cold.
the cold that seeps through the plaster as the windows frost faithful. that. motherfucking cold. and now it is blissfully warm, tones of pink warm, sloshy walk without mittens taped to my forehead warm. and i remember that for every season there is a change. nothing stays the same. ever. even as nostalgia warms my memories.
Last night as I was watching Haven and there was a pale blue coleman ice chest that caused my heart to constrict. My childhood rushing back at me. Of course, I just texted my parents to see if they still have it and they do and so of course I asked to have it if they ever decide to get rid of it. I suppose that explains what shooting the last of the 600 polaroid film means to me. There is so much of this life that I don’t understand and so much of what it is to be human that I don’t know if I will ever understand but there are memories locked away that hold layers upon layers of emotion that can be unlocked with the smell of Chanel no. 5, a pale blue ice cooler, pine needles found in the cracks of the floorboards, and the way a soft wrinkled cheek feels against baby new lips.
and as polaroid disappears, impossible holds new possiblities and how proud am I of my polaroidgirls collaborator, my dear friend in all things, the lovely Kristen Perman who is showcased in 8 exposures and gives me hope that I am creating new layers of nostalgia as I continue shooting with my polaroid cameras and impossible film.
behind these eyes
i watch the world
stream by
and wonder at the speed
that we think we can fly through
forgetting that breathing is as important
as winning
an imaginary race.
technology started speeding up when i was a little girl floating with lakeweed between my toes, watching ants march on with purpose carrying crumbs on their back to feed an army and i wondered then if we had the time to truly understand what we were doing as humans as the machines got faster and faster and our brains stayed the same, neurons upon neurons coursing through the bloodflow of our bodies. and now. here we are. watching it continuing to speed faster than we can breathe never mind think or process or wonder at the ethical value and inflation rises and our dollar flounders and is it too late to step off the train without rolling to our death. there is a price for everything and i wonder if we know what the price will be, the true price of it all. the price that centres around a currancy that is not for sale, the price of our breath.
i live for those moments. few and far between. those moments of quiet void of expectation, void of anything but sitting beneath my skin and watching the world stream by from the vantage point of slow moving walks and i find that the trees still speak to me in quiet whispers not yet drowned out by the voices of the machines and the light jitters in a slow moving white turned golden and the colour of it causes tears of emotion.
and love is still found in the touch of skin and the blink of an eye lasts far longer than we are being taught to believe.
