kumran.:© 2004-2008 i.m. ruzz (all rights reserved)

aint no one wants you when you’re broken down. everyone wants the quarter back after he throws a hail mary. we defy enough just by being alive without all those self-imposed heroics. why can’t you see that? why do we need to bring any more than that with us when we come?

i’ve had a lot of time to think and it’s thickening my skin. deforming me, maybe. but the scar tissue wraps itself around everything and soon i can speak entirely clearly from a cocoon of damaged flesh. the soft pink-white of a lung collapses. contracts. and i throw the ball long.

for you.

it came to me all at once. this thing.

it poured over me. encircled me. pooled at my feet and began to rise. and it just came to me, all at once–while i watched the river of darkness fill the space between me and everything.

it just came to me. all at once. this thing. just then, while my flesh was flayed from my body. it came crystal clear. it came fully born and raised and matured. this thought. this thing.

it was the culmination of nearly four months of everything being hard. it had time to get some speed up while it approached, I was looking the other way.

probably at a her. a her of some kind.

so i want you to know, heartfelt and all, that i didn’t see it coming. and when it came it hurt. and not someone biting your earlobe too hard kinda hurt.

lets aside a moment. lets aside with news i’ve meant to give for weeks while i try to get my thoughts together about the other thing. after a period of pretty heavy deliberation, and a few weeks of gestating the thought, and then some deliberate trying to prove myself wrongheaded i have arrived, firmly, at this here decision. take your seats.

I am taking a prolonged hiatus from photography.

i won’t be talking any young girls from their clothes (least not for taking pictures), or shooting weddings, or wandering back alley’s in search of sunflowers, or driving in circles looking for the right way up that hill to get all of that cloud in the shot. no.

i won’t be sitting in the corner watching you, sneaking shots of you smiling, or thinking.

i won’t be walking down a path while you trail your feet, dragging fabrics of different colors. I won’t be standing over you in the river while you try to look graceful, without being swept from me by surprising currents.

i won’t be glued to my computer working on pictures (well, okay, i will till i’ve got the things i owe people done). I won’t be posting to flickr, or facebook, or here, or waiting and wondering if anyone gets it.

i won’t be doing two hour gear checks. i won’t be cleaning lenses and charging batteries.

it’s not for nothing either. i’ve said before, many many times, one cannot serve two masters. One cannot be of two minds. not for any substantial period of time at least, and definitely not when trying to create something more than a watered down over commercialized photo. no, it takes more than ‘I have some time sunday’ to get anywhere.

more than that. even more than that.

I’m not happy anymore. I’m not excited to hold the camera. theres no passion in it for me these days. i lost the connection and now all i feel is i ought to be doing something so i best set up a shoot. i’m working from a place of reduction, not addition.

and so, i’m taking prolonged break from photography. maybe a month. maybe a year. maybe twenty. when i feel i just have to take that picture, have to record that image–i’ll be back.

back to the thing. the thought that came to me. I’ve not yet managed to distill it from the sweet tastes it came wrapped up in. I’ve not managed to separate it from the piercing pain it came with.

it goes something like this. something sort of..

like this.

there was a moment. however brief, where i felt entirely at ease. where i felt calm. the constant thrashing of my difference engine was silent. the gears and goings on of  my hyperactive mind were all fully focused on that exact moment and yet, not focused on anything at all.

there was the slightest second, where i felt calm. i felt content.

i was sated.

and a river of darkness cut large swathes, rushing from the corners of my eyes. rushing from a sea of isolation, come to meet me here in this slight moment. come to divorce me of my newly found peace. and i watched it cover everything. and i watched it. and i watched it.

and i closed my eyes, opened them. closed them.

opened them.

and when i saw, i saw what was there was gone. what was there was only a point of mourning for later. only punctuation on a larger statement about how we live our lives. only a brief flash of light to cull the dark.

opened them.

opened them and it was all grey. grey like my flesh while my lung filled with death. grey like the longest winter spent trapped in that basement with no light. grey like how things that were once full, rich and alive, now only live in our memories.

opened them and it was cold and wet and covered in a river of darkness.

like everything always has been.

and it was here. right here. where we freeze things in our mind. where we stop them and hold on to what was. right here, where the statement is fully made. the thought fully completed. the birth fully born. the infinite briefly brought finite by will or need. we hold our eye here even though the darkness burns our eyes.

and we do this, we hold, because it’s how we honor these things. How we set the things that mean something a part from those which mean nothing. that doesn’t happen on it’s own. its a conscious act of will.

and we do it, too, because it allows us to roll it around on our tongue and see if we choke on the words we speak, or merely become defined by them. if we are strong enough to ignore rabble rousing, strong enough to get past the parts where we feel it, we can arrive to where the thought comes out, fully born and matured.

there was a moment where i was contented. where i was calm. where i was sated and the constant thrashing of my difference engine was silent.

and then it ended. and then it became grey. and then it became only punctuation on a larger statement about how we live our lives. how i live my life.

it’s not a battle cry, or a 4am promise. not a pause between beats of melancholy. not a thing that happened and mattered–any more than a birth must happen for a life to be lived–or a mantra to wrote on sticky notes affixed to monitors, or a resolution to welcome a new year.

it is what was because of what wasn’t. it’s an absence outlining a presence.

it’s the shape of a piece that’s been missing.

2008 has begun to define herself.

yes, now you can see me staring at you from your bookmarks.

yes.

soak in it.