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.

once i wanted to be the greatest.

been some time since we’ve been here together. you & i, all late night and full of a certain unwavering grace. and still, here we are–be we (or the unwavering grace) genuine or simulacra. pay it no mind at all. after all when you close your eyes it could be anyone giving you head.

run with it.

i come here today to give praise to modernity. not the idea, or it’s misconceptions, mind you. rather the alter of modernity which i suppose would be progress. we all have faith in progress and it is that i come praise today.

I feel i ought give praise if for nothing else than teaching some young frenchman how to insert a chest tube and less sexily all the myriad of supporting roles and implements that kept me alive through the great empyema of ought-seven. because, and think this out fully, after that event i can say with certainty that without modern medicine (and clean shaven frenchmen, i spose) that i would have perished. I have officially left my psuedo-normal life course and entered into a gift from medical progress.

it could be argued, badly, that immunization takes us wildly off the planned course–and if i were 70 that argument might apply but i’m not and historically many lived to my current age even without immunization (and, god forbid–Canadian Healthcare). so like i said argued badly.

the crux of this being, of course, that i know with as much certainty as i can that had science (dressed in silly medical garb) not intervened i would have ceased to exist.

and i figure i owe science a big french kiss.

(possibly more depending on if i actually use the extended life for anything more than being tempted by young girls in tight clothing)

(young being a relative term naturally. falling well within the age appropriate taboos and pseudo-fantasies daily provided me by our conventional media, after all a thirty year old girl in pig tails and knee socks isn’t telling us anything about ourselves as a species–okay, fuck, gender then. because women never have such banal thoughts–but i digress.)

and it is with humble heart that i thank the big hairy beast that pollutes my water, soil and air. that kindly mind-giant that entraps me in a tangle of wire and concrete, quickly consuming everything (refactoring) everything it gets its hands on. yes. thank you old beast and thank you to the nazi’s who so clearly don’t get the props they deserve for pushing science forward 30 years–albeit under rather.. questionable terms.

do i mean that or am i testing to see who is still reading this far down by being wilfully inflammatory? you can’t say for sure, but if you’re jewish i think you can still scold me and call me inhuman.

posthuman.

post hymen.

i clearly have not improved my ability to stay on topic.

the verdict today then, was one of muffled optimism. a sweet unidentifiable pocket of goodness remains but seems disinterested in infecting and killing me. so for now it gets to remain there. so my favorite frenchman says.

and my left lung is smaller than judekyle’s penis now. the doc says it will never get back to full size (both his penis and my lung) but that it could be worse.

spoken by someone with two normally sized lungs, i say.

i wasn’t using that 15% of lung anyways. honestly. how much air do i need to sit on my ass all day long?