Plunging headlong into this looming abyss, I am

powerless to stop

myself.

No hesitation.

Uncertainty clogs

my ears, floods into my mouth

coating my throat. 

I gulp it down

swallowing everything that comes within

my vicinity.

Gravity

yanks me from

you

pitching me into the unfamiliar.

Will I drown or float

back up to the surface once

I run out of  air?

Sense Offense

People tell me I feel too much.  I have always worn a proverbial heart on my sleeve.  Apparently, this has been too much for some people to handle in the past.  Sometimes it seems such a burden, encompassing me in extremes, and yet…I would not trade it for the alternative. 

Feeling is as vital as breathing.  Without it…happiness, love, sorrow, anger…life is empty. 

“I said nothing for a time, just ran my fingertips along the edge of the human-shaped emptiness that had been left inside me.”

photo copyright This Too Shall Pass Photography

photo copyright This Too Shall Pass Photography

Take a course in good water and air; and in the eternal youth of Nature you may renew your own. Go quietly, alone; no harm will befall you.

“Isolated, she managed somehow to feel free—albeit with a freedom that made her want to smash a hole in the very center of the universe.”

How do we find meaning in a broken world?

How do we find meaning in our lives when there seems to be none?

How do we take these fragments of shattered glass and make something out of them?

How do we make things whole when only splinters of their essence remain?

photo copyright This Too Shall Pass Photography

The artist is a receptacle for emotions that come from all over the place: from the sky, from the earth, from a scrap of paper, from a passing shape, from a spider's web.

~Picasso

photo copyright This Too Shall Pass Photography

Untitled-copyright 2012

The daffodils have come and gone

And you have not returned.

Each night, perched outside my window

You promised me the world

Scattering the moonlight with your feathers.

I relied on your nightly attendance

Offering up my deepest secrets

Into the warm expanse of your wings. 

I carved your name into my heart:

-nightjar-

Without you,

I confide in ghosts now

And the bruises have faded to yellow

Staining everything they touch. 

Times, when the air is still

And thin, and I cannot sleep

I listen for you.

Where are you?

Mi corazón

Mi corazón

photo copyright This Too Shall Pass Photography

I feel as though something imperative within me has been missing for a few months now.  It’s as though there is an absence of self and I am powerless to stop it, ineffective at figuring out what is missing and how to find this missing piece of me. 

There is a disconnect somewhere.  I feel utterly lost at times, like I have fallen off the track I am supposed to be on.  I have a hard time concentrating on the task at hand.  As cliché as it sounds, sometimes, it’s as though life is passing me by, leaving me floundering in its violent wake. 

Who am I?  What am I doing here?  What am I supposed to be doing here?  Struggling to find my way, struggling with my identity. 

I would like to think the chronic pain I have been dealing with for the last few months has something to do with these feelings.  It would make much more sense than anything else I can come up with, which is nothing. I have been in pain every day, I have not been eating much due to this pain, and I have been depressed and hopeless that it will not end.

I need to convince myself that I am a good person, to follow the path laid out for me (or the path I have laid out for myself), that I am surrounded by good people who care for who I am, not who I could be. 

This too shall pass. 

photo copyright This Too Shall Pass Photography

5:17 and

the pain wrenches me

out of dreams

and into

the early morning shadows

dividing

one from the other

scattering birdsongs.

(poem copyrighted 2012)

photo copyright This Too Shall Pass Photogaphy

photo copyright This Too Shall Pass Photography

I have long been captivated by abandoned places.  The spirit and energy that remains long after the human element has departed arouses me.  To capture the unique soul of a place is challenging yet tremendously rewarding.  

Long after the human component is gone, a place holds onto past energy, transforming it into its own distinctive blend of blossoming emptiness.  These places become hallowed, consecrated by time and nature. 

They are alive, clutching to the past while reluctantly embracing the future.

photo copyright This Too Shall Pass Photography

Keeping Things Whole

 In a field

 I am the absence

 of field.

 This is

 always the case.

 Wherever I am

 I am what is missing.

 When I walk

 I part the air

 and always

 the air moves in

 to fill the spaces

 where my body's been.

 We all have reasons

 for moving.

 I move

 to keep things whole.

-- Mark Strand

photo copyright This Too Shall Pass Photography