awake and alive

Every once in a while, I have a day, an evening, even a moment when I feel awake and alive. It doesn’t happen all that often, far too infrequently in fact. I am very good at hiding myself away in my own mind. In some ways it’s my superpower. Unfortunately, a mechanism developed to protect oneself can become outdated, obsolete, even destructive – definitely destructive.

  Awake and Alive, I am open, I absorb beauty like it should be, without bitterness and envy. I see art and I welcome it instead of having to fight my defenses against it. I live, simply, so many straight jackets stripped away. It happens in such small, ordinary ways. It happens when I open myself to people. That’s the solution, I keep learning over and over again. But it’s terrifying too. To think of it as putting my happiness in the hands of other’s reactions to me is terrifying. I know that’s an ass backwards way of looking at it and it’s wrong, but easily comes to mind.

I’d like to state that “Awake and Alive” is a new photography project I’m beginning. I’d like to say that because it’s certainly a life project… a project I’ve been working on for as long as I’ve had self awareness.. a project that is a matter of spiritual life and death. I’d like it to be a photography project too, but every time I state such a thing, it fizzles. It fades the instant I declare it. That self-defense again. Anything good and fulfilling is a danger to me because it can be soiled and ruined. Instead, I declare my intention to focus my creative eye on this elemental, imperative project.