Friday Evening Remembrances

For the past few days, I've been uploading what I consider some of my best photographs to a much more public site. This has been ongoing for a few days, a slow process made slower by the need to describe what was going on when the photograph was taken.

It's no coincidence that my best work has come from some of the most intense moments of my life, and as I sort through these snapshots of time, I have been remembering.

And I have been remembering.

I hadn't intended to sit down and write anything in particular, but it seemed like a natural, proper progression of where I found myself tonight. Today, and this evening in particular, I've been in an odd frame of mind.

Yes, I know I say that here relatively often, but these are the times I feel like writing; these are the times I feel open; these are the times I feel ...connected. Connected to the world, connected to myself.

It is simultaneously beautiful and terrible, seeing and feeling everything. While I'm a much stronger person than I once was, it's still hard to both relax and hold myself in this place, in this moment, feeling the air breathe through my shoulders, into my arms, my perception warping in subtle ways.

This is a good place to be, a place without guards, without defenses. A place without bullshit; A place of truth. A place of being; A place to simply be.

It wasn't always this way.

The first time I was in this place was the worst night of my life. I found it through sheer exhaustion, collapsing through my inner barriers as they were smashed by a tsunami.

I was powerless, swept up like a leaf in a tornado, tossed and smashed and mangled and ground into myself with pent-up rage born of years of pain, suppression, and denial. I vaguely recognised that I was obliterating myself, and eventually, I succeeded.

I was quite surprised when my eyes snapped open the next morning to an only vaguely familiar room; it was if my memories were someone else's, with no connection to myself. So total was my destruction that I had no idea if I was even real. I eventually came to the same "I think, therefore I am" realization as Descartes, and from there, I slowly began to build anew, one deliberate piece at a time.

The next time I found this place, a couple of years later, I nearly died.

It is still perhaps the most profound experience of my life, achingly beautiful in that way that makes your heart hurt as it tries to expand to encompass its enormity. In that moment I was connected to everything; connected to life itself. I comprehended, I embraced, I accepted... and simply let go. Let go of myself; let go of everything.

As it turned out, that included letting go of breathing.

That eternal, peaceful moment came to an abrupt end when, out of concern, I was touched. This sudden contact brutally yanked me back, the shock and whiplash leaving me unable to do anything but shudder and shake, coupled with a terrible sense of loss. I had lost the most beautiful thing I'd ever experienced; the beauty well beyond my ability to even remember or imagine.

The evening that followed was one of those nights that could have changed everything, had I been a more daring person. But I was too much in shock, too unaware of my own ability to effect what was mutually wanted. The next morning; even that was yanked away.

That was more than fourteen years ago, and I made many, many mistakes trying to figure out how to get back to that place, chasing that feeling, that sense of loss, failing to comprehend that I'd been chasing a shadow cast by my own self, when all I had to do was turn around and see the light I kept turning away from.

Both experiences were of the same "place", albeit experienced by very different people. One was holding back the tides of denial, the other wholly embracing everything. One experience was pure agony; One was pure ecstasy. Yet both were undeniable truth; my truth.

This place is where I find myself again tonight; while much less raw, much less intense than those moments that book-ended my experiences, I am holding myself here, balanced as the winds of memories, the winds of dreams blow through me, fanning the flames burning within, and I ache with the need to grow beyond myself, the need to connect, to touch, to live.

It took far too long to learn just what this place was, even longer to learn why it had eluded me for so long, and longer still to learn that balance, and how to extend myself as a tree grows leaves and roots, simultaneously holding myself in multiple, intricate realms.

I learned that shadow, the shadow I chased for so long, was my own, ever shifting and flickering and changing as I shifted and changed myself, growing sharper or dimmer as the light grew and faded behind me.

That light, the light that cast that shadow I forever chased, was the terrible incredulity of life itself. It is the beauty that holds my gaze, eyes glistening as they feel that inaudible, overwhelming roar, and at the moment I yield, I come to know true madness.

I am the shadow; I am the flame.

I am the light; I am the darkness.

I am the peace; I am the storm.

I am thought; I am feeling.

I am my own definition; I am my own reality.

I am everything... yet I am nothing.

I simply am.

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