This passage comes from Wendell Berry’s novel “Jayber Crow”. I’m heavily struck each time I read this. I relate so much to how the character, Jayber, feels here. I love this.
If you could do it, I suppose, it would be a good idea to live your life in a straight line—starting, say in the Dark Wood of Error, and proceeding by logical steps through Hell and Purgatory and into Heaven. Or you could take the King’s Highway past appropriately named dangers, toils and snares, and finally cross the River of death and enter the Celestial City. But that is not the way I have done it, so far. I am a pilgrim, but my pilgrimage has been wandering and unmarked. Often what has looked like a straight line to me has been a circle or a doubling back. I have been in the Dark Wood of Error any number of times. I have known something of Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven, but not always in that order. The names of many snares and dangers have been made known to me, but I have seen them only in looking back. Often I have not known where I was going until I was already there. I have had my share of desires and goals, but my life has come to me or I have gone to it mainly by way of mistakes and surprises. Often I have received better than I have deserved. Often my fairest hopes have rested on bad mistakes. I am an ignorant pilgrim, crossing a dark valley. And yet for a long time, looking back, I have been unable to shake off the feeling that I have been led—make of that what you will.”
I’ve loved the work of Josef Sudek ever since I accidentally stumbled upon a large book of his prints in my university’s library. In school, I’d often wander the aisles of the photography section, searching for divine inspiration through the works of old masters. In my discovery of the “Poet of Prague” I found a highly significant influence on my work thereafter. The book was Anna Farova’s “Josef Sudek” and I’ve cherished the copy I bought several years after that day in the library.
Directions are a fickle thing. Who really knows where one is going all the time? Oftentimes I feel I never know until I get there. There’s too many roadside distractions and attractions, and ambiguity isn’t necessarily a full tank of gas. Who really knows what we want and/or need?
We’re all searching. We’re searching all the time. Sometimes we feel like we know where we are going — but mostly we feel like we’re lost. We’re not lazy, we just don’t know where to go.
In photography, the now becomes the past. The moment I press the shutter, the world is how I make it. I can make the past what I want it to be. I am comfortable with the past, with the present I am not, and with the future I don’t know.
Our past shapes who we are. But have we learned from our past? Like a teenager, we want to move quicker through life. Do we appreciate where we have been or where we are now? I have accepted the past but I do not accept the now.
We can’t always always understand things as they are going on, and we usually always know what went on after the fact. Photography helps me take a step back so I know how (and even why) to move forward. Everything we see is something more than it seems. We have to be able to recognize the world around us in order to move forward. We too often want something new to replace the old. In art, we want new art movements, new music genres. In science we want more new “facts” — more truths. BUT have we processed what we know now? We move too fast.
Do we really want to think? Or do we want someone else to discover new facts, so we can follow?
This is why most often new technologies don’t make our lives better, it only changes the way we do things. New technologies in medicine help us live longer, but they do not make us live better.
I don’t know if I’ll ever have something “new” to say. I interpret my past in order to make more sense of my future (to make it better). I am the peacemaker between the past and the future. I make the present the past by making them memories, and I make them memories in order that I may grow by interpreting them.
When we recognize true beauty we cannot help but be changed by it. In our moment of recognition, life is timeless — we are outside of ourselves, and we recognize something greater than this flesh and blood. It is a moment when abstract and logic become one — when we no longer worry about the past nor the future, and the now becomes… beautiful. A life of beauty is a life truly lived.
Since beauty is beyond the body, and time, only the spirit can recognize its presence, and since we are physical beings, we cannot stay in a state for too long to continue to recognize it. The moments fleet until at some point later we become aware of its presence. Recognition takes training but mostly a step away from distractions. For me, I have to leave my house, go for a walk, or go to a coffee shop. Though walks, I can take pictures. By going to coffee shops, I can write — free from the material junk in my house. Beauty takes a stepping back from wherever you are, so we can see the entire picture as it truly is.
My first date, we went to see “Romeo + Juliet” at the movie theater. I awkwardly placed my arm around her. I did so though it really wasn’t comfortable (probably for the both of us). After the movie, we talked as we waited in the lobby to be picked up by her sister. Classical music came on over the speakers. She said she didn’t like Classical. I lied to her and said I didn’t either. Her name was Elizabeth — the first of many with the same name.
I’ve thought often about the use of this site. Part of me is content with the content on this site, though ill-content with my prolificacy. I manage to keep myself busy with various small and large projects across the board from photography, video, design to written words. When first building out this site, I was hesitate about calling it a “blog” and to an extent I still am (though I admit, it looks quite similar to such). Blogs to me seemed uninspired, and sounded like “filler-songs” to those who like whole albums-as-art.
But this wasn’t becoming a full-length album, it was becoming a museum, where good articles came to wait the days away. It was becoming a place which had me feel limited to what I could say. Only the finely edited remarks could make their way out, and It didn’t sound natural. The articles were my ideas, and my views were established within them, but I needed more.
So I began to think of expanding this site not only to “articles” but to “thoughts” — my thoughts. I’ve written down many things in various notebooks and scraps of paper about how to progress further, what to do with my “art” and what to do in my life. This may be an error of judgement, allowing all of the internet to see, but I’ll put it down, and edit later. This all brings me to a first entry I wrote in one of those various notebooks I keep laying around:
Jan was once told me I should photograph like how My Bloody Valentine played. I understood, but not completely. I understood a bit better tonight. If you listen to the album “Loveless,” this concept begins to make so much sense. It’s so noisy — the vocals are pushed back and indistinguishable, and it’s almost as if it were all recorded completely wrong. But it makes so much sense. With all the fuzzy noise and indistinguishable voices, something alive and true comes from it, and all the seemingly wrong sounds come together to form something marvelous. Instead of me trying to figure out what I want to say in “Art” (this is the wrong reaction — I’ve done this too much in my life), I need to just speak and let out all the indistinguishable sounds come out and have faith that maybe some sense can be made out of it — and if not, maybe I can at least have some fun doing it.
The story of Sudan is a complicated story, so it’s no wonder many are unsure what exactly is happening in Africa’s largest country. It has been an embittered battle fought on many fronts composed of many different tribes, languages, and religions, and lasting for decades. Since 1955, two civil wars have been fought between the north and south. The second ended after 22 years of bloodshed with a peace agreement in 2005, granting Southern Sudan autonomy for six years. On January 9th of 2011, a new chapter will be pressed with ink-stained fingers.
Yes, I know. It has been a long time since I’ve written here on this blog. Well, much of the reason that I haven’t is actually a result of the topic that I’ve wanted to write about: distraction.
I wanted to write. Really I did. I also wanted to read the books on my bookshelf. But something was getting in my way. Distraction was my problem, and it still is. Well, I needed someone to blame for it all. Was it the incessant chime of a new email in my inbox? Was it work ringing my cell phone? Was it that next big project I wanted to get done on my computer? Was it the text messages vibrating night and day in my pocket? Was it the movie my roommates were watching downstairs in the cool basement on a hot summer’s day?
Facts:*
Your Brain on Computers – Attached to Technology and Paying a Price | NYTimes.com
The Risks of Parenting While Plugged In | NYTimes.com
The Medium is the Medium | NYTimes.com
Taming the Digital Distractions That Make Your PC a Time Waster | NYTimes.com
Going Offline in Search of Freedom | NYTimes.com
First Steps to Digital Detox | NYTimes.com
Frontline: digital nation – life on the virtual frontier | PBS
Is the internet making us quick but shallow? | CNN.com
2010: Year of digital distraction? | CNN.com
Parents obsessed with their mobile device | CNN.com
I’m quitting the Internet. Will I be liberated or left behind? | Slate Magazine
Multitasking – Switching Costs | American Psychological Association
Scaling the Digital Divide: Home Computer Technology and Student Achievement | The National Bureau of Economic Research
All articles written in the past year.
*That is if the internet is in fact, fact.
Since childhood, it seems I have always been drawn to history. One of the first books I remember reading dealt with the American Revolution. And my grandparents had one of those satellite dishes big enough to communicate with E.T. so I would often watch documentaries on the History Channel with my grandfather. There was something in the characters of history that led me to believe that there was still something to be learned from their actions — otherwise why would we bother writing down their experiences? I recently watched the HBO miniseries, John Adams, which caused me to think more about that time period, and what issues are still addressed today. His relationship with his wife, Abigail became most of my focal point in thought. And with that came feminism.
