Shorter than I thought

Walking home late on a warm evening accompanied by a soft breeze, the night holds so much gentle energy.

In Which I Apologize for Letting Life get in the way of a Blog

Written on April Fools Day, just before 11pm, and completely without any holiday spirit:

Now that I have a desk to sit at in a living room all my own, and my girlfriend sleeping in our bedroom, I feel apologies are in order for abandoning this project weeks before it came to an end. Please allow me to rationalize briefly:

Around the time of New Years, we decided that we wanted to live together. Both of us wanted a space to call our own, and with each other as roommates that’s pretty much the same thing. Our leases were up in September (or so we thought), and we started a slow search to test the real estate waters way before anything was available for the Fall.

February brought a bit of a surprise for her. “Hey, the landlord wants a lease starting in April, no sub-letting, and my friend is moving to Boston then, so you’re out.” This began the suddenly frantic search for an apartment with about six weeks to spare. We had some incredible luck and found the perfect apartment in a little over two weeks. Cue the, “I’m actually moving out five months early and need to find someone to take my share of the lease” panic that lasted until two days before I moved out.

So yes, I failed in my attempt to be creative every day (minus the 31s) for a year. I think I made it to around 340 semi-consecutive posts.  That sounds like a pretty good run to me, and after a month-and-a-half hiatus from pretty much everything, I’m itching to hop back on the wagon. I can’t even sleep after 3 straight days of lifting, moving, and arranging a ridiculous amount of objects. Maybe now that we’re 70%-80% unpacked, a traffic-jam has finally cleared up in my brain.

I have a small workspace to call my own. I just looked at a collection of photos I’m dying to write about. CRIT is set to release our first book in a couple weeks. I’m craving the lens, the pen, novels, and everything that goes along with them. Not that I haven’t been pining for months of this stagnation, but now it’s more than a desire for the energy to seriously consider keeping up with the things I’ve always loved.

I want to continue posting on Fish Oil Fog. It won’t be the daily dump of anything at all just to keep me going. I’m going to shoot for at least one post a week. Quantity got me back into the game (psychologically at least, I hope), and now it’s time to concentrate on quality. Art school all over again.

I’ll see you soon.

Dear Person,

I'm addressing this letter to you because it's been four days since my last post and I don't really feel like taking the time to construct a reason to send someone a letter that reads more like an essay. So I'm going to sit here and tell you some ideas about photography that I just found words for.

There is a reason I'm drawn so strongly to photography. It's really the only way you can distill the world's pure beauty with minimal tampering. Human interference waters it down some, but our diluting presence is more than made up for the physical and chemical processes utilized to capture a still image. Disregarding Photoshop, a photograph is essentially a copy of a small slice of our surroundings.

Writing, that other great art we take for granted, is full of human constructions: irony, sarcasm, lies, and so much more. Writing exists to convince you. Photography exists to show you. Sure a photograph is subject to it's maker. A human chooses what to include, how to frame it, where to focus, when to trip the shutter, etc., etc., but this is the only medium grounded in the pure, physical act of existence. Good photographers can manipulate that reality to elicit certain reactions from their intended viewers, but the world pictured will always remain the same.

Beauty in reality. This is why photography exists.

Thank you for your indulgence,

Short

Mister Wallace, D.F.,

Thank you.

Oldies

To the suitcase full of old family photographs dating back a hundred years:

Yes! I know you're sitting there just waiting to be digitized so we can enjoy looking at you for hypothetically eternity. Really, you don't need to worry that I agreed to scan you only out of a sense of familial duty. Those beautiful old images of my gene pool fascinate me. Pictures like this are statistically irresistible for photographers. I'm just kind of busy right now.

Please know that as soon as I have a few things figured out, I'm heading straight down to grab a nice archival box for you and scanning the hell out of you.

Affectionately,

Catching meta

To my dearest blog,

Over this past year, yes it has been that long, we've had quite the love/hate relationship. Creating something, however tiny, every single day (well it seems to have been about 9 out of 10) takes a lot out of you. And by you, I of course mean me, because you're getting bigger and bigger all the time.

Okay, I'm sorry for that joke. It was just begging to be set free, and you know me and puns.

Meta-letter-journaling probably isn't the best way to get any sort of point across, but that's what February is all about, so please bear with me, especially because I'm not quite sure if I even have a point.

Why did people write letters anyway? Don't tell me to drop the past tense. I know it's been said, but you'd be lying to yourself and everyone in earshot if you tried to tell me letter writing is alive and well in the modern world. People wrote to each other for the same reason they call or text or whatever these days. We just want to hear another voice with us. It's an act of loneliness.

I grew up during the death of the letter, so I remember what it was like to get a a communiqué from a familiar return address handed to you by a stranger in a faded blue uniform. I also remember how much easier that whole ordeal became when more people started getting America Online.

I don't really remember if I had any point in mind when I started writing the space in writing in a letter about writing letters. Maybe something about how it's easier to write when it feels like your talking to someone rather than just shouting out into the void. Street preachers have it hard.

Catching up with an absent love

To Winter (a fickle season):

I know you're harsh nature freezes a brittle crust over New England hearts a few months every year. We give you nothing but shit, and that must have gotten old a long time ago, but please don't leave us like this, dancing in and out if our lives whenever the mood moves you.

I only ever see you at night these days. You come to sleep with us then leave for Europe again in the morning. Sure you've gotten bored a few times and come to visit, but that just isn't enough. I can feel my toes all day, and I don't even think my elbows are chapped.

Most people want you to stay out. Everything you bring with you chips away at our souls, and they know better than to long for such an abusive relationship. When this is all you know, it's hard to do the sensible thing and run far far away to somewhere like the temptress California. I need to struggle through snow drifts and lose feeling in my face. I'm a sucker for blankets of traffic stopping snow. I miss layers and scarves and the red Steve Zissou hat I found for $7 last year that's the first not to make me sweat.

Spring won't be as sweet without conquering you. That tease flurry this morning made me smile, even though I knew I should be shaking my fist at you.

Forever yours,