Actually, no no. What’s on your heart?
How deep does the well go? Will the well run dry?
I am a well of ideas, and I’m struggling to contain them. I’m ready for the winter. For life to slow down a bit. I’m ready for a week alone in the woods, upstate or in Maine or somewhere with little to distract me, to make sense of all of this. To take the things I’ve created and collected over time and to morph them into something meaningful.
I create because I have so many fucking feelings. And at times I don’t have any other way to make sense of them. Creating is a way for me to make meaning of the world. Both of the material world. The people, the experiences, and the things around me. But also of the world inside of me. My fears. Traumas. Desires. Imaginations. How fun.
I’m working on one photo project, Get Out the Sun, about family and colorism and the outdoors. Here’s a little teaser. “I silently cried. Jumping out of the car, going 60 miles per hour, would have felt more comforting than my grandmother’s words.”
I also want to write a book. (Mind you, I am not a novelist.) I want to write a story about a young climate activist who is frustrated with the lack of progress on mitigating the impacts of climate change, and decides to leave her organization because she realizes that the only real way to stop climate change is to remove the billionaires’ and rich people's exit strategy, or Plan B out… bunkers. She, with a group of trusted friends, goes on a quest to find their bunkers and destroy them. Fun story, right?!
My friend George.
I’m working on another about my 76-year-old friend George, who I play tennis with. And who is my best friend’s doorman. I’ve been asking myself, Why am I doing this?! Why does THIS topic matter to me? And realized. I never grew up with grandmothers. There is a gaping hole of masculine familial energy in my life that is somehow being fulfilled in this friendship.
Questions
In photo class, we did a fun exercise: just free-writing a list of questions that came to mind. So I figured I’d do that here. Let’s see what we can cook up.
Is this all for nothing?
How do I photograph the grief? The sadness? Depression?
Do I have the courage to do what is necessary? Am I as bold as I think I am? Or just scared?
Will my children despise me for the world I brought them into? Will I have children? Can I have children? Will I find someone worth having children with?
Will I ever find “the one”? Is there a one? Or just a one at the right time? Will he want to, with me, buy land and move upstate and grow food and have an open door policy where any friend or family is welcome at all times? Oh, and will he wanna be my creative partner? And make a ton of shit together?!
Will any of that even matter in 4 years? What will matter most in 4 years?
Why does he hate me? Is it possible to be friends with someone you’ve been romantically involved with? Should I stay or should I go?
Will this damn condo sell?
Are the aches and random pains in my knees, my hands, my joints, just aging… or something more?
Will AI kill us all? Or will the floods or heat or hurricanes get to us first?
What will happen in 2030? No. 2028? Is an AOC presidency possible? And will that fix things?
What will fix things?
Is it really the coolest summer of the rest of our lives?
What is Darren Woods or Mike Wirth doing right now? Are they willingly leading society towards an apocalyptic hellscape? Or what are their justifications?
Do they think about their children? And their children? And the world their children will have to grow up in?
Or do they have bunkers? Where are they? Who will cook and clean and maintain them, so they are wholly unable to do so themselves? How much are they paying them?
With so much to live for, why do they want to kill it all? Us all?
Is the extra home or yacht or status or two or three 0s behind their net worth worth it?
Is this all for nothing?
Crush.
Sometimes the idea of a thing,
Is better than the thing itself.
I have a new crush. It has brought new meaning and purpose into my life 🤣
But seriously. I love a crush. I can recount, since 3rd grade, every boy/ man I have ever had a crush on. Crushes are yet another extension of my imaginative nature.
Very seldom have I ever acted on a crush. In some ways, these were meant to be just figments of my imagination, a microdose of spice in a life that at times can feel monotonous and predictable.
But I was sitting on the train at 2:15 am last night, dozing off, and was hit with a sudden rush of chutzpah. Why don’t I just message him? Be forthright and clear. And see what happens. What’s the worst that could happen?
But I think I do like the mystery and build-up.
Unknown unknowns.
And the case for hope.
Many of the most worthwhile and meaningful things I have ever experienced in life were completely unpredictable and unknown to me. Experiencing love for the first time. Going to Cornell. Moving to New York City. Finding Sunrise.
Often, the thing we can imagine is not the thing we get. Because our brain doesn’t have the ability to comprehend something it has yet to experience. Hence, the unknown unknowns. (It’s pretty interesting; look it up. Donald Rumsfeld.)
And often the thing we can imagine is a product of our own anxieties, our own fears, and our own brain’s desire to keep us safe. Or cage us in.
I always come back to the tendency humans, myself included, have to predict the worst-case scenario. And often have to ask, What’s the best possible thing that could actually come from this? Instead of the worst. (Like, what if this man is delighted to get a text message from me?! Delighted about the chance to continue bantering over margaritas and music so loud my voice will for sure be hoarse the next day?!)
And what beauty, what possibility in that? That life is worthwhile solely for the fact that we can't predict what will happen. And that the infinite unknowns, and the possibility for what they could be, is enough to want to endure through the heartbreak, through the suffering, the war, the climate crisis, and more, because who the fuck knows what might actually happen?
Who tf knows.