Heavy Christmas Bubbles

 Every Christmas I'm left with the strange remorse of not having achieved this elusive feeling I yearn for. Surely I'm missing it by looking for it, but I cannot help it. It's all I've ever known. This perpetual homesickness for a feeling I've never felt . I grasp for moments like chasing bubbles. Only for it to vanish in the moment of contact…

Today is December 26th and this morning, I woke up and wrote a poem of sorts.
(I still feel uncomfortable “naming” my writing at this point)

I recently joined a poetry community and it’s been both inspiring me and sending me through all sorts of spirals.

I can’t help but keep thinking when I'm listening to the gorgeous readings and the analysis through pulling the symbolic threads-

“I know this language in imagery. I know this language visually. But I don't know this language with words. I don't know this language with language.”

It bothers me.

Since one of my last posts about how photography has betrayed me, I’ve been unpacking many things and the poetry is helping.

It feels like I've been using photography and visual art in general, as a crutch at times. I mean don’t get me wrong- it is my first love. It's certainly a healthy, beautiful way of expression and processing. It's enlightening and emboldening.

And also, it allows me to touch the feeling,
"oh, there it is."
and walk away.

I want to have to articulate myself.

This morning in the dark early morning sitting by the fire and my lit up Christmas tree, I wrote to rid myself of the nagging discontent that demanded to be called by name.

Christmas Bubbles

Every Christmas I’m left with the strange remorse of not having achieved this illusive feeling I yearn for.

Surely I’m missing it by looking for it but I cannot help it.
It’s all I’ve ever known- this perpetual homesickness for a feeling I’ve never felt.

Nowhere but here,
I grasp for moments like chasing bubbles
only for it to vanish in the moment of contact.

But what if I dip myself in what bubbles are made of?
only to touch it mere moments longer.

And in those mere moments I frantically search my soul
taking in the delicate magnificence as I try to feel for the spot inside that feels,
the spots that knows,
the spot that recognizes.

The counterpart of Christmas bubbles.

Like looking through a viewfinder and my whole body knows to press the shutter.

the catharsis of synthesizing inside and outside.

But alas it’s the same amount of time to take a picture as it is to pop a bubble you’ve finally reached

except now you have the residue of a picture
to hold, comfort, console, astound, & torture you.

it's there and gone.
alive and dead at once.

brought back to life only by my ability to touch that part inside my body again
but it has moved and morphed and melted into something unrecognizable.

I could drown myself in bubbles only to disappear in an instant.

Reaching for bubbles like reaching for a single day all year
Both a shell of a space available everywhere and all the time
just like pictures-

only alive through the life inside of me.

There was a version of peace that washed over me after naming this feeling that can’t be ignored.

After all, the only moments I certainly do not feel this discontent is mid creation.

I came across a quote that gave me mixed feeling by a lovely photographer, Robert Doisneau. It says,

"To suggest is to create. And to describe is to destroy."

I agree to an extent, I see that.

To suggest is to create.
To describe is to destroy.

To suggest does feel expansive and iterative and open, like you're coming from a place and all possibilities are available. Open to interpretation.

To describe most certainly requires boiling things down. Constricting and specifying.

But I also find such relief in that specificity.
I find such deep relief when someone describes something so specific it eliminates all remaining outside noise.

It now can only be one thing.
this, one, thing.
It soothes me.

The elimination of possibility helps me put a finger on a truth that feels tangible rather than overwhelming. It helps me scratch the itch inside of me through words.

Words…so black and white.

I am adept at putting my finger on images that always feel like everything to me.

The process- absolutely dripping with possibility and meaning.
In the moment with my body and energy and choices, after the moment in intuitive editing, in the context I place them in once they are complete...

So rich with everything that it drowns me.

I suspect this is related to my instinct to respond. I’m a responder by nature. I can always respond.

But when I’m not given an ocean of visuals to respond to…when it’s a blank page,
it elicits this quiet, slow, almost panic inside of me. A feeling I need to look at.

I feel this undeniable pull to a medium that doesn't allow me to point, “there it is. there it is. there it is. click click click”

Writing feel like reverse engineering this process to me.

It depends on me coming to something and creating from nothing through words.

Writing demands that I go first.
It calls me up and in and out in a way I deeply need in this season.

Because of this, in this new year I'm challenging myself to explore other mediums.

Of course, I will continue taking pictures, it’s the innate way I metabolize life.

However, the journaling in my Nostalgia, Now practice has always hinted to me how critical the writing component is to deepening the excavation and processing the photographs.

I'm going to gift myself with a very literal beginner's mind, not from a philosophical standpoint of, “Yes. I know if I sit in the seat of consciousness of a beginner's mind, with the knowing that everything is new all the time… it doesn't matter if I've been taking photos for decades…”

Let’s be real- as beautiful and earnest as that is, a philosophical beginner's mind is very different from a “I don't know what the fuck I'm doing at all and I feel vulnerable and embarrassed” beginner's mind.

That's what I'm finding in the poetry classes.
That's what I'll be looking for and unavoidably experiencing in singing classes.

I don't know why, but it feels embarrassing to say im going to take singing classes- so strange.

Something feels extraordinarily vulnerable about singing and for someone that's been vulnerable on a microphone for years via podcast, the level of discomfort perplexes me.

Back to Christmas Bubbles-

“the catharsis of synthesizing inside and outside.”

I think that's really the root of a lot of discontent and unrest.

I know what it feels like when I'm moving through my life and I see something and I press the shutter to take the picture. It's this very physical/emotional/creative aligning of everything in and out of me in a second.

And then it's gone.

Awakening the part inside of you that most deeply recognizes the thing you're looking at,

blissful catharsis.

A lifelong forever gift in taking and making pictures.

In this season, it feels like I'm really wanting to be able to recognize and understand the part inside of me first without needing an outside experience or representation to draw it out of me.

It reminds me of how it can be really unhealthy in a relationship if you solely depend on the other person to bring happiness to you or you look to them to make you feel a certain way.

Romancing the narrative of being two halves of a whole- dismissing the wholeness within yourself.

It feels like I do that with life.

I'm pleading with life to validate me, to comfort me, to show me, “See?”

I don't even know what the “see?” is, but “See? This. You know.”

I'm looking for life to pat me on the back, “Yeah. It's okay. Yeah. See?”

Like a friend that you don’t need to explain anything to but do anyway for the sheer exhilaration of having a safe space to speak uninhibited truth.

And I'm not saying it as a critique. I'm not saying this is wrong. Maybe it's just human nature. I don't know. I just feel particularly aware and uneasy about it.

We hear all this talk around manifestation with when you're on the same vibration as something else, that's when it's attracted to you, that's when it's feels the most natural.

I thought about that when I was thinking about how you can hold a bubble longer if your hand is dipped in that soapy water.

Because it can rest on that surface because that surface is the same as it, like a beloved friend.

But even with that, it only lasts a certain amount of time.

And then it pops.

But inside of a bubble is the same as everywhere surrounding us- air.

What makes a bubble?

Of course. It's compared to light.
Of course, there's film.

The thinness of the bubble film causes light to interfere with itself resulting in the rainbow colors we see.

Welp. I certainly feel like I'm interfering with myself.

A quick contextual aside about the bubbles but not about the bubbles:

The boys for Christmas got a room makeover.

The door was locked and it said, “Christmas magic is happening.”

They were trying to look under the door and Cassius said he felt like he saw rainbows and that Tyson (our dog that passed a few years ago) was probably in there working on their Christmas present. (all the rainbows we see are Tyson)

Bubbles, light fighting with itself in a film, underneath that film, inside the bubble, is the same stuff that is everywhere all of the time- air.

a single lightwaves width encases the most common element in a delicate rainbow film tempting you to reach for it like it isn’t everywhere.

It's everywhere. And yet you're looking for, reaching for…this elusive few hundred nanometers thick surface of a thing that is only made visible by a single lightwave.

Once you touch it, it's gone.

Even if you were able to take a bubble shell, hold it and then open it up, it would look empty because it's full of everything that's all around you already.

I mean, what the fuck.

Think about the shell of a day.
The Christmas shell that is the day of December 25th.

I get to it and don't feel the way I want to feel.

It's overwhelming and it's frustrating, but it's so comforting because it's all always here.

Just like the picture means nothing and everything.

How alive is the person looking at it?
What film is over their eyes?

What is the counterpart inside of you that is able to see and witness what's in front of you at all times?

It feels like I've come full circle in this.
(round and round i go, perpetually circling the same truth in a million ways.)

I’m recreating my original flagship course Manifest Your Memories. It’s about using photographic practice as a means to sinking your teeth into your life, vision, and being able to really extract this version of presence that feels satiating, conscious/unconscious, effortless and intentional at the same time.

That’s what photography gives me.
In the recreation of this course amidst my recent skeptical relationship with my camera, I've been putting some of those practices from that course into play in daily life.

I wanted to know,
Does this still hold?
Or is this like a bubble that when I touch it, it disappears?

The truth is it would be impossible to disappear because it’s everywhere.
The practice holds just as much magic as it has my whole life.

I was recording a video of my dog through the blur of flowers and then my son scooted over to me on his new blue scooter in a blur.
I turned the camera to him and it focused for a second, but then it had a hard time tracking him as he scooted away.

The photographic accident of blur…

The most wonderful reframe, the most wonderful “mistake”.

The blur sharpens your vision and wisdom and emotions.

It pulled me so deep into that moment.

Lean into the interference.

The interference is trying to help you see through the obstruction.
It helps you see through your soul.

The light is interfering with itself in bubbles results in rainbows.

And in this perpetual squabbling I find myself in so often-
I'm so aware of how discontent I am.
I'm so aware of how restless I am.
I'm so aware of awareness that it gets in the way
even while being a privilege and a gift.

It feels like the top of a pin,
or the the width of a bubble.
a few hundred nanometers of a coin swap of:

Is it going to hinder you or is it going to help you?

So I ask you,

What do you want to do with your Christmas bubble?

What do you want to do with your life bubble?

Your holiday bubble?

What do you want to do with your pursuit of bubbles?

I'm using this conversation as inspiration for my final Nostalgia, Now guided photographic journaling template coming out soon.

In these reflections, anything you do, anything you see, anything you feel- it's only alive through the life inside of you.

The life inside of you.

What kind of life brings you alive?
What kind of days bring you alive?
What kind of moments remind you of being alive?

And if you're finding yourself particularly discontent in this season,

I ask you,

What would it look like to come from creation rather than reaching for content.

When I'm feeling discontent how can I use it as fuel?
alchemizing, transmuting.

Instead of reaching for the bubble let yourself acknowledge that you’re inside of it.

see the rainbows.

All you need is as little as a single wave of light to do any of it.

And sometimes it's just you.

You are the single wave of light.

Happy new year. <3