Deeply Vulnerable and Deeply Sinister

I am moved.

Re-reading my accounts from Thailand. Bizarre & bad spelling. I gleaned many ideas over that year.

part of the conversation

Photographs by Jackie Nickerson Photographs by Lucas Foglia

things i always keep on my desk:

almond butter

$

a book of poetry

chapstick

todo list

scarf

group in america | Slavin, Neal

"head" all you need to know

Aparicio, Eduardo

back to images

marilyn zimmerman

color palette patterns perspective oddity eloquence

Even though I feel pretty defeated about my work today, I believe to be an artist you need to:

have conviction, dignity, and not give a shit.

more channeling

not apologetic

lots of girls nights

freedom of self-determination

doing homework

channeling

i want to:

see only my girl friends

never call him back

buy a large format camera

think of only myself

never feel bad

drink tea forever

her groove

things come in waves.

the brain is churning.

ordered a lot of chemicals for alternative printing. experiments on their way. and looking into buying a large format camera. photography is going to be fun again.

and am trying to figure out if what i want to do is 51% self promotion and 49% working/is this my calling?

going to revisit the zarina show for more ideas.

also began looking through things i hadn't scanned in yet and uploaded a couple at the good ol' blog: estallion.tumblr.com

yesterday i went to taska's holiday party. i love the clevelands. i saw jon hassell who i haven't seen in a very long time. we bonded our medical situations. i also talked to ira, taylor's dad (i think), for a long time. later that night, i found a copy of LA Yoga with him on the cover. it was a nice comparison to make. he was wearing a similar red sweater.

i experience my anxiety as different nuanced colors i do not know how to articulate, but as jon and i spoke, we agreed that it just isn't meant to be described. why must there be a description? how strange that we give the whole world a description. intellectualizing it all until it loses it's saturation, true color.

i'm coming around to photography for the sake of photography (rather than a status for other people to validate). i dont want to use it as a vehicle to validate myself, but it's so hard to not leverage the one thing you have confidence/experience in when you are an era of self criticism. it's a relationship im not ready to start again unless i feel better. i feel good about this loyalty that i have to my convictions, my practice of photography. i don't want photography to fuel this negative thing.

trying times.

a different kind of hunger.

new motto: "i don't give a shit" and "i'm still the same person"

disappearing into the background

my ideal day, which i will try to live tomorrow:

wake up, have ten minutes of just lying in bed trying to remember my dreams

get up and surf or go running for an hour

eat a delicious breakfast

go to work on some goals - photography or writing

lunch with friends and laugh

back to work

take a walk, talk to someone you don't know

goal for everyday: make at least three jokes or make three people laugh

back to work

get chores done

read

hang out with friends/eat dinner/laugh/go to a concert/something live

relax with a movie you've never seen before or a movie i've seen too many times

drink tea/go to bed at a reasonable hour

Went to see the Zarina exhibit at the Hammer. Stunning, absolutely stunning. Haven't been floored by work in a long time. Funny, it's never photography.

I love her language, her mind, and the way she sees both natural, spiritual, and boundaries. Her aesthetic sensibility is something I really relate to right now - textural minimalism.

I love her new work, the spiritual journey theme. like Dark Night of the Soul. I did a little bit of wiki research - making this kind of work is totally in my mind. Exploring darkness.

other works i fell in love with at the moca blues for smoke exhibit:

The Sonnets: III

BY TED BERRIGAN

Stronger than alcohol, more great than song,

deep in whose reeds great elephants decay,

I, an island, sail, and my shores toss

on a fragrant evening, fraught with sadness

bristling hate.

It’s true, I weep too much. Dawns break

slow kisses on the eyelids of the sea,

what other men sometimes have thought they’ve seen.

And since then I’ve been bathing in the poem

lifting her shadowy flowers up for me,

and hurled by hurricanes to a birdless place

the waving flags, nor pass by prison ships

O let me burst, and I be lost at sea!

and fall on my knees then, womanly.

I revisit this poem so often. And I wonder, using this as a measure for beauty, sadness, and real emotional movement, if it's possible to create a visual body of work as equally powerful as what this poem does for me?

deal with the situation or go down in defeat?

trying to be more human, trying to be true to myself.

(“When you adopt the standards and the values of someone else … you surrender your own integrity. You become, to the extent of your surrender, less of a human being.” - Eleanor Rooselvelt)

do i want to do photography because it is something i love to do, or have i been feeling interested in photography because i can't bare to say that i'm not doing much (in fact, i am doing a lot, but it is work that i do not want anyone to see or know about)

how do i honor all of the people i have worked with this year when i stay in my house, but away from the emails i should respond to?

needles and pins in my back!

constantly walking on egg shells around myself.

feeling the most satisfying sad after reading berrigan today.

OK, will now spend the rest of the day trying to be useful to myself. i ask, "what happened to my hunger?"

betty davis eyes

my currency is lost! longing for what i don't know, but not in photography. very reluctant to work, to reflect or review all that went down. less than a creative block, more like breathing. "everything is special everyday" my new motto/sale sign at a thrift store i've been very focused on love lately. i've been feeling through anna karenina. have been to very many film screenings of the avante garde nature. most have been very good, but tonight's screening was a pretty big disappointment (a found footage film festival). makes you wonder who/what makes it work/works it. sadness, like the deep kind in east of eden. and never hungry.

all in all and deep by deep

eating raspberries in the sun.

house is not perfectly put together, but it looks good for right now.

the top of my hair is brown (a layer of sun), the bottom is a shadow of my natural black.

my skin and hair have a distinct preference for california, the united states. my body, in general, is doing better, although not completely relieved of pain.

thinking outwards, i have a very large and overwhelming bucket list. the most important part is talking about my feelings. i need a lot of help - that sort of thing. it feels like i need a very big and potentially long break from my creative self.

i've been taking part in surfing! it's a wonderful escape that has me being tossed in the ocean like a salad. i have been tumbling across the ocean floor because the tide is so low. the waves are louder than my thoughts, which is perfect. the sky is very big, much bigger than my thoughts, which is also perfect. this force that is bigger than me is an important element in bringing me to a calm. i need to be reminded often that we can't make every single choice in our lives, and with the choices we do make, not every single one of them can be the best or the perfect. as an optimist, i struggle with that a lot. it's important to try, but i tried too hard and now i have to take a break. i am looking forward to this break.

I could try to toughen up

Rose:

Completed a day-in-the-life paternal grandfather tour in my parent's home town. this included eating his favorite pork's blood noodles, duck noodles, tasting local desserts, seeing the site of my family's old humble abode, learning how to pray to my family's chosen chinese deity, Matsu (Mae Tsup in Thai), visiting chinese and thai temples he was devoted to, cleaning my grandparent's grave and leaving them an offering of flowers, and seeing his room before he passed away (an empty, bright room made of concrete with nothing in it except for 13 eclectic wall clocks - very strange).

Bud:

Going home.

Making a home with my brother.

Cooking from Plenty. And looking forward to getting Jerusalem in the mail too.

Swimming everyday I can.

Running everyday I can.

Riding my bike.

If life is favorable, adopting a dog.

Thorn:

Undiagnosed and symptoms remain relatively the same. Although very slow and subtle, I think I am starting to see some improvement.

Testing one two three!