Help My Unbelief

After all the years of unburdening and reverse engineering and truth seeking, I am here at the beginning. And yet, everything is different. Truth may not change, but context does, and perception does, and I am a product of time, standing on the other side of my certainty, perplexed by its dissonance. I am back in the sanctuary like there’s something I missed. I have exhausted this space; flipped the pews, and read the books cover to cover, gnawing on the poetry, the anecdotes, the prophecies, the histories, the stories. 

I was never against it. Coming back, I mean. Those who resolve to chase truth are committed to the actuality of it; meaning they assent to finding the ecstasy of the divine or the bleakness of the void, or any permutation between the two; also meaning, I was leaving and the only way to really leave a place is to know you are never coming back. 

But I did. 

And it’s not the way it was.

And I’m not the way I was.

I believe, help my unbelief.

I have concluded this circling back has something to do with the misalignment of kingdoms and kings and the incongruity of power. This disrupted cohesion is evidence to me. This disagreement satisfies the questions like why does everything here have a tilt to it, like we’re not quite on axis (we’re not) and everything is sliding, slipping off; gravity threatening to loosen its grip just like every other promise. The incompatibility of what is and what should be is my Polaris and is the answer to disorientation in a place that is supposedly my home.

Certainty is a compromise of nominal faith, a luxury of assumption, and true believers (in anything) have to acknowledge the absence of absolutes. This conflict has a peace about it once we untether ourselves from our desperation for clarity. It took shoving off from shore into the wild open waters for me to willingly return to land, otherwise I would have lived in animus toward the familiar, having never tried for more than the shallows where my feet could still touch bottom. 

I believe, help my unbelief. I am certain only of my uncertainty. My unbelief contours the belief that was, is, and will be. I am at peace in pursuing truth rather than weaponizing what I want truth to be. My assurance is incomplete, my nature is pliable in the way most things bend and writhe across the fabric of forever, my convictions are always wandering away from expectations.

There is no place for those like us here, but then again, there was no place for the son of man to lay his head and that, too, is a comfort. 

Free Fall

I keep settling

back to the silt and brine

sun gazing

that distant pin of light

and miles of water suggest

it’s just a matter of time

(until til I break the surface)

if I were inclined

and did you know we can free-fall

beneath the surface

(around thirteen meters)

how is that possible

that we can still fall

even when the air

is

gone

Wishing Well

If we are on the topic of wishing, and a wish can be anything, and it doesn’t mean it’s the end of more wishing tomorrow, then I will heap my dreams into this river like some giant wishing well. That’s what they call it? Any body of water which drinks our spare change and the full bodied hopes of children who teach us all the meaning of believing and of course the world is possible, it’s ours isn’t it? All of ours? And conflicted people stare casually at grace and let it slip to the bottom.

Adopting Analog Principles to Digital

The virtue and terminus of analog photography is the tangible print, which occupies physical space. It is defiant to the cold storage and virtual nonexistence of digital imagery, which trivializes the entire process. We can adopt the principles of the analog camera to the digital by imposing a restriction on the otherwise limitless capacity of our technology. Before every press of the shutter release we need to ask whether this is an image which should be printed into existence.

Film demanded some intention by design. What was considered a flaw of film during the advent of digital was its limit of 24 or 36 frames per roll. Every single shutter release would bring the photographer one exposure closer to winding the negatives back into their housing to later be processed in a darkroom. There was (is) an economic calculation in photography, particularly as film became more expensive.

Digital promised to eliminate that pressure. And it did. But art which thrived on the scarcity of a product was replaced with an abundance of digital files, which may or may not possess any element of inspiration or intention. Hence, a self-imposed restriction: is this picture worth printing? My CF Express card can fit over 1,500 RAW images at 48 megapixels. And like a bigger house, or a bigger backpack, more space often excuses more junk.

So rather than sell off your digital kit, it may be worth adopting, even temporarily, this habit of slowness, and intent, to preserve the virtue of picture taking: to make images that matter; if not to the world then at least to yourself.

AI and Photography

Thoughts on AI and Photography in response to last night’s @ctforum :

The nature of photography is one of preserving fragments of reality and that is something Artificial Intelligence has neither the motivation nor the sentience to accomplish. Photographs are artifacts of precise record, and are captured at the free will and whim of people. One might say these images are shavings of truth and for all that AI is (or may become) it is not an inspired soul which considers and chooses the moments to chisel into eternity. AI generated art assembles visual content from a dataset, and thus never truly deals in the immediate unfolding of reality and the documenting of the pulsing, breathing, interactive nature of life. By definition, it cannot. Whatever conflict exists between the visual arts and the social values of profit and expediency, is not new. The struggle between unmitigated consumerism and our autonomy is carried into this new frontier. New players. Same game. And it is incumbent upon the creators to surge against addictive technology clutching at our very agency. So, let us put our minds to the deep work of imagining and create something beautiful from that deep ocean of conscience, virtue, and wonder that we call humanity.

Think on These Things

There’s a verse from my childhood that hangs on the door to my mind so that I read it each time I pass through (which is often). It says to consider only that which is worthy; saturate yourself with what elevates you. In the many caustic renderings of religion, beauty is tarnished by reckless people and we are so dismayed with the whole damn mess that we discard truths caught in the tangle. But some words cling to the corners and don’t shake out. The mandate to set our minds toward the truest, most honest, just, pure, lovely, and good - assumes an elemental truth of humanity: we require goodness to flourish. The fumes of fear and hysteria yield no hope. The dysphoria in our world may well be tacked down to our obsession with lesser things. But the lovely and good are reflective by nature, perhaps even viral. And it is only by their nourishment that we will thrive. So the next time you see a dogwood in bloom, or the next time a song reaches deep into your heart, or a story raptures your imagination, or the sunset kisses your cheek, “think on these things”.

Skyline

I have a bad habit of looking up in cities, that’s how you know I’m not from one. A skyline for scale; asphalt fairways for dimension. The world I’m from undulates with the slowness of organic resurrection; glacial landscapes, ancient lakes. It’s an old world that cycles through centuries like breathing. A city beats like the heart of an infant, and rests on the breast of the land.