Sunday, May 21, 2017

Exposure, Doubled





I was playing with the in-camera double-exposure feature. It's crap, but at least it looks like a double exposure, not softened or corrected the way a computer application might encourage with just a little click and tuck. I only took two images - or rather four that resulted in two - but I may start playing with that function more often. Does it qualify as juxtaposition if it's the same subject twice? I suppose that contrast is the key, not that the same subject differs in composition to create that contrast. It's fun and seems to be of another time - reminiscent the 60s and 70s, for me. 

Juxtaposition it is!

I'm writing out loud again, the result of being an aging daily chronicler; a beekeeper without bees, without hive to tend, protected by mesh netting, wandering a roadside dressed in white. I spend time mumbling out sentences here that convince no one, myself most of all. Neither the listener nor the speaker moves me much any more. I have become incurious about my own thoughts. They lack the engrossing verve of juvenile madness. Meaning seems to have gone the way of puberty, a thing remembered fondly, swept into its wildfire. My body and mind have settled on a separate peace. A sense of juvenescence is a thing recovered or lost with too much mature effort, the killer of much. It takes a lifetime to know when to be mature. Sooner or later you're bound to get it wrong all over again.  

I'm enduring a vacancy of purpose, awaiting the weekends for their emptiness of task. I acknowledge that I'm as needed now as I will likely ever be just by being a dad, something that will fade, felt mostly by others for reasons all their own. It's been a struggle, one in which I am often tempted to overreact. My foot injury has made me feel old, vulnerable in a way that is not of my own choosing, susceptible to too much self-doubt. A vulnerability that is anchored to diminished physicality, set apart from the emotional sphere. 

My foot has a swollen prostate, one that I'm forced to walk on tenderly.  


I went for the first bike ride in almost a month yesterday. I noted how different my inner-voice was when outside, cycling - heart rate elevated, earth gliding by, a rhythm in the body setting the tone of the mind. For most of my life I've struggled with feelings of loneliness and I don't quite know why.  I've been loved. I've done loving. It's as if I'm waiting for a life that is never going to happen, vaguely dissatisfied with the one in front of me for reasons that I dare not utter and do not make much sense to me when I do. Many must feel this way, but I'm a selfish asshole, so I don't care. The dull wretchedness of others never held much novelty or fascination for me. 

I'm barely suffering, yet sometimes overwhelmed with the shallow emptiness of my own making, a vacuum of disinterestedness that seems to surround the most insignificant of humorless complaints. I'll be back, of course, once I find the energy to rededicate myself again to my own petty grievances.


I skipped going to see The Jesus and Mary Chain last night. Old people are disgusting, and maturity holds all the dignity of death.






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