GERONIMO.

The sum of what I write in this isn't actually what I want to be said. Because there is everything left to be said. But my suffering is not unique. It's been written already, in movies and books, songs and letters. But I still find myself altered and unknown. The carousel ferris wheel never stops turning and it only carries me in circles. I catch myself still waiting for it to come back around. It won't. I can't tell if I'm waiting for you anymore or if I'm waiting for who I was to come back.

7/2026 // cursed to come back around

Put your ear to me and you'd hear the ocean. I lost little pieces. I didn't even notice them being swept away. But the waves, they tumble and roam, never stopping, never returning. I can't name what was carried off. I've let large chunks slip to the depths and I'm not sure what to fit into their place. I could push new story lines, and fill it with new content but I fear it will fall right on through like an open drain.

7/2026 // a geometry that structurally cannot meet

So I think you're supposed to name your feelings or whatever and I think mine is grief. It's so domestic and mundane, a common household name. But it's mighty in its emptiness, and dismissive in its shame. Grief isn't the ocean, it isn't the drain, it's the ferris wheel, going in circles, you wait for it to move on, and it keeps coming back around.

7/2026 // you had the nerve to say Geronimo

Ferris wheel to waves, what feels closest to true? Maybe I'm just closed for the season and this time, I won't come back around.

NO COMPLAINTS.

I avoided the emotions and filled holes with things that are bad for me.

It’s not ragged or turbulent anymore. It’s quiet and persistent.

6/2026 // No Complaints

6/2026 // it still exists, it just escapes different

Song: No Complaints by Noah Kahan

PALINOPSIA.

OVERVIEW. Continuing to see something in your field of vision, even after it’s no longer there. The title Palinopsia comes from a Greek term meaning ‘again’ (palin) and ‘seeing’ (opsia), referring to a visual phenomenon where images persist even after the original stimulus is gone.

6/2026 // when i catch my breath, i choke

TYPES OF PALINOPSIA.

Hallucinatory: When areas of my brain that involve visual memory are too active or fire too easily, showing reappearances of the past.

Illusory: When the visual pathways in my brain don’t work like they should. Like changes in how I perceive something I’m seeing at the moment.

POSSIBLE CAUSES. The most common causes include: being defined by someone I have bad dreams of, when I don't breathe the way that I was born to, the innocence that I knew nothing of, when I’m still myself and time’s just run it’s course, or lemon life.

CARE AND TREATMENT. The treatment for palinopsia depends on many factors, especially the underlying cause. Because so many conditions can cause it, the treatment varies widely. Your lemon life provider is the best person to tell you about the treatment options for your case and which they recommend. Typically you should treat it with copius amounts of pop punk and angst.

PREVENTION. Some causes of palinopsia are preventable or avoidable. The best things you can do to avoid it include: Wear safety equipment as needed. Manage your chronic conditions.

WHEN TO CALL A DOCTOR. When you catch your breath, and you choke.

OUTLOOK. There’s a whole world out there, I just can’t see it.
Brought to you by Lemon Life Clinic.

Song: Palinopsia by Arm’s Length

TOTAL CINEMA.

I believed something was true that wasn’t.

TEMPORARY.

I’ve been writing end of the year letters, reflecting.
I wrote you a short one. It’s starts with I
It ends with anymore.

It’s different than all the other letters.
They all start with a casual Do you remember
And end with Here for you

6/2026 // hazy in my thoughts, leading nowhere

I thought maybe I’d write about all this, but it’s hard to write when you don’t feel.
I can’t pinpoint who I am anymore and there’s this piece that’s been dampened.
lost without a cause
'cause all of my nightmares have turned into daydreams
It’s all filed under the blanket of this year.
I never liked hiding under the blanket.
I found it hard to breathe, never enough air.
Too hot. Too heavy. Too dark.

6/2026 // stuck in a cycle

6/2026 // temporary

song: temporary by savings

DOUBLE VISION.

In the morning, I saw the moon. I almost cried as I pulled out of the driveway. No camera, just eyes. The quiet, the dark, the morning, all a familiar pang.

In the evening, I took up my regular post along the fence line and it felt the same — for thirty seconds…and then the ground dropped away and something inside went with it. It felt foreign and tainted.

In the night, I rolled the windows down. My hair whipped past my hat, little slashes in my vision. I tried hard to push it aside. But I wrapped too much up into this whole damn thing. And now I’m left with this damn double vision.

4/2026 // my double vision

song: difficult by gracie abrams

A FAULT LINE.

A FAULT LINE

I built a space out of everything I knew.
Poured out everything that was said.
I watched the lines carve themselves out of red and blue.
Swam through the labyrinth.
I traced my fingers along the impression.
Coils of cobalt settled along the edges of my fingers.
I unravelled the rift in the ceiling.
Violet spilt from the seams.
I was sure I spoke the language inside dreams.
The fissure turned on its side,
Cracking and curling ash, as a ghost inside.
I closed my eyes, let it drift.
The colors fell back into the rift.

3/2026 // this failure is built deep into my design

3/2026 // this doubt is deafening

3/2026 // cause you were gold but I'm colorblind

Song: Colorblind by Movements

FLOWERS TURN TO FIRE.

What does it feel like to carry it?

3/2026 // I’m not a child

Covered and overlapped
With no need to take root
As it’s always been there
But, it didn’t need to stay
Any number of words
Could have stopped this

The panel has convened
Me, myself, and I
With no answers to my questions
And my voice caught inside my head
We’re stopping this.
I’m not a child.
Flowers turn to fire.

Song: Flowers Turn To Fire by O+S

SHOWER THOUGHTS.

Art & Fear Chapter 4 and Shower Thoughts

“Art is often made in abandonment, emerging unbidden in moments of selfless rapport with the materials and ideas we care about. In such moments we leave no space for others. That’s probably as it should be. Art, after all, rarely emerges from committees. But while others’ reactions need not cause problems for the artist, they usually do.” [Page 37]

The simple idea of any reaction to my artwork, causes me problems. Big ones. The authors go on to write that we carry real and imagined critics with us constantly. And they’re right. But I don’t care so much about the critique. I don’t care if they like it, love it, feel indifferent to it, hate it. I carry so much of everything else. I’m more worried they’ll see it and know it. And scarier yet, ask about it. I want to leave it in the world and I want it to be left unaddressed, at least by those who know me well. And for those fears, and for those reasons, lately, the work I create, I can’t seem to post.

“But for most art there is no client, and in making it you lay bare a truth you perhaps never anticipated: that by your very contact with what you love, you have exposed yourself to the world.” [Page 38]

“You have exposed yourself to the world.” It’s so weird to be an artist. I have this unbearable need to get the work out of my system and out into the world, so it doesn’t linger with me a second longer. I can’t describe it any other way, it has to get out. But I fear a fallout from it’s emergence. I want my art to be seen, exist. I just wish to remain unseen. A true paradox.

“The lesson here is simply that courting approval, even that of peers, puts a dangerous amount of power in the hands of the audience. Worse yet, the audience is seldom in a position to grant (or withhold) approval on the one issue that really counts — namely, whether or not you’re making progress in your work. They’re in a good position to comment on how they’re moved (or challenged or entertained) by the finished product, but have little knowledge or interest in your process. Audience comes later. The only pure communication is between you and your work.” [Page 47]

I don’t want to worry about the audience anymore. I don’t want the outside world to hold any power over what I wish to create. I don’t want to censor my work because it feels too true, too much, too dark, too anything. I want to make what I want to. Say what I want to. I’m tired of trying to make everything fit into these little boxes all the time. So I’m torn between wanting to shield the circle of those I know from my artwork. To separate the Claire they know from the Claire who creates. But we’re the same.

2/2026 // shower thoughts, i’m cleaning my head out

Our scene opens. The narrator speaks: The hardest part wasn’t what she thought it would be.
The camera pans in, the rainwater shower head makes frantic pitter patter sounds on the fiberglass walls and floor. As the subject sits still, the water pours and pours over the subject.

The narrator explains: Saying goodbye in silence wasn’t the hardest part. Existing as it slipped away wasn’t either. The still, dead air wasn’t the hardest part, nor was the familiar depths of depression, revisiting in layers.

A song by Ethansroom called “Shower Thoughts” begins to fade in under the narrator’s words:

It was the undeniable little scrap of hope she clung to, against all better advice to just let it go. Against all her better judgement, holding onto it, like cupping water in your hands, refusing to let it go as it dissolved.

It slipped, silently, without permission, as so many things do. It said no goodbyes, it closed no door. She relinquished it, under the weight of depression, without even knowing. It went, without a witness. The hardest part wasn’t the endless abyss of numbness. It wasn’t the revisiting of the crushing, black void. It wasn’t even the tortured “what if’s”. All these things weren’t the hardest part. 

The camera focuses on the water, the drops that slowly slide down the walls of the fiberglass as the subject covers her face in her hands with one long sigh. The narrator finally tells you what, in fact, was the hardest part: The hardest part, you see, was waking up one morning and knowing deep in her core that it had all gone, a very long time ago and that awful, stubborn and beautiful little kernel of hope prevented her from knowing it had left. The hardest part was it slipping away so quietly, under all that weight. Robbing her of the knowledge that it was already gone, robbing her of feeling it, robbing her of feeling anything at all.  

The scene cuts to black and the song ends. The narrator yields the final words: The hardest part wasn’t what she thought it would be. The hardest part was realizing what it took and not knowing when it had left.

MIDDLE DISTANCE.

The sun is warm on my face and I can’t deny how nice it feels. I swear I can feel it seeping directly into my skin, as some missing vitamin grabs hold inside. The dirt and gravel crunch under us as we tumble out of the truck. Each of us strapping various bags to shoulders, adjusting water bottles, extending hiking poles, and applying uv protection for the sun.

My mother leads, eager to walk, and we follow. She’s such a sunshiny flower. She carts little bits of trail mix in her pockets so that a bag doesn’t rustle. I get my sensitive ears from both my parents, the wind irritation from hers — my ears screaming in pain under the pull of even a slight breeze, and the uncomfortableness with repetitive or intrusive sounds from my father.

2/2026 // pockets full

I smile to myself as she has cleverly found a way to make no sound at all and still have her snacks. My father grumbles next to me, “She never stops eating.” I change the subject, as I move behind him on the winding trail and call out: “Look it!” —a familiar family phrase from long ago that will take him back. He stops and looks around wildly, to see what I might be pointing at. “Straight in front of me, be quiet! The bird!” His eyes are looking down for a “road runner,” whereas mine are looking up at this little bird atop a saguaro.

2/2026 // perched

I wonder how it survives here. What it searches for… Arizona looks to be one thing but, the feeling I have, doesn’t match most of what I’m seeing. Yes, this landscape has its own beauty. The green is striking, with little hints of yellow on the ground and blue in the sky, it looks like a movie set. But the more I study it, I find an uneasy feeling welling up inside. Somewhere deep in the back of my thoughts, a voice urges, “Run.”

2/2026 // the thousandth time

On the second day, a blue lake appeared, surrounded by rocky, sandy mountain trails spotted with more saguaros. The blue water glistens in the sun and creates the beautiful bokeh I fell in love with years ago. And even though I know I’ve taken a thousand pictures like this, I have to stop and take just one more. People behind me continue their hike and my father waits for me, talking to each and every one. The blue ripples continue to move, the sun is so warm now, I don’t want to get up. I want to just sit here and squint at the water as it glitters. It feels like it doesn’t belong, nestled inside this cluster of mountains.

2/2026 // no horizon

That feeling stayed with me, following along the dusty wind to “The Compound.” A name I started to use for where we were staying. It was comprised of similarly looking sun-bleached trailers. Each one roughly the same shade, each with a little deck, stairs, and each with a small patch of gravel raked just the same way. There was an order and neatness to it all. A quiet community of the 55 and older crowd.

When I first arrived, the sun had already slipped below the horizon, and I could only see it by light of the street lamps. I felt a quiet unease immediately and marveled at how everything belonged a bit too well. Once inside, there was no horizon line, only trailer after trailer, road after road, golf cart after golf cart. Where the desert had some semblance of life, with the cactus and wildflowers, roadrunners, and ducks on the lake, The Compound felt preserved, like time stopped, like the world stopped. Closed off, secluded, gated inside. All your needs met, never wanting for anything else, never needing to leave. It felt odd to me, that this was what people would choose. To surrender to the seclusion. That voice deep in my head said again, "Run," more urging this time.

2/2026 // Run.

I stand somewhere between the two. Not rooted like the saguaro, always balancing itself, not preserved like the trailers, each one identical, waiting. Just passing through, like I was made of the same dusty wind that carries everything else. My family moved around me, my mother reaching for her silent snacks, my father talking to strangers, and I watched them the way you watch something through glass. Close enough to touch, but with something between us I can’t name.

I am a photographer through and through. I frame and capture, looking for the whole picture. But I look through a small rectangular viewfinder. Suspended in a small window, present enough to see what lies ahead but one step removed from actually being there. I keep coming back to that little bird, perched atop the saguaro. What are we searching for, little bird? And how will we know when we find it?

WHERE YOU LEFT ME

Yes, I remember 
Yes, I recall 
Yes, I paid attention

I am not where you left me

Along the side of a little shop of Wonders, residing on a fading Main Street, sits a couch somewhere between an orange rust and a merlot. This long little hole-in-the-wall Shop is bursting with things. Crammed floor to ceiling, wall to wall. Every step, every glance, every inch, holds a little piece of someone else. 

A pair of black roller skates with green laces and green wheels

A license plate with a little rust

A new doll that stares, not seeing, back at the visitors

A bowling ball bag, sans the ball

An extra small, dark green leather jacket with intricate floral patterns


The sight is overwhelming. Inside this Shop of Wonders, I get lost in the sea of things. So much to see. My dad doesn’t. He sees what he wants. And before he takes it for his own, he goes line for line, story for story, with the brother of The Man who owns this shop. He can separate things. He can do pretty much anything. He can decide what matters. Where I, never do. I never learned how to put anything down.

As my dad fills the space with his stories, he gestures to me, speaks to The Man like I’m his pride and joy. He expresses how much we are alike and how I know him. He tells The Man, a story about us and he looks to me and says, “Remember?”

Yes, I remember 
Yes, I recall 
Yes, I paid attention

And they’re always so impressed. That I remember. That I pay attention. That I recall. Over and over, they are all, just always, so impressed. 

I remember. 
My superpower. My curse. My purpose. My burden. 

I remember. 
I’m like the inside of the Shop. Crammed floor to ceiling, wall to wall. Holding little pieces of someone else.

But I’m also like the outside of the Shop.
Like the couch. Sitting just outside, just around the corner, bare, uninhabited, vacant. It’s slightly removed. On the edge, the outskirts.


I am not where you left me. 
But I will remember. 

NUMBER 13

To avoid certain number 13’s, remember: it means nothing until proven otherwise.
Remain neutral until evidence is clear.

number 13 favorite crime

Steeped in golden warmth, I wonder if this metal is brass. I’m almost sure it is, as my stomach lurches into my throat with the rise of each floor. The wood is cast in warm light, making it appear richer than it is. The marble walls I had walked through to get here, were cast in a similar overwhelming amount of soft light. As I moved through them, I found the black of the marble to my liking, drawn to the darkness where thin bits of white wisp along the surface as if they flourished on their own in the elegance of this 1930’s building. Desire rose, urging me to trace the lines with my fingers. I forced it back, keeping my hands at my sides.

Here, now, in this small rectangular box, a row of illuminated numbers runs in a precise, lateral line. I analyze the font, try to guess it, but I can’t place it. Each number is softly lit as it slips us past each floor, their little glass faces catching the light as we go, like small beacons of light in the dark, carrying me upward. I look away, down to the floor, and sigh for the millionth time, wondering how long this battle of dark and light will command my life.

The vertical corridor moves me up and down and I think about the symmetry again, of how the light and dark push me up and down in this world. With my camera wrapped around my neck, resting like a shadow rests against a body, forever with me, I absently lift it toward the numbers. With a small, deliberate act, my fingertip meets a gentle resistance that gives way to tactile and unmistakeable “click”. The hum of movement quiets from this lifting cage, and a metallic chime signifies we’ve arrived and the doors split and slide evenly open.

On the other side of the elevator, white, san serif numbers greet me from the dark hall. I pull on the door with “1670” illuminated next to it. The room is small, filling with bodies in finely dressed attire. I settle into what can only be called a wooden pew, it’s smooth surface worn by decades of patrons of the law, locked in their own battles of light and dark. I fight off memories of places like this and, instead, to distract myself, I lift the camera to review the frame I just captured. The image comes to life on the screen. It’s how I remembered it looking, the warm light, strong vertical brass lines reaching for that horizontal line of numbers and then suddenly, there it is: the number 13. Illuminated in quiet declaration against all the other options.

Quieting the snicker that rises in my throat, I let out a huff of air, almost rolling my eyes as I do. This tiny moment, this unfocused click, this lazy photograph, captured the quiet tension, the bit of mystery, the lore of “13”. I wonder about my luck. I wonder about what it means in my unending battle of light and dark. And I wish it didn’t feel accidental.

To avoid certain number 13’s, remember: it means nothing until proven otherwise. Remain neutral until evidence is clear.

VACANT.

and one more thing, is too many things
an inner voice pleads for it to stop
it whispers out to the universe
I am vacant

vacant, 1

vacant, 2

this vacant tale isn’t safe to tell
twist it back inside
burning neon
I am vacant

POETRY IS EXIGENT.

Let’s study.
A bare rumination
in how shadows drown out a space
and where the light claims its domain.

A mood that is a bit aimless
and quiet. Contemplative
and pensive.

What could be the point?
perhaps not declarative,
but something else, something like
seeing and passing.

The absence,
echoes the wandering,
in the spaces that are left.

WEEK FIFTY TWO.

project 52 / week 52 / time

Exhale. Turn back the clock.

17 February 2025
Incoming Message: I have another prompt for you if you want one.

Outgoing Message: Send it

Incoming Message: Time. A photo is just a snapshot in time, yet it shows so much. And while that photo is being taken, whether a happy or sad one, the world keeps spinning. People are living their lives. Good and bad things are still happening. Yet we never seem to have enough time. If anyone can try and capture the essence of time, it’s going to be you. Now I fully recognize this is not easy, however I can’t wait to see what you come up with.

Outgoing Message: You are good at this. It’s so hard. I’ll try!

So on February 17th, I started building. Thoughts on time? I have many. But this prompt came from a past photo student who gave me the first prompt idea for project 52. And she explains it so well. If I thought capturing what photography means to me (week 1) was hard, this… shakes head.

My original idea for 52/52 was to create a metamorphic photo, showcasing how I’ve changed but…once she floated the idea of time. I knew it should be the bookend. There is comfortable symmetry in that, starting and ending with one person’s thoughts. Starting on what photography means to me and ending with time. We like poetry ‘round these parts. 

So let’s go back.

project 52 / week 1 / capture what photography means to you. Damn. That one took a lot of thinking. I love that photo. It’s exactly right, paired with the right song.

Project 52 became highly personal to me. It became so much more than 52 photos a week. I thought it was going to be so easy, one photo a week. Surely, less demanding than a photo a day. I was wrong, and don’t call me Shirley. Sometimes the weekly photo took all day long to create: set up, shooting, editing, and then came the writing. These photos were meant to have a bigger narrative attached, a story, cinematic. I wanted to focus on that, “visual storytelling,” but somehow my brain got that confused with writing. And so I wrote. And wrote. And wrote. And I pried opened this door I had painted shut. The paint peeled, the air rushed in and the words went flooding out.

There are 11 photos within this photograph. I was shooting for 52 but it became too much. Since February, I’ve been photographing the sky and the color changes it produces with this end photo in mind. 

52/52 // time

Time. Fragments of it, all cut up and spliced together between power lines. Strips sliding past each other, pulling apart, layer by layer. The power line, standing in, like structure and routine. Time holds rhythm. The days keep showing up, the calendar flips, the clock strikes 00:00, and so on. But here, there are blended layers of time woven into the sky. Multiple moments coexisting. There’s order. There’s chaos. It holds all things. It is the in-between, the beginning, middle, and the end. It flows from one boundary to another. Control and release. Side by side. The essence of time.

Project 52 comes to its rightful end.
Thanks for playing.
For all time, always. 

Oh, hey, on week one, I told you to find the thing, that feels like everything. So, in this time of project 52, did you find your thing? Find the thing that fills the spot in your chest? I did, several times, and lost it too. It felt like everything. I still can’t explain it. I just felt it. I let it consume me. I let it drive my life, did you? On week one, I told you to listen to this song: rite of spring by angels & airwaves.

”If I had a chance for another try, I wouldn’t change a thing, it’s made me all who I am inside. And if could thank god that I am here and that I am alive. And every day I wake, I tell myself a little harmless lie: the whole wide world is mine.”

If you want to know what this feels like…being at the end of project 52, being all these different versions of myself, finding and losing different parts of myself, trying to make it all fit and then letting it not fit…listen to this song: a little’s enough by angels & airwaves. Secret #17: This song, has been my through-line since I was 16.


“I, I can do anything
If you want me here
Yeah, I can fix anything
If you let me near
Where are those secrets now
That you're too scared to tell?
I'd whisper them all aloud
So you can hear yourself”

WEEK FIFTY ONE.

project 52 / week 51 / photos you didn’ t see

2/52 // it was so very cold on this day. the ascent up and up and up, for only a fraction of the time it takes to come down.

2/52 // and so very cold on this day too. something about the way the first light glints off the empty black bench during the sunrise, and the little tracks that walk right by it.

2/52

2/52 // i didn’t know the sky could make waves. the prism of color refracted by the sun, quiet and commanding.

9/52 // i thought this photo was a dud. this day started out terrifying and ended with the most peaceful sleep I’d had in ages.

9/52 // i rushed this photo
not because i wanted it over quickly, rather,

9/52 // i rushed this one too.
i wanted to stay in the present, unfolding before me.

12/52 // i cried three times on this day. once in laughter, twice in sadness. the symmetry of the photo and the day are not lost on me.

25/52 // sometimes i wish she wouldn’t grow up. sometimes i think i should give up all this to just be there instead.

25/52 // i don’t like to look at this photo. for the first time in my life, i didn’t want to be there.

25/52 // the birds felt like gospel in front of the moon at sunset. they allowed me seven shots before flittering off. and i wondered what it would be like to simply be that free.

42/52 // i went to this spot for a little bird. and it was here that i put it together in my mind, waiting for the literal light. i strung together all that would be fading soon.

42/52 // this photo has never felt like mine. and i was right, about all of it.

42/52 // i thought this photo was a dud when i took it but when i look at it now, it’s like what it feels like to no longer be homesick. “…’a perfect house, whether you like food or sleep or story-telling or singing, or just sitting and thinking best, or a pleasant mixture of them all,’ merely to be there was a cure for weariness, fear, and sadness.” that’s what i think it feels like when the “homesick” feeling goes away. so photo kids, this is why i tell you not to delete photos on your camera, upload them, keep them, revisit them, because after a day, a week, a month, or many, you might see something you missed in that tiny lcd screen.

42/52 // i don’t think i like this photo very much but there’s something about the way the light crests on the hill. if you don’t look, you won’t see.

49/52 // this photo felt like the most honest one i’d taken in awhile. and to go back to 2024, it gave me the chest tingly thing to post it, so i know it was true and right to do so, no matter how scary.

7/52 // i take this picture every year. and usually keep it for myself. except for the year of “nothin’ but time” and this year I guess.

Without much thought, I dove into project 365, on January 1st, 2024. Which, was actually 366 because lemon life (TM) and leap year… And I figured out a lot of things through that process of finding a photograph every single day. Finding, stumbling upon, searching for, creating. I listened, I watched, I waited, I set it up. The coolest thing about 365 was each photograph holds an exact moment of the day that I can instantly recall when I look at it. What was said, what I felt, the things I did and didn’t do… It’s all there, a visual journal of an entire year. [This is why I highly recommend you attempt it, at least once in your life]. As much pressure as it was, it’s maybe one of the best things I’ve ever done. I said it from the start, it was like a vitamin, one-a-day. It gave me something that I had lost. And I’m glad to have found that thing again.

Switching to a photo a week for 2025, rather than a day, was denser. Less photos, but…the photos felt like they needed to carry more weight than those of 366/2024. They needed a narrative. I set a tone and I aimed to achieve it. A photo a week is nothing like a photo a day… It slowed down time. It wasn’t about visually appealing images, (I mean, it still was, duh) but it was about saying something more. So I threw out any caution and went deeper. And it was really hard. I wanted to quit, a lot. Half way through, I stopped photographing for the weekly “prompt” and started creating the images first, finding a prompt to fit them later. And maybe that’s cheating, or maybe that’s just backward design. Whatever you want to call it, I think it made me a better artist, a better writer, a better thinker.

As an artist there’s about a million battles to fight, and one of the biggest and longest you’ll fight is fear. There are many fruitless fights against different types of fears and many of them, don’t really matter…The big one is keeping the line open. To search, to find, to make, even when you’re not sure the world wants to see it, even when you’re scared to show it, even when you’re not really sure what it is you’ve created. And it’s sort of beautiful and awful and wonderful and painful. My other big fear: losing things. The idea of not seeing, the idea of not knowing, not remembering, not keeping...scares me too much. I have to keep the things that matter, forever, in whatever ways they can be kept:


like photographs on this blog,
words on scraps of paper, in journals,
ticket stubs folded into the pages of said journals,
a little jar with vincent’s toenails in my cupboard,
the receipt from the restaurant tucked behind a picture in a frame,
the scrap of paper with my grandmother’s handwriting next her perfume in the linen closet,
the last drawing I made you resting in my junk drawer,
the stickers on the envelop from my mother stuck to the side of my fridge,
a screenshot of a story of two trees intertwining sent by my dad at 3:02 a.m. in a folder on my hard drive,
the starfish anklet my niece made in the back of my make-up drawer,
all have to kept.

I am the keeper of things. While photographing in 2024, I kept some photos to myself. Some days, I took a photo that I didn’t want anyone to see, I wanted to keep it, just for me to have. And so I shot more that day and came up with something else to post. I did the same this year for project 52/2025. I held on to photographs and didn’t post them. I wanted them for me. So in going back through my 52/2025 folder, I found a few that feel like they should’ve been seen.

There’s only one week left of project 52, and it’s really just a couple of days, because this year will end on a Wednesday. So in thinking of that, in trying to grow, I took a look back through project 52 and found a few photos I was holding on to that you didn’t see. This isn’t all of them, change doesn’t happen overnight but I suppose it nudges the needle a little. Forever, with a war of worlds inside me, these are the photos you didn’t see.

So, for the last time in 2025, I guess I’ll see you next week.

WEEK FIFTY.

project 52 / week 50 / held

it’s the only way to be alive
and as your resident living dead person,
i had to tell you so.
something fell out
something important
but I can’t quite —
I can’t think it through
I know it’s gone
but what it was —
I just don’t know
I don’t have anymore fight left in me
I am transparent as a ghost
I’ll tell the truth,
but only some of the time, on sunday’s
I’ll write it all out so they’ll know (the living, I mean)
who I was
what I did
the things I couldn’t feel
the moments I kept
because it’s the only way
to stay alive
as a living dead person
to hurt or haunt

WEEK FORTY NINE.

project 52 / week 49 / exhaustion

49/52 // the slow replacement of an inner life

turn the page, turn away

I’m tired of the same fight, 
Of the awfulness they are to each other.
I don’t have the energy left to correct it.
I have to find something else. 

I’m tired of knowing what won’t happen now,
Of the plans I had carefully set aside. 
I don’t have the energy to hold them.
I have to buy a new cooler. 

I’m tired of waking up heart racing, 
Of thoughts circling, never really leaving.
I don’t have the energy to let it go.
I have to take more sleeping pills. 

I’m tired of answering the same questions,
Of lies that necessarily slip between my teeth. 
I don’t have the energy to let it show.
I have to hold a prefab answer in the queue. 

I’m tired of the calendar days turning over,
Of knowing each version of present and future are slipping away.
I don’t have the energy to witness it.
I have to cancel the tickets. 

I’m tired of writing the same words,
Of thinking they’ll provide clarity.  
I don’t have the energy to pick up the pen. 
Turn the page, turn away,

From everything I was, until I wasn’t.  

WEEK FOURTY EIGHT.

project 52 / week 48 / suspended

48/52 // suspended and finite

Falling through all the layers, each one missed,
Suspended in versions of a life that will never exist.
Deep in imaginary worlds and timelines
—— But why is it never this timeline?
Will it always be like this — untethered?

Tied the tether tight and shot for the moon,
Only to forget, it’s always too soon.
It’s a long way down all on your own.
Remember this part, a lesson that I’ve blown.
Closed, quiet, less.

I thought you were infinite.
You found me to be finite.
My bright is too slight,
To hold back all my dark.
Grasp this, let go, keep the mark.

The world keeps turning.
I pretend to be busy.
Busy ——
trying not to think about it.
trying to fill my time.
trying not to quit.

Sometimes I wish I wrote songs. No one freaks out when a song pours out all the lonely words, says the things we only admit in the dark. Because my emotions control me and I want to express them, to get them out. I read somewhere that depression exists because there is “suppressed expression”. Something authentic that wants to be expressed, but is held back. Creativity. Truth. Change. Whatever it is, depression is the soul’s protest against a life that doesn’t fit. As an artist, you expose your own wounds, in order to heal them. But when you do, they linger, fester, never really gone. And if I could just write as I wished too… If I could just photographs as I desired… But I feel compelled to hide it. War of worlds in real time.

But it can’t stay within me, it has the power to eat me alive. So if I could just do it how I want… But didn’t we just tumble through this lesson for the fourth time? Closed, quiet, less. I keep falling through the same patterns, caught, suspended in finite. So which it is?

Commit to creation or protect what’s left of you?