SHOWER THOUGHTS.

March 7, 2026

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.

March 1, 2026

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.

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.

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.”

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.

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, seculeded, 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.

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

January 24, 2026

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

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

January 17, 2026

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

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.

January 15, 2026

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

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

POETRY IS EXIGENT.

January 10, 2026

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.

December 31, 2025

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.

1/52/2025 // *& every day i wake, i tell myself a little harmless lie: the whole wide world is mine*

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.

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.

December 25, 2025

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 // 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.

December 21, 2025

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.

December 14, 2025

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.

December 7, 2025

project 52 / week 48 / suspended

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?

WEEK FORTY SIX.

November 23, 2025

project 52 / week 46 / back to the start
featuring Shadow Lake
@shadowlake.mn

Back to the Start (The Long Version)

Once upon a time, in another state, in another town, I lived in the coolest apartment in the world. It was on the edge of downtown and it overlooked a railroad crossing. In this third floor apartment, I could see down the main drag and to my little red Chevy Colorado in the parking lot.

I loved everything about that place, from the old, dark brown wooden door, to the speckled tile floors. To Lion cat, who lived somewhere in the building and would roam the halls. He was a normal cat…until his owner had him groomed to look like a full on lion.

The kitchen, as my mother would say, was quaint. I couldn’t reach any of the top cupboards but each one had little white trim with glass panes to hold my five plates and two cups. It was narrow and cozy. From the kitchen, it snaked into the living room, which was one massive space. When I was moving in, on the fifth trip up, I brought up my skateboard and realized the true purpose of that massive space. I skated back and forth for hours. It was that big and I had little to no furniture apart from a table, a mattress, and my grandmother’s old chair.

The bedroom had no doors, so being true to my artist identity, I hung up beads. Every time the train rolled by, they rattled. My mattress sat on the floor and I had barely a foot on either side of it where the wall and closet existed. The bathroom was a few steps away and it was a calming light green, full of intricate little square tiles, with slight variations in hue. The mirror was so tall I could only see from my neck up when I looked in it. And the tub… It had those feet — you know the ones. The ones all the women swoon over.

It was my pad. I loved it from the minute I rented it. I hated leaving it, when I moved out (and even tried to get it back 12 months later, unsuccessfully). It was above a law office by day, and by night, it was above a little DIY venue. The kind where the walls are brick, the ceiling so low, you feel like you’re at a house party and the band is playing in the basement. On nights I didn’t go to the show, I could still hear it, the bass, twisting up from below, through the walls to where I sat in my grandmother’s chair.

The chair was a creamy white, textured fabric with a mauve trim, I placed it in front of the big picture windows in the living room. I’d sit there at night and gaze out at the sky. The clouds would pass, constellations disappeared and reemerged, and the moonlight poured in, so I didn’t need a light. The window open, the sounds of the patrons on their way to the bar, the train rumbling by, the wind whispering, and the bass thumping from the venue…I would sit there and wonder what my life would be like. I would plan out all these scenarios. I can see it so clearly, in my memory, sitting in that spot, in the dark. I have fond memories of it, but sad ones too. It wasn’t only a spot to dream, but to mourn. Because just as I had thought I’d figured everything out, it crumbled. Such is the way of life.

On nights I did go to the show, I took my camera. At first, I stood against the wall on the side. Plastered to it, not sure of the space I could take up. But slowly, I learned to trust it. Myself, the bands, the crowd, the sound. All of it. And it felt like this safe little spot where you could be anyone, do anything, and either no one would care, or they’d have your back. Maybe time has made it seem so much better than it was but either way, it’s where I started.

I photographed so many little bands, some passing through on tour, some regulars, and my friends. It was dark and small and you felt like you belonged. I’d crouch in the front row and try to not get in people’s way. I don’t even remember when I got brave enough to move off the wall and into those spots, but I did. And my camera felt like a secret weapon, this tool that could get me into any door, into any space, into any place I wanted to be. So I dreamed, and I dreamed big. And I really thought it was going to go that way. And not to be a broken record, but we know this, that’s not how life works.

So flash forward to Saturday, November 22nd, 2025 and there I am again. In a venue, this one about ten times the size of my old little DIY spot. The bands were the same, I mean, of course, not the same bands. But the same feel, ya know? The people, of course, were different too, but also they felt like similar souls, similar hearts to those that stood beside me way back when. Ten years ago, in that venue, I slowly realized I knew everyone in that little “basement” room. This night, though, I didn’t really know anyone. But it doesn’t really matter at shows like that. There’s an unspoken rule. If you’re in the room, you’re a part of the thing. So even though most were mere strangers, we talked, we bobbed our heads, tapped our feet, even danced (hardcore or no), we screamed the lyrics back, and I photographed it. It has been over 10 years since I had a camera in a venue, and it was like coming home. My brain was on autopilot. I didn’t think at all, it was all muscle memory. I moved as the set did, and followed the breakdowns, the bridge, the chorus, and all too fast it was done.

A couple weeks ago, I said we’d see where the wind takes me. And I guess it took me back to the start. Back to a really old dream that I put on a shelf. I don’t know if it’s still my dream, to be a concert photographer. What I do know, is that getting the shot, in that scene, never fails to make me feel on top of the world. So with a little déjà vu, here’s this week’s photographs.

WEEK FORTY FIVE.

November 19, 2025

project 52 / week 45 / the mundane

I host a photography club. The prompt this month was: gratitude.
I’m grateful for 3:00a.m.
It’s a much more reasonable time to awaken rather than 1:03 a.m.
Just sayin’.

WEEK FOURTY FOUR.

November 9, 2025

project 52 / week 44 / beaver moon

WEEK FORTY THREE.

November 2, 2025

project 52 / week 43 / transience
the beauty and ache of things passing

Song: Paint by The Paper Kites

43/52 // *I take it with me all the places I go.*

I’ve listened to The Paper Kites for many years. But not many songs, and not very often. If you haven’t picked up on this yet, I like to save things, in case I want to go back, so I don’t forget, because I like to know.

“It's something I hold, something I hold
I take it with me all the places I go”

This is both a strength and curse. Because it also feels like I’m the keeper of things. I have to hold on to it otherwise, who will?

“You left me living with a lingering soul”

Because I hold on to things, I never feel quite settled. Like I have one foot here, one there. Above and below. Forward and backward. And all those other poetic contrasting words about never being steadied, leaving things unfinished.

The Paper Kites popped back into my existence last Tuesday, when a playlist ended and “Paint” shuffled into rotation. To me, music holds power over moments and memory. I remember the other times I listened to the song…What was happening in my life, how I felt, and I found it slightly eerie that it re-emerged. As it did, I instantly saw this photo in my head… A gray, foggy morning, along a forested path, and a long white dress, tattering in the wind, as a female subject ran, hair whipping behind her. As with any plan, real life emerges and things shift. Ready or not. I found no white dresses. I found no foggy, gray morning. No forested path.

But I did find the wind. On the prairie, where the grass prickles my legs and the colors melt together like a familiar painting I know all the brushstrokes to.

“It's all in my mind, all in my mind”

It’s becoming a little comical how much is in my mind, that which doesn’t match reality. And I really felt like running lately, like the picture in my mind.

So, I packed a bag, I took a flight, and found the house on the fruit named drive to enlist the help of my sister and the girl who grew from flowers. From the prairie, we are, so it’s the prairie we found, and I ran, as I have, a thousand times through the thicket. My legs are covered in scratches and bumps. TGWGFF’s almost ruined her Uggs. My sister’s legs cramped. But we did it anyway.

The part of the song that lingers, is this:

“Still, there's a wound and I'm moving slow
Though it don't show, though it don't show
I've got a hole where nothing grows
How little you know, how little you know”

43/52 // *I’ve got a hole where nothing grows.*

“I’ve got a hole where nothing grows.”
What a line. It got stuck in my head. So visual, but so… empty?

There are a thousand possible ways any one thing can go. What do they call it? The butterfly effect? The image I have this week isn’t the image I thought it’d be. A lot of things in life are like that. So maybe I should just go with the wind. Wherever it ends up taking me, transient.

WEEK FORTY TWO.

October 26, 2025

project 52 / week 42 / a world without “x”

A world without “insert your thoughts here”. I don’t really know what to write about today.
I don’t have any strong emotion to convey. I don’t have any big story or secret to get off my chest.

I don’t have anything to say because it’s October and I don’t really like October, or weekends, or September 27th. This might be the last image I create in October because I usually do my “assignments” on Saturday or Sunday and this month ends on Friday. What if we had a world without October?

A world without “insert your thoughts here”. I guess, it’s your turn to write.

WEEK FOURTY ONE.

October 19, 2025

project 52 / week 41 / fragments

Song: I Tried to Draw a Straight Line (Relaxed Version) - Petey

41/52 // *fragments in the liminal space*

We accidentally broke the glass of a small oval picture frame. I was ready to discard it but the kids declared, “Keep it!” with an imagination I didn’t share. “We can tape it back together!” as if the sharp edges could be undone. So, delicately, I picked up the shards and set the empty frame back on the table. The fragments are now sitting in a tupperware that we’ll probably forget exists, set aside, out of the way. The sharp edges won’t be taped back together. The kids won’t use it for an art project and in a few months, I’ll tape up those edges and toss it out.

When you said how you are, it was only fragments. I searched the pauses between sentences. The things unsaid, hanging there, in the intangible space. No one spoke them. So the fragments sit in the divide. The abrasive lines and pointed edges were veiled by cushioned, carefully rehearsed phrases. As if you’ve answered the same questions, over and over. There are the things we don’t say, that the other still sees.

41/52 // *i tried to photograph a straight line*

When I chased the sunrise, I knew I wouldn’t get far before it would dissipate. So I hastily parked in an empty parking lot and skittered up a hill of five foot switchgrass in shorts and a t-shirt. It had rained a few hours before, evident in the slick grass that slipped past my skin as I ran up and up. I held my camera over my head and the wind carried us up while the sun kept rising. Cars passed along the highway and I missed all these little fragments of light shifting and swirling in the sky. I only caught a few small slivers. On the way back down, I caught sight of one single dandelion seed threatening to ascend, verberating in the liminal space.

WEEK FOURTY.

October 12, 2025

project 52 / week 40 / unspoken

I don’t know how I ended up here.
I don’t want to say always,
Because I’ve been trying to be an optimist.
But my pessimistic side has roots woven deep.

They shroud the door I need to get out.
I trip over the vines, stumble on the uneven ground.
It’s all overgrown,
Overstayed it’s welcome.
Impassable.
Grown so tall, I’m not sure how to cut it down.

I can’t figure it out,
How I end up here so often.
This is the very spot,
Where not some 365 days ago,
Four quick steps saved me.
And I was sort of hoping to return,
And have another miracle.

Because it’s hard to hold on, to all of this.
And I just want to set it down. It’s gotten so heavy.
The branches scratch and the grass tangles up my legs.
I just want to set it down and feel the weight disappear.
Just for awhile, just a reprieve.
A moment where,
The weight of the limbs, doesn’t feel so heavy.

Those limbs, have fallen here,
Crashed under the strain of the wind.
And, metaphor or not...
It feels like the wind hasn’t blown this hard in a long time.
It rips the words from my throat,
So I whisper to stop the strain of tears,
That threaten with every second,
To spill over. Overgrown.

I don’t know which way to go.
Because the path out is overgrown.
I trip over the vines, stumble on the uneven ground.
It’s all overgrown,
Overstayed it’s welcome.
Impassable.
Grown so tall, I’m not sure how to cut it down.
I don’t know how I ended up here.

WEEK THIRTY NINE.

October 5, 2025

project 52 / week 39 / shadows & secrets

a short poem about letters to ghosts, part 7

About a month ago,
I wrote another letter,
To my ghost.
The ghost who knows me.
Who understands the things I have a hard time describing.
Who lived at the other end of the tether.

I asked for advice. I pleaded. I cried out, tears slipped.
I ran too hard, until my lungs felt like they would explode,
And my wrist itched in that uncomfortable way.

But there’s no way to reach a ghost.
There is only what there always is.
Hollow silence, all the words to and from,
Get intercepted by shadows and darkness.
A tether no more, only a loop.

A fact of the nonfiction in my life.
I can wish it a hundred different ways,
I can hope, until it reaches soaring heights,
I can play out every scenario,
But it just… Is.
There is only what there always is.

I repeat the truth.
And it slips away like water.
Finding a different path back to wherever it came from.
I might not ever, be able to hold it, in my hands.

And my ghost would know.
Would have the answer.
I would Run. Fly. Drive. Climb.
To get to that ghost.
I would study the map, find the route.
To learn the way. To hear the answer.
And get out of the loop of shadows and secrets.

I yank on the tether. I pour it into the universe.
I hit the steering wheel. I let my body shake.
Rage, anger, apathy, numbness, nothing, silence.
I turn the music loud to drown it out.
It doesn’t change the truth.

There’s no way to reach a ghost.
There is only what there always is.
Hollow silence, all the words to and from,
Get intercepted by shadows and darkness.
A tether no more, only a loop.

WEEK THIRTY SEVEN.

September 21, 2025

project 52 / week 37 / ode to a portal

37/52 // *ode to a portal, thou shall not pass*

It’s hard to reconcile the two identities that wage within me. Sometimes I think I should go back, before it’s too late. The other part of me knows it was best I flew. That it created growth impossible to achieve in another area code, and if I go back, all that may be lost. So I am stuck in a way, between the two places I wish to be. Not knowing if I will get to either of them. So it would be nice if this portal existed, but the timeline we’re in, these things don’t exist. Thou shall not pass.

project 52 / week 36 / the world waking up