in , ,

“Always be yourself, express yourself, have faith in yourself, do not go
out and look for a successful personality and duplicate it.” - Bruce Lee

A weekend at New York Martial Arts Academy, Brooklyn, during the Sifu Chris Kent Seminar

Photography was that first tool of self expression that overtook me with its undefinable power to transform and cleanse the lens of my internal perception. It is a tool that can both refine or reinforce, depending on how it is used. If used in what I believe to be its higher purpose, photography can help you feel more fully grounded in the life you’re living, or even free yourself from your present reality, if that is what saves your soul in the short term. For me, photography helps me to see more clearly - not externally, but internally. The act of photographing, allowing me to re-see what I thought I knew, helps me to feel more involved and at one with the life around and within me. It is very easy to detach so intensely that the very experience of human-ness feels foreign, and while I find that helpful when clearing my mind and connecting to that higher spirit, it is not a state I wish to constantly exist through. In day to day life, I want to feel everything, to feel embedded into the very fabric of life that is all around and within me, to find no gap or separation between the seer and the seen.

Boiled Eggs

Have I lost my ability to enjoy life?

I ask as I sit, back again the window sill,

Feet pressed on the cool iron slats of the fire escape.

I close my eyes to feel the sun against my aching chest

And the crisp fall air kiss my shoulders.

The pot of eggs boils on the stove behind me

while a humming bee perches on my thumb.

I sit in a droll of heavy silence, my mind sluggish and numb -

Is this all I am? I fear I have forgotten how to live.

The Long Way Home

in

And under the chaos of life, when I slip beneath its surface, the light, it calls, just as it did before, not urgently nor demanding, but softly, gently, reminding me that while I may momentarily flirt with human form, the light it is always there, waiting to bring me back home.

To Be

To be. To be anything at all. How very strange it all is when you stop. When you stop and find yourself outside of your normal routine. Outside of what you have become accustomed to. What has come to define you. It’s trippy to get so rooted into a routine and suddenly the sky opens and you don’t know what tomorrow will look like. You don’t know what it will feel like. You don’t know who you yourself will be. And you realize you never really knew, you were merely caught in the illusion that you know what was ahead. It’s a wonder to be alive at all, a bizzare and strange wonder.

Creation Through Non-Creation

To create art outside of oneself is a noble, penultimate pursuit. To embody the art into the fabric of your daily life is the ultimate creation.

External art and the making of such has been a way for me to make my own clearing - to forge the path my soul was destined to walk through. While there is no point of arrival, there is one of eternal arrival. Eternal arrival is found through embodying that which was once sought.

Timeless

I’m not interested in being a voice of the time. That voice is temporal, fleeting. I am interested solely in allowing the voice of the timeless to speak through me.

To Awake On a Crisp Morning (Poem)

in

Dreams,

Dreams,

Jelly beans.

I toss and turn

Like a laundry machine.

I dance in the night

Unafraid of the curse.

I smile in the sun

Knowing I’m my cure.

Love is here in my very bones

Wrapping me in blankets

Like an oversized coat.

The plane floats away

As the leaves turn green.

The train passes by,

Oh what a strange dream.

Poem Drafts

in

I feel held together by threadbare shoe strings

And worn out elastic 

But he said I spin the finest of silks

_

I reside beneath the guise of personality 

A busy mind makes a foggy mirror

Spirit is synonymous with light

You are spirit disguised as human

06/25/96-03/23/23

in

My brother
Michael is dead.
I danced around him
In a blue tutu as children.
I snuck him sweet chocolate
And we rode the rocking horse.
Our parents took us to the zoo,
He was always smiling, my silly,
Sarcastic, sensitive little brother.
He could not speak but he spoke
My name when we were children.
He taught me the wordless gift of
intuition and what the spirit world was like.
We would watch his eyes and know that he
Was dancing with the angels in divine light.

Oh Brother, I Love You So

in

Oh brother, I love you so

We shared more than blood,

We shared a light-filled soul.

An ineffable bond I could not know,

Not truly until you went back home.

But now that you’re there, 

I sense your presence everywhere.

I feel the thread between your soul and mine,

One day we will dance together in the great divine.

Blue swirls drown my soul

in

Blue swirls drown my soul

As we sit and wait for the unknown toll.

I anguish in a green taxi waiting in traffic -

I see the beauty in her mismatched outfit.

The pain of your death is searing

And yet somehow it helps me see more clearly.

All that is real, true and worth the most

Is that which no man or mind can compose.

We have to be our own sunshine

in

“How Infectious!”

Infection!

Get the jab or die!

FEAR! DIVISION! ANGER! 

(The changing faces of suffering)

What has happened to this world?

He was only talking about

The infectious affect

Of her radiant smile.

She told him, 

“With a world as dark as ours,

We have to be our own sunshine.”