painting myself into a corner
I know I haven’t been posting much lately, either here or on my Flickr stream. For a while now I’ve been wondering how to explain this retreat to you, what pretty words I could use to turn my turning away into something sweetly melancholy that would sit on this page like a portrait of me in soft seashore light, eyes on the horizon, enveloped in fog. I hoped that, like a true diarist, I could turn the glove of my emptiness inside out and find inside it an entire world writ small, quotidian poems in every finger.
I’ve searched hard, though, and all I can find is emptiness. I can’t promise I know when I’ll find much more than that. I don’t quite know how to return to your gaze. I don’t quite know how to remain sanguine under my own cruel eye.
Until then here is Jenn’s eye on me instead, and mine on my new city.
January 13th, 2008 at 7:16 pm
I’m sure true diarists rarely find charm and adventure at every point of introspection or documentation. If so, what else would all the historians, students, or aliens do? It sounds like an occasional existential journey of the self is good enough fodder as any. Whether it is documented now, or later.
By the way, love the photo. Does it satisfy any laws of photography. Heh.
January 13th, 2008 at 7:52 pm
I would say my head and the tip of that tall building on the left there mark approximately the lines of thirds through the picture. Hee.
I just registered for an evening seminar series on Kafka at the Newberry Library (my new hangout). ;-) It starts in February; I’ll let you know how it goes.