I don’t know why, but it took me far too long to realize we are coming to the end of a decade. Ten years seems to have gone by so fast, as it does when you get older. Maybe when you’re younger, too? Once you slip from the bonds of the regimented seasonal / annual scheduling that school provides, and the ‘real world’ in all its shapes and forms throws you onto a treadmill… days, weeks, years seem to go by at a more rapid clip.
We’re at that time of year to reflect upon what has come, where we are, where we want to go. I’ve been dancing around these thoughts more deeply lately… I guess my existentialism is growing, fully developing into my modus operandi. I’ve been working on being present, feeling the here and now. The past is gone, the future is the future, all we have is now. All we ever have is now. Which feels at odds with my life as a photographer. I seize moments with our cameras, but what do they become? Tangible manifestations of past moments, memories caught in proverbial amber (or pixels, or grains of silver halide.) We gaze at our pasts through photos, equally as much as we do with actual memories. And what about the future? We plan, we prepare, we gird ourselves for an unknowable future, for me, with a camera in my hand. I plan trips to come. Locations to shoot. Projects to undertake and complete. Or not. Books to create. Photos to post. Website to update. Dreams to dream. Fantasies to entertain. Scenarios to imagine. Fears to avoid. Or face. Anxiety to dive deep into. Joys to find. Love to give, and to receive. What a mix we make in our minds. What a stew simmering in my own mind.
I know that over the next few weeks, when the holidays kick into overdrive, my melancholy will most likely shift to a more peaceful, middle ground, (a neutral gray) punctuated by moments of joy, of laughter. I know this to be true because even in my darkest moments, these gifts have somehow always arrived. Small bottles of hope that somehow wash up on the shore. This is a natural time of reflection, of course. A double whammy this year as we bid the “Teens” their farewell. 2020 is coming. The metaphor of perfect vision that looms on the horizon. What will I focus on? What will you? For me, this: It is today. It is now.