The Waning Glory of Latter Days

May 7th, 2022

Much of what I wish to say about these photos is treated, strained in a classifier, its precious substance snatched and withheld for a later date. I have a desire with these posts to expound upon a specific musing that I had at the time of taking a photograph, but for the moment, you must forgive me when I speak vaguely. I have many thoughts when I make my way northwest. Some compel me with unconditional love towards my family, others sit in the dim exospheric edges of my awareness, and most still are quiet ideas that hide in deeper catacombs, and I dread those especially. Articulated or unarticulated, these daemons of various levels swirl into a concocted elixir that seeps into my blood, and without understanding it, I feel a profound sense of love and sadness when I arrive.

Blunt nostalgia is perhaps one obvious explanation, not for the city of Portland or Vancouver of which I have no connection, but in returning to my family. However, I can't help but feel as if I'm cheating truth by calling it such. The word "nostalgia" has been battered and beaten into the mud, and I am myself not free from that guilt, but if ever there was a word that so succinctly captured the array of feelings for such an occasion, it would be that acute homesickness; the pain of returning home, originating in the word itself. But still, my heart warns me that to call it nostalgia is to debase the feeling. After all, there are very few words that themselves encompass any such sharp thought, much less a multitude of thoughts loosely connected, and only through an incessant stream of paragraphs could I feel satisfied in my explanation.

I say this because I am keenly aware of the brute force of nostalgia that I am bombarded with on a daily basis as a result of my hobbies: my love for archiving and the medium of photography to name a few. And I have stood on the irreparably altered remains of my childhood home and wandered on the campuses of former educations to know its illusive temptations. But what I felt at that point in time was more defined and less reminiscent.

During my stay in Vancouver, my parents had the misfortune of contracting the coronavirus, firstly my mother and eventually my father, though he likely received it before. At this point in its development, my fears of its effect on my health were mostly dulled, but I had been put in an uncomfortable position where I had invited Sam to join me and apart from my own need not to miss work as a result of being sick, I didn't want her to contract anything either. My mother had already reached the later stages and wasn't considered contagious when I arrived, but my father was earlier in his ailment and in a great deal of discomfort. He was of course crushed that he couldn't see me, and spiked by these thoughts previously discussed, I would've thrown caution to the wind if it weren't for work and Sam.

Upon his insistence to see me and my desire to see them both, we arranged an outdoor scenario in the backyard. Distanced as we were from each other, the catharsis of being in the presence of one another despite everything overrode any oddity in its arrangement. Lucy danced about the lawn in ecstasy and we sat together peacefully in the haze of the wet spring day under the hanging limbs of the neighborhood trees. The dark clouds parted above for a brief moment, and as the shroud lifted, we watched the sun cast its dim light on the dewy blades of grass, catching the fragile mist as it descended gently onto the soil.

The irony of it all was that Ted had also contracted the virus and later began developing symptoms right as we returned home. In a sense, we were hopelessly surrounded so that any precaution was meaningless. But I don't regret those moments nor will I regret any amount of time I spend with my parents.

The Problem of Morality

May 7th, 2022

I spent most of my days in the northwest with my eldest brother Ted as a result of my parents contracting the coronavirus. The unfortunate circumstances of my job meant that I was always limited in the length of my visits, and I often had to ration myself amongst my siblings and my parents. It was a strange though I dare not say pleasing result that I was allotted more time with Ted, whom I have always desired to share in company, and whom I perceived shared this mutual comfort of conversation. With a regretful yearning poisoned by fear and hesitancy I would eventually see my mother and father, who both later recovered slowly but surely from the virus, but I'll speak of that another time.

Ted and I, be it through our heritage or shared upbringing, carried on ourselves similar dispositions, although the lore of the family always liked to cast me as the more stubborn and less agreeable of the two. Regardless, we tended to trade philosophies, though I admit that's being a little generous on my part. The reality was that growing up, Ted seemed to come to his revelations first, and these ideas would then trickle down to Andrew and I who, enamored with his words, would take authorship of them amongst our peers. I suppose this stream of belief was not unique to our relationship. After all, do we not all collect our thoughts from others, known and unknown into ourselves?

But perhaps now, detached from him in these latter years, I had some semblance of ideas of my own to share, and we often spent long nights rambling to each other in streams of conscious thought barely articulated and comprehensible and yet piercing deeply within each other's hearts. I speak only for myself of course. I can only hope that in age my words have had a fraction of the effect on Ted the way his words did on me.

On this occasion, spurned on by an interaction on the street, Ted and I trailed off into a discussion about the proper etiquette towards the homeless and eventually into the pitfalls of traditional morality in the context of western Christianity. I found myself shamefully eager that Sam was present to witness us in the midst of these conversations. Apart from the pride in my falsely perceived intellect which I confess is a hideous fault of mine (not to be confused with the "burden of intellect" itself, which would be a ridiculous thing for me to confess), I had a genuine desire for Sam to engage in our discussion or at the very least for Ted to interact with her more directly, such was my deep love and admiration for both of them. But of course, it was within the character of Sam that she paced behind us, quietly, attentively listening, and I was afraid to ask if she was deep in contemplation or slowly losing the thread of our incoherent conversation (I suppose it was a bit of both).

Surrounded by the luminous green of the late spring forest, densely packed in the cool, humid air of the northwest, I had a faint recollection of New York and the fringes of a memory so distant enough as to become indecipherable from a dream. The content of our dialogue was perhaps only meaningful to us at that point in time, and what might now still feel sharp in the torrential swirl of ideas in my contemporary mind will soon fade into obscurity and irrelevance; thoughts incapable of being recalled though they may still reside in me like lost volumes tucked away in the back rooms of a library. What will remain in bursts of lucid detail among other things will be the color green, the rapid trill of a speculated song sparrow darting among the enveloping branches, the company of those I loved amidst the gentle overture of spring mist, and beyond me, jpegs on a hard drive and places temporary.

The Philosophy of Sensitive Design

The evening of May 6, 2022. Drew’s house and a local dive with Andrew.

Sam and I connected with Andrew in the afternoon of our second day in Vancouver, and my brother treated us to a few sequestered locations south of Ted. In conjunction with my exploration of liminal space and dream photography, I was once again interested in digital noise as an aesthetic, and I switched over to shooting entirely on higher ISOs in an attempt to rekindle my desire for spontaneous photography. However, for the moment, I mostly kept my camera sheathed during my time with Andrew until later in the evening.

We reconvened with Ted at his brother-in-law's house, and it was here that I found inspiration in his cat, Viggo. Drew was hosting a party, and once I got the chance to meet Viggo, I took it as an opportunity to remove myself from socializing. I hid in Drew's room and began photographing Viggo, who timidly endorsed my presence. He clearly perceived some kind of activity happening outside the door, but whether he was internally curious, I could not tell. He waltzed about the room casually, not particularly excited or anxious, and it was hard to distinguish if this was his normal disposition or if he was stirred by the party. He was somewhat aloof as all cats are. I did, however, detect a bit of bravery and nobility on his part, fitting of his namesake. I was surprised he heeded me at all, invading his space and photographing him so incessantly.

At some point, I had a desire to share his company with Sam, but my sweetheart was busy participating with the guests outside, and I reflected on my own habitual exhaustion with socializing. It was one of the many things she did to enrich my life that I felt a temperate pressure not without a small bit of comfort to rejoin the party. Luckily for me, Viggo later followed, if only just to investigate the noise. Several other companions would also make appearances: a timid wiener dog I believe was named Charlie and an unnamed cat that only ventured its head outside the threshold of the stairway. Ted and Kara had also brought Reu, who was of course very excited and received plenty of admiration in return, although her energy would slowly drain over the course of the night.

I returned to the party as Sam was discussing the role of design in a culture that was more ingrained in social issues and which had a larger platform to express dissent. We later participated in a more elaborate (some might say convoluted) game of charades, of which I expressly refused to join, but through a collective pressure and a bit of internal pushing, I yielded. In that moment and more so later, I wondered why I so desired to avoid such direct social contact despite knowing quite clearly how it poisoned my happiness. It was an irrational stubbornness akin to my tantrums as a child when I would refuse to learn the alphabet. In that righteous and effective stubbornness was formed an internal, selfish pride that became difficult to exorcise. I likened myself to a man who was resolute and uncompromising, and had firmly made up his mind, being an intellectual of high thoughts.  And much worse still, I sensed an unadmitted desire to remain isolated and ostracized and thus find sinful comfort in my sadness.

Such were these dialogues which spun too quickly in my mind so that in a sense I thought nothing in particular other than a resigned sadness and self-loathing. But I was indeed happy when I joined the game and I was actually quite good at the charades, although most of our team's success was the fortune of drafting one analytical and overly-competitive guest as is often the case with party games.

Once again, my eye was drawn to the mundane and the overlooked elements of the party, and occasionally to Viggo, who nestled himself stealthily in the corner of the room and watched the party-goers with an intense eagerness.