“Simple”

This morning I woke up with a single word on the tip of my tongue.  “Simplicity.”  Life is complex.  I can’t say if it’s work or the current political climate or navigating the treacherous waters of two teenager girls, or Elliot.  When I write it out like that it seems pretty obvious that it’s all of the above in constantly mutating, random combinations.  In all honesty it doesn’t really matter why it’s happening, what matters is the outcome.  I feel run-down and uninspired and a bit detached from my own life.  I don’t think I’m alone.  The few friends I keep (and few being the key word here) feel similarly.  We all seem to be having trouble sleeping.  We all have issues with anxiety or depression or health.  We suffer from self-doubt and a lack of self-confidence.  You wouldn’t know it to look at any of us.  We strut around, joking and laughing but a good deal of it rings hollow… well it does for me at least.  

There’s a danger to look back on your life and remember times that were easier and less complex.  When you were younger and bulletproof and unafraid.  When work was just something transitional to get to that place you really wanted to be.  Somewhere along that journey though work became the destination and that place you were aiming for turned out to be a mirage.  Or maybe you just made it one.  Maybe I just made it one.  I don’t know anymore.   Along that journey you make friends and sometimes you make enemies.  Those friends sometimes turn out to be enemies and enemies who turn out to be friends.  You have a rationale for each instance and often times that rationale turns out to be nothing but self-serving bullshit rather than nuanced, altruistic reasoning.  Sometimes you’re the asshole and sometimes you are the good guy but that ultimately depends on who’s watching–everyone has their own perspective and those perspectives change and evolve.  That includes your own. 

Complexity.  Then along comes family and that fills many of the gouges, sores and wounds left by career and faltering ambitions.  Those wounds are still there; some fester but family heals most pains.  But with the love of your family comes new pains and worries and concerns.  You empty your emotional account every night staring at the ceiling before the curtain goes down and everything goes dark.  Are you raising them right?  Are you emotionally available as much as possible?  Are you more angry than you should be sometimes and not angry enough at other times?  Are you spoiling them?  You tell your partner that you’re doing your best and that your best is all anyone can ever do but are you really doing your best?  Could you be doing more?  Are you to hard on your special needs child?  Are you as compassionate as you should be to their needs?  Have you called your mother enough?  Should you call your father?  Do you tell your partner that they are beautiful?  Do you treat them with the respect they deserve?  Do you feel respected?  Do you feel loved? 

More questions, more complexity.  Then there’s the world around us in this constant state of flux.  Credit being pumped into an economy to substantiate growth to in order to give more credit to substantiate more growth in this constant cyclical consumerism that we are so accustomed to at this point it’s like gravity pulling our wallets out to buy more shit that we truly do not need in order to prop-up a self-inflicted system of wealth and power who’s end is it’s means.  This rampant-running, rabid dog of capitalism in a constant state of invisible ideological war with our beliefs in liberalism and the sovereign rights of every human being.  We’re being pulled in a million different directions by a million different forces–forces that are no more than fictions we’ve invented to bind us together as a society of socially conflicted consumers.  Then you have faith ripping through that shit storm like a hurricane of chainsaws.  God defying fact defying god.  The religion of science offers constantly evolving answers, the science of religion dictates never evolving mandates.  One has all the truth and none of the answers while the other offers all the answers and none of it’s true.  More forces pulling you apart.  

Complexity, complexity, complexity.  I’m out of breath.  Rather than traverse the history of humanity searching for the point when we went wrong and failing to make sense of a time when each day is systematically an order of magnitude more complex than the previous, I’m trying to close my eyes to it all–if only for a minute or two.  I’m trying to breathe in and breathe out and clear my head.  Trying to find a certain beauty or serendipity in simple everyday moments–finding joy in doing little but seeing and breathing and being.  It’s complex trying to be simple but I’m trying.  Camera in my hand, I’m trying. 

A “Simple” shot on my Nikon FM2 at 50mm on Kodak Tri-X 400 pushed +1 at the Icon.