Forever, like Never.

I shot five exposures to compose these three shots, and I remember where I made all but one.

The one with my arm threaded through my shorts --
could I have made so many of these that this newest image invokes (/recalls) no memory?

Yes, apparently I could have.

This gives me the oddest sense of embarrassment and pride.

 *

 

It's a journey, any sort of long-term self-exploration (through at least partial exposure).
I never know if I'm climbing up the hill or haphazardly repelling down a cliff.

Probably because the journey is not an ascent/descent form: it's a plateau!
Such psychic exercise on a plateau!

It thrills me that, mid-plateau, I can confuse my own trajectory as an endorphin-riddled incline or decline.

double-exposure, taken within seconds

double-exposure, taken within weeks

single exposure, forgotten and then, weeks later, exposed to light

*

Twice this week I've been made aware that the me from ten years ago has a proper name that isn't the name I consider my own.

I mean that in the metaphorical sense, though in the literal sense it is true as well.

Where my artistic life resides now, it's never ( rarely) in the shadows.

But then, what I wanted

wanted deeply

was to be under (not a spotlight but) a searchlight.

A searchlight. 

A suggestion of criminality, of desire and specifically the seduction of chase, a removal of my will.

When I was exposed, I wanted to be able to say I didn't want to be exposed.

A passivity, you could say. A topping-from-the-bottom.

*

People often consider what I made seven years ago the product of what I make now,
as if who I am now continues to work backwards, allowing my earliest shared-online work to finally make sense.

It's not just 'people.' At times, I think of myself and my work in this manner.
As if to authenticate -- to prove as genuine and accurate -- the power with which I blindly invested my earlier work.

Sometimes, when I approach my old work, I see the silliness of it, the immaturity, the lack of craft.
Sometimes, when I find that work to be much better than what I make now,

I know that (even if it's accurate), it's mostly a self-derisive sentimentality.

Self-derisive because it's often a mechanism that prevents me from enjoying my current works-in-progress.

Occasionally it gets me flustered that I can never compete with my own history --

with the earliest engagements in my work (the initial impulse, 

the bridge between my online identity and my personal life) --

that what I made once-upon-a-time will always be more memorable (for many valid reasons I appreciate)
than what I make now.

*

But who am I to say that time isn't running backwards? 

That what I'm making now IS creating what I have made in the past? 

Every day I feel like I'm beginning.

I can imagine the feeling will only get stronger as my life gets longer.

I look forward to knowing less and less and less.

And also to finding out -- and manifesting -- who I was long ago.

(So long ago it feels like never.) 

(The way that forever feels like never.) 

(That forever acts like never.)