A Tear and a Smile - Kahlil Gibran

"I would not exchange the sorrows of my heart for the joys of the multitude. And I would not have the tears that sadness makes to flow from my every part turn into laughter. I would that my life remain a tear and a smile. A tear to purify my heart and give me understanding of life's secrets and hidden things. A smile to draw me nigh to the sons of my kind and to be a symbol of my glorification of the gods. A tear to unite me with those of broken heart; a smile to be a sign of my joy in existence.

I would rather that I died in yearning and longing than that I lived weary and despairing.I want the hunger for love and beauty to be in the depths of my spirit, for I have seen those who are satisfied the most wretched of people. I have heard the sigh of those in yearning and longing, and it is sweeter than the sweetest melody.With evening's coming the flower folds her petals and sleeps, embracing her longing. At morning's approach she opens her lips to meet the sun's kiss.

The life of a flower is longing and fulfilment. A tear and a smile. The waters of the sea become vapor and rise and come together and are a cloud. And the cloud floats above the hills and valleys until it meets the gentle breeze, then falls weeping to the fields and joins with the brooks and rivers to return to the sea, its home.The life of clouds is a parting and a meeting. A tear and a smile.And so does the spririt become separated from the greater spirit to move in the world of matter and pass as a cloud over the mountain of sorrow and the plains of joy to meet the breeze of death and return whence it came. To the ocean of Love and Beauty - to God."

I read this and I thought, 'paulo coelho, eat your heart out.'

Picture This and That. Knick Knacks for Snaps

Leica D-Lux 3

Lomo LCA+

The White Stripes “MEG” edition Diana+
Ricoh GR Digital
Leica Edition MP 3 LHSA

A few weeks ago I directed a friend of mine to my website so she could check out pictures. I talked to her afterwards and asked her what she thought. “It looks great!” she said, and then added, “you sure have a lot of pictures!"

“Yes, I do,” I had to admit sheepishly. And then when she asked where I got all those pictures of me I had to admit that I in fact took most of them myself.

I really can’t count the number of times I’ve had a conversation similar to that one since I’ve started directing friends to my website. And every time I wonder… should I be ashamed of my self portraits? And I’ve decided that the answer really lies in what my motivation is. Is it merely vanity and self-gratification that drives me to put these pictures of myself on the internet? No, I don’t think it is—but I can’t ignore the vanity that lies behind this whole endeavour: the blog, flickr, everything.

It would be so easy to gloss over my vanity—to give it a nice label like “healthy self esteem*” and move on, satisified with my ability to explain myself. But if I am perfectly honest with myself, I can’t ignore the jealous, prideful vanity that sits like a warty toad at the bottom of my heart. Because that’s exactly what it is: black, festering, scabby, sinful, ugly VANITY that, but for God’s grace, would probably crawl out of my chest and swallow my life whole. And it’s this vortex of vanity that makes me yearn for recognition from other people… that motivates me to put pictures and stories on the internet that will gain me that recognition. It’s what leads to putting other people down to raise myself up. Even self-deprecation is another form of vanity (what a paradox).

And, if you are honest with yourself, you will find this vanity in yourself too.

So, in the light of this regrettable truth about human nature, is it possible to justify self-portraits? Blogs in general? I honestly don’t know. Maybe not.

But I said that I don’t think it’s merely vanity that motivates my self portraits. And I meant it—whatever vanity may be motivating my photography, there are equal parts desire for creativity also motivating it. I can tell you that when I did the photoshoot of myself, I really was not thinking like a typically vain girl (although I admit to thinking that way for many of my pictures). I was thinking like a photographer—trying to portray my subject in the most flattering light and catch the best expressions.

Is that vanity? Maybe. It could be. But if it is, it is vain in the same way that taking a portrait of any other person would be vain. Of course, perhaps the desire for creativity is ultimately rooted in vanity anyway. But that is a much stickier, more complicated question than I intended to get into tonight.

So I guess I don’t have much of a conclusion—this is not a closed book in my mind. I am interested in others’ thoughts on this subject. Feel free to say “you should get rid of all those pictures of you” if that is really what you think. But be prepared to back up your argument.

* I think there really is such a thing as “healthy self esteem,” but it’s so thinly seperated from vanity that I would not trust myself as a sinner to draw that line.

chew my words

My hope is that this diary becomes a snapshot journey of my life in both pictures and prose. A voyeuristic peak of how I see this world. It is an effort to photograph, especially the times with when I use film rather than digital cameras. Some of it will be stunning, some of it will be glamorous, a great deal of it will probably be mundane and prozaic. Besides the fact that I will probably come off as dangerously close to drowning ala Narcissis in a vapid pool of vain photographs, I am hoping that whoever reads this takes everything with a grain of salt, a little bit of wit and comes into this world for one hopefully enjoyable moment in time.

ADVERT ** cobrasnake

get 'em

Holga Rolls #2

Wake me up when life is easy, please.

It doesn’t work, of course. This perverse determination to procrastinate is not the least bit relaxing; it gives me chills and makes me nauseous and feels like a hundred-pound weight on my shoulders.

I won’t pretend for a moment that I’m proud of this behavior. It is sick and wrong and irresponsible. But the sick, wrong, irresponsible truth is that my broken spirit often reaches this point of desperation; the point at which doing nothing seems so incredibly much easier than doing something.

And it’s at that point that I realize how much I need help; how much I’m not going to crawl my way out of this canyon on my own—little, tiny, powerless, human me.

Thankfully, we tiny, powerless humans are not alone. Which is good, because I don’t know if you noticed, but life doesn’t really get easy. But even though it’s not easy, it’s time… time for me to pull myself out of this mire of self-pity and sloth, brush myself off, and keep moving forward.

Random but I love random

Saigon

Honestly, such a cinematic moment.

*I've learnt that having the burden of caring about things/people is more rewarding than the effortless, weightlessness of caring about nothing.