A place of picket fences and shadows
where color can be found…
In old alley ways
and words on doors.
Sun and shadows…
Time etches its story without words
but it cannot etch the sky.
There will always be a place for you here.
And if you peer into doorways that are hidden from every day
remembering what was larger than life, yesterday
the color of a former world
whose beautiful eyes can no longer see,
you will find me.
I’ll be playing with color, dancing in shadows
trying to count all the things we’ve moved
and the distance we rode
together or alone…
And I’ll be thinking of you while I walk my line through time.
This is beautiful. The personification of buildings and the lost stories that made them. Capturing the images held together by the fragments of a poem, that notices the loneliness of buildings and the need for a loving arm and the words ‘I love you.’ I’ve been clicking through your images from the start of the journey to date, and reading the words alongside, and I am there with you. It feels like the film of this time has been broken into slides, or shattered into shards, and so the pieces are more beautiful, and your words allow me to see the images with your eyes, with your sensibility. It’s a really interesting way of developing a story and connecting the places with your character. You have a real poetic heart and insight. The relationship between love and loneliness is an interesting one. It makes me think of the theories that all love is projection, and that we must first love ourselves in order love others, but there is something about the solitude of traveling alone with endless possibilities and the constant stimulation of people and places that somehow hold a mirror up to us. The question is, do we like what we see, and if not, what can we do about it. I went on a similar trip after I came out of boarding school, and then again but much later when my first love died very young, and to some extent I am still there now in those places, with that version of myself that lives inside me, not yet lost, but so valuable when the world bears down upon, to know there are places we can escape to in our heads. Anyhow, just want to say thank you for curating all this incredible photo, journo footage and poetry. It is treasure trove and a portal.
Thank you so much for your kind words, thoughts, and for sharing more of your story with me.
Sadly, I lost a lot of my photos and the original layout I had on this blog when I moved it over to a more simplistic hosting site, but I am grateful for the time capsule that remains.
You say: “and to some extent I am still there now in those places, with that version of myself that lives inside me, not yet lost, but so valuable when the world bears down upon, to know there are places we can escape to in our heads.” Yes, exactly. This is why we have to leave, sometimes. I didn’t want to return to the mad pace of the world, but the places I escaped to, once, are still inside me.