Date put in site: 10/14/2024
Unedited.
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1. A few weeks ago, I was cleaning out my room at home - my parent’s home - and found a book filled with film I took of some one I had been in love with. The photos were beautiful, grainy and soft and evocative. They captured the infatuation I had for her. I was in love with her twice: first in her presence, and then in her absence. Both sorts of in love were intense, and my surrounding visuals reflected that. When I was with her, the summer evening haze coated us in dusty yellow and green. When I was without her, the sunsets from above my city were startlingly vibrant and sharp.
I sent photos of the photos to a friend - wow, look what I just found - because it was an archeological discovery and the beauty of the photos prompted me to recall the beauty I was feeling at the time. Through love, through pain. I learned that this sort of love is a feeling that distills other feelings, so that everything in my mind became singular and focused. A sugar crystal growing on a stick in a jar (think: the type you can buy at some quaint and random store, or that you make at home when you’re nine and there’s a snow day) is exactly how I picture all of this.
2. More recently, I have photos on my phone of someone I was seeing near the end of an era - that’s the best way to place him, in a literal and emotional timeline. It was brief, but the nights were long and what I remember is the cool blue of the street on a cloudy night brought in through his windows; the orange lamp I bought from Ikea glowing over us on my couch, like amber capturing us in the moment and constructing a temporary but very true reality. He was a friend of a friend, and when I met him for the first time, not considering him as someone I might be interested in, I took photos of him because the light was coming into his eyes, matching the elevator walls flooded by the South Carolina afternoon sun: a bright, electric blue. I was a little drunk and a little high (the tiniest remnants of both), floating on the joy of being with my friends and free to be laughing on the beach and living off of Crystal Light packets for three days in a row. Later that night, our mutual friend told me that he (the boy) thought me and my eyes were beautiful, too.
3. Sometimes, when I look at myself in the mirror in the morning, I fall in love. In these moments I am stunned by how beautiful I am, how full of life and energy. Somehow, my puffy eyes become sensual and I feel deeply grounded in myself. Rooted to this earth, confident that my mind and my heart and my body are drawn with lines that fall right on top of each other. Nothing’s out of place.
4. I felt the same sort of way earlier today, when the wind from the sea blew in through the fans to hit my shoulders. I’m seated on a wooden bench drawing on a big sheet of cartridge paper taped up to a board balancing off my knees the bench. The model is a man on a chair in the center of the room, his skin somewhat glistening from September humidity. I study his face, watch his eyes, the way he occasionally looks amused. With my teacher’s prompting, I notice the way his chin enters his neck slowly, in a way that does not cut at an angle but rather comes gentle. To me - as I remain completely still save for my hand, wrist, and a few strands of hair that are dancing, lifting off my neck, with the breeze - the way his shirt rests on his shoulder and hangs from his back is the most beautiful thing. It’s so gentle and the interaction between his body and his clothing seems both familiar and protective.
The point I am trying to make through these examples is that beauty is ultimately emanating. It is a relief to know that in some ways the glow and the romance - the beauty - with which I view people is not actually unique to them. Our shared time and intimacy is, and that is what opens the window and creates the opportunity which allows me to see them in a way that makes me fall in love. Because - and I know this is overly whimisical - all four moments are ones in which I am deeply and truly in love. How can you not be in love when you see, feel, live beauty?
Noting that the themes here are: love, beauty, sight. Sight through memory, photographs, mirrors, drawings.