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Today, her blood told us that she is growing them. They are the size of poppy seed. Unknowingly, she was growing their lungs while wearing a mask, which protected them from the silica in her studio.

She cried, and I smiled.

Tonight is the first night we go to sleep knowing that she is growing a child.

Tonight will be the first night I lie next to my love as my children's mother.

Tonight, I patiently sit in the coolness of a new summer's night.

You will be born in February, which is admittedly not what I would have wanted for you, and so we will celebrate you throughout the year to make up for the fact that you will be born during my second-least favorite month.

Or maybe we'll get used to the ice and snow together. Maybe you will inspire me to find new things to love about February.

I imagined you in the house, running around - I'd never actually pictured that before.

All of the sudden, Pinterest isn't as necessary.

I simply want to imagine you growing up, and offer you the space to be someone beautiful if you wish to be.

Today I called my dad to tell him we were pregnant.

He responded about as I thought he would.

But I am here to speak to myself, as a parent.

---

I am so proud of you, Ethan.

You and Emily will work so hard for that child, and I hope you remember to love yourself so that you can show that love to them.

I am excited to see you as a father, I am excited to see life become how you make it. It will be fun if you have fun, it will be tiring if you tire yourself.

Today is a blessing, and your call has offered us some new hope, some new glory. Your child was wanted, planned for. You have taken care, and will bring them in with intention.

But make sure your love is not restricted by your own imagination, far less the imagination of others.

Be aware that you cannot control, so that you reserve your mind from madness. Be aware that your child will want all the freedom, sovereignty, as you do now - as you always have.

You will care, and you will listen.

Do so now, for Emily - do not be generous in your time to flounder.

Listen to her, and listen to her inside of you.

Listen to yourself, as you consider how to care for her.

Lean into yourself. You will make a child, and they will become themselves as long as you create the environment for them to do so.

You long to love them - and so their only requirement is to exist.

How they exist - you will watch with fascination and joy.

They will become, right in front of your eyes.

And you will become, as well.

You are becoming.

Exist, every single day.

thomasmartinnutt

Marsha Cottrell. Spectral Landscape, 2016

miamaimania

“Blue Immersion” by James Turrell

Particles of touch

I started a daily meditation exercise some weeks before my wedding.

It was led by a narrator on an app who was encouraging of doing this practice in a place where you weren't in complete control. The purpose was to notice how you feel and think in your surroundings, not to entirely disengage from, or have control over them.

Early in this process, the narrator asks that you take notice of how the sound of the world around you enters and leaves consciousness without one's permission to do either. He then asks that one tries to hold a sound. Then asks that one tries to hold the sound of his voice.

Doing this, I realized that when I (I feel like I could easily say 'we' here, but I'm not interested in imagining myself as an educator of someone else's experience) attempted to 'hold' this sound, or the memory of this sound, that I was holding sand. That the imagined audio wave dissolves into millions, and millions of particles, but I can visualize it's now haphazardly broken shape as though it's suspended in a black void. A particle that falls, if recounted correctly, can be snapped back into place as though magnetized.

But I'll never be able to recall his voice with perfect accuracy. I'll never have that audio wave complete again - at its very best, it'll only be recognizable. And even so, only temporary.

---

I thought about the hug I would give my father on my wedding day - afterwards, the million particles of memory would be all I would have.

I felt the weight his arms on top of my own, his broad chest as I squeeze him more tightly towards me, and the side of his head with his white, fragile hair.

And now all I have are particles of that experience. They connect to my brain from time to time and trick my skin into feeling it all over again, only this time like it's been diluted.

As I live, I may pass a blazer that looks like the one he wore, and so I've found a missing particle. I put the newly found piece in with the rest of them, and I'm convinced I'll be able to feel it all again one day, just as I felt it the first time. But there are so many pieces - too many, and I'll never have them all again.

When I pull back, viewing all of my memories in this way, all I can see are sand-blasted visuals. And so nothing is complete, but it's all that I will ever have.

---

These photos are not from a single series, they are a quick dip into my archive to find images that invite me to imagine the sensation of touch.

Why Tension

I'm not sure

what could he even do to you?

It's that I think so highly of him, and, more often than not, think his critiques are correct. He has said he loves me, he has said that I'm like a brother to him - our processing of emotional harm is different, I would say that he is much quicker to make decisions in removing an assumed threat. I don't think he is wrong in doing so, but I worry that I will be perceived as a threat. I worry that I would not be given the opportunity to fix it. I worry that I will not be able to have my cake and eat it to, in a way.

---

He asked for it to be more intimate, so here I am, reaching out - sharing and revealed. Here I am, what you asked for, but I'll ask the same of you. Otherwise, there is a power struggle, there is something that you have, but I don't - an allegiance or so, a promise towards connection. Otherwise, I'm pitifully leaning onto you - but now, that is not the case. You also owe me. We owe each other. We come when the other calls, we comfort and listen. We support and champion. We uplift and fervently enjoy. I don't know exactly what to do about my own inner voice - I'll be more bold with it, happily more brash about it, and see how it comes out in the wash. It's just so fucking dull to be this indecisive, this addicted to processing in my own head. But I don't know, maybe that's the only way interesting art is made, and how to compartmentalize it so that it fits a Google Calendar is one hell of a skillset.

elevatorteeth

sketchbook spread from a few weeks ago

Dad's here. Tucked away in a nook that happens to be the perfect width of a twin-size bed in our cape-cod, oddly laid out upstairs bedroom.

Dad and I mask the awkwardness of not fully knowing each other at this stage in our lives with conversations of artistic pursuit, and slap stick comedy.

I'm comfortable learning of my dad's fears. Whatever I may know of them, I don't know them all. I'm comfortable looking at him in the eyes, validating that he's perfectly within his right mind to believe things I may not, and many of which I've likely never cared to look into.

For us, in this lifetime with each other, which of us is to care if he is completely correct, or completely ignorant.

He and I are similar in this - we have a disposition, and wander through emotional landscapes and conversations with any and all people finding validation in that which we understand. We squeeze each conversation we have with strangers, searching that life really is the way we always assumed it was.

We do listen, we hear every word - but are assumption of what the world ultimately is grounded in what our anxieties point us towards.

---

I assume this, although, I myself have prevented conversations of knowing who he is - fears, joys and all of what lies between.

Although, I am not scared to know. Not in the least bit. He still breathes near me - he still uses his legs to lift himself off of the couch and return to his guitar where he will write lyrics that reveal more about him than I otherwise would ever know.

---

A difference in our artistic expressions is that I'm more and more hiding behind mine. He is more and more revealing himself.

JOY. PEACE. RELEASE. FINALIZATION. ACTUALITY. JOY. JOY. AND MORE JOY. My eyes locked upwards -

Water from the shower head trickling into my open mouth I don't realize that it's open, I don't realize that there's water dripping into the slackly open orifice.

My eyes look directly at something that is outside of my possibility of fathoming.

For there are several, millions of atoms, linked arm and arm, marching towards my brain - all ready to exclaim their gospel throughout the body.

The body that is so familiar with its process, he instructs me to let go of the tension in my feet, and release the grip I hold on the muscles around my pelvis. I am now along for the ride.

All of my body, every muscle and tendon look at the orb of light that I am gazing on beyond the ceiling of my bathroom, as though we're all looking at the 2017 solar eclipse. Particles of dopamine have made their way towards their claimed square millimeter of tissue, and will massage them by tightening harder than ever experienced and releasing them all at once.

My seed seeps out pathetically with a little help from my index and thumb, and hides itself in the current that eventually leads to the drain. It's an after thought, here. There is no real part for it to play, we've come for the main event. The unpredictable and miraculous future overshadowed, tremendously, exquisitely, by the most apparent present moment possible.

How could I possibly enjoy any other moment quite as much, or without this?

A sunset is an observation that is trapped behind a gated buck, tucked behind filing cabinets that this orgasm has all of the capabilities of kicking through the nearest wall with the same ease of snapping a finger. The observation holds honesty and sincerity, but my tension will not release itself for just any inspiration to look upward - I must forget, all and entirely, that my eyes are fixed to fingers and legs. My tension reserves the right to pause its departure until it is sure that my anxiety has no railing to grab. I gaze.

It was worth it if only to observe, here and now, what it was, actually.

A complete obliteration and rectification all in one moment - and it's incredibly dangerous to become too interested.

The breathing space of my wanting to express, and my wanting to learn, are combative. So let's have them meet, and let's assume that they're friendly - that they _want_ to know each other.

I so badly don't like this - I so badly do not like stretching out my imagination, or foraging for inspiration. I'm reliant on marking a point of impulse. Photography, my thoughts on sin - When I find the point of excitement, I demand that it be taken up. Fascinatingly, that may just be my downfall. no, let's not say downfall, but let's agree that this revelation is interesting, and that acknowledging it could lead to a deeper understanding of self.

okay, so, what I'm observing is a comfort in relying on inspiration. On pressure. I'm observing a lack of familiarity in building pressure from a space in which there is none.

And pressure doesn't even sound correct.

I assume that inspiration, excitement from my own imagination, can only occur without my intervention. That it's not about the space I allot it. And yet, I'm always feening for more space - more breathing room. So let's do it.

---

a show sounds so daunting. I assume that I'll do it wrong. Incorrectly. This show won't be as good as that show. I'm this old, why would I not have put more thought into it?

So what I'm missing is, the foundation of a selection o f images.

I can't assume that I'll go into it with a narrative. I don't shoot from narrative. I can make you feel good is a great set of images, but I do believe Mitchel largely gets away with a lack of narrative but encompassing all of the images into one grander idea.

The Altitude Talking is in the same vein.

However, I'm not sure that's the show IO want to perform, that I have the tools available to deliver the message.

I am Trying - Really Hard.

Why? To what end? And trying how?

I am trying to make you proud.

I only feel, so recently, that I have a vision that I'm not interested in your approving of. but I don't understand that vision for myself.

I go back to Kharan - a time when I felt like I made photos that I cared about, in a place that I found interesting, for. person I wanted to make pictures for.

It just goes back to people - but then there is a symbolism that I'd like to carry.

Tension - that as you are or do one thing, you are affecting another. That there is something that waits or lurks, or ponders around you. That balance is temporal. When Kenneth flies, he only lifts so far, and although it's no technical feat, the image is that he rests in the air of believable. What if more images were from this in-between state. A tension that made your stomach tighten.

The gift of photo is that it can hold you in a place that allows your imagination to wander. when looking at a body, it can allow you to imagine the physicality of that pose, the tension in muscles, the concentration - it requests a physical interrogation.

Mess - that there is no such thing as perfect, even when everything looks to be. That perfection is tainted once too much effort is exhibited in order to keep the illusion alive. Mess looks like several elements - in front and behind. Mess looks like posing not erectly center, or in the midst of chaos. I think of mess feeling more psychological than visual, though. Although, mess creates more visual stimulation. It's not calming. It's an abstract - it's a painting. Yes, something was done, an act was conducted, a meeting, a motion. For me, I have links to it all, but I'm not interested in controlling where you go with it.

Only tonight, did it occur to me just how lonely it can feel to be left at home. No, that's too far - that makes me a victim. I've chosen this. I've clearly, and deliberately, chosen solitude. I like solitude, peace in this way. Clarity, pace, slow, but truly, most of all - clarity.

It's just that I don't always know what to do with it - no, it's that I don't know how to view solitude as opportunity.

Maybe, with that in mind, Emily is not struck with this wild longing, this nervousness of self destruction, that I am when I'm alone in the house for too long.

However, I turn on Philip Glass, and I write a journal entry, and suddenly I don't feel so pathetic.

It's true that I was in and out of focus during Anatomy of a Fall - so help me, this is the first evening of solitude I've had in, Jesus - I truly don't know.

I ran out of things to occupy me. I ran out of reasons to be anxious.

Jesus Christ, I felt boredom, and then came out on the other side of it. I sit on my couch, nearly in tears. I do think I can cry now - although, maybe it's still handicapped from the medication.

Emily will walk through the front door any moment now - and although I am so glad she's home, I have just now discovered relief. Absolutely wild relief. And I don't want to be interrupted. I just want to sleep, slumber off, into an abyss of gentle dreaming and imagination that seeps into all crevices of my muscles and eye sockets. My lower back untwines as I imagine waking up in the same mental silence that I am sitting in right now, in this moment.

Nothing is loud - absolutely nothing is violent. there is a radiated peace. the altitude talking.

She's home, and although I am so grateful, I mourn

Money enters and leaves and enters my ownership in like liquid being measured electronically. Like molecules, unbound from each other, each dollar is free to maneuver through my fingers as long as it finds its way back to the world from which it came.

I'll never forgive myself for wasting away the opportunity that paid me more money than I've ever known.

I worked harder than I could have ever imagined working. I did so with health and longevity in mind. I can't say it was graceful, but I didn't know what else to do. I sought counsel from the internet, but didn't realize that they weren't speaking to _me_. To my situation, to my reality. My context, even at its most miniscule.

The internet sort of does that - maybe, I do that, and I use the internet to support my behavior.

I assume things work globally, universally, because - either it really does, or the appeal of it doing so is so strong, that we're all being fooled by a promise that can never be confirmed.

Or, and this is most likely the case, my lack of practice in seeing nuance creates a rift in me.

That's what I notice other people living in - nuance. Complications, and joys that reside in a spectrum of color. My world is much more dry, barren even, although I don't mean it's not without its beauty. I appreciate assuredness, and I can also appreciate a lacking of - but my intuition cuts with a blade more swiftly than what I notice elsewhere.

I either save money, or I spend money.

I don't spend money while saving money. And I don't save money by spending it.

Yet, that _is_ the way of the world.

I may spend here, but that means I won't have spent there, and because of that choice, I have saved. I have spent in a way that saves.

"To be gorgeous, you have to be seen. And if you are seen, you can be hunted." or something like that, from Ocean Vuong.

---

You told me you felt sick. I believe every word. Your body feels fully ill. A negative covid test, a temperature of 98. None of that matters, you feel weighed upon.

I've brought home treats and flowers - I had picked them up before you told me you were sick. I make the point that I didn't buy them out of pity. It is not only when you feel pitiful that I love you. Although I've meant to make you a bouquet of Trader Joe's flowers like we saw that guy do on Instagram, I have put it off for several months. Today I made the decision to show you love in this way - to approach you with a romantic intention.

I just don't want you to think it was done out of pity. Unless that would be better.

You question out loud, after your second cup of bone broth, "Maybe it was the frozen shortbread I ate." The uncooked dough we left uncovered on a plate in the freezer before the holidays.

My wrist feels as though it is broken. Or on its way towards uselessness. Only after a long day do I remember that I fell on it three times while snowboarding about a week ago.

---

I had so much more to say, but the sleeping aid is quietly obliterating my consciousness like an eraser tool with a low flow.

---

My ankles are worn. Honestly, the mark of a day filled with well-spent hours. I remember watching Kevin Durant's MVP speech live online, for some reason. He spoke to, and about his mother. How she fed him before herself. How she did so much with so little.

For some reason, I have decided that's what being a partner is. I have imagined myself as a Father, and I know that right now I have nothing additional to offer. I could care for you all day if I wasn't so invested in my self expression. I don't have many hobbies, I don't like to be a burden.

As I think about commercial photography, I just can't imagine stomaching the process of creating a message so incredibly artificial with the precious hours of an entire production crew.

I'm not entirely sure what I did wrong.

And now I'm descending to pity.

The artists I admire pushed their craft into a new space.

Even Irving with his cigarettes printed them, obsessively.

I know I just push for freedom - I push for no one to question me, or challenge me, or tell me that it's not good enough.

I would love to make the photos that Heather Hazzan makes - I would love that. But I know I'll rot my mind to death fearful of my own boredom with their technical prowess.

Most definitely, at this point, I have come to realize that I would like to work more intimately in video, but that I little faith in my ability to do anything interesting with it.

I am in gridlock while writing - I'm waking up in a kind of 'let's get this bread' mentality.

Last night's panic attack was terrible.

We can find one thing to feel good about, but it must be followed by 10 things that we shouldn't. It started, I believe, in realizing that Emily had reached out to connect with me multiple times throughout the day. That she may have felt a bit alone. And I just didn't notice. I simply wasn't aware.

I went to get dinner with Gabe - I come home to several reels in the DMs, and she's texted me while at dinner, "How's it going?" She invites me to watch the murder mystery show that she's currently into - she's already seen the episodes but is down to watch again if I'd like. Like saying, "I would like to share any thing at all with you, even if I'm already over it."

As I write this, it's the only entry I can remember in recent times where I am distracted - I'm flustered while thinking about it. What is _really_ bothering me, I actually wonder.

I assume that I'm nudging into something uncomfortable, maybe more true to self than I've been going near, lately. But it's not all to be assumed a deficiency of contemplation of introspection - I did, indeed, have a panic attack, followed by absolute shit sleep. It does something, no doubt, to a state of mind.

But if we're coming closer into the light of honesty - and I can feel that I'm more so cautiously tip-toeing as opposed to walking enthusiastically - I am ashamed of my injections of information. I am ashamed at the quality of what I consume. Ashamed that my output favors my weakest tissues.

I assume it's all to blame for the consequent hopelessness.

And yet, even now, even in the face of panic and torturous self esteem, _this_ is the journey. _This_ is my life, and I believe fully that there is no better version elsewhere. That to assume decision making now is the best time to make that decision. And even though my body feels stale, and my mind feels fragile, and the weather sure isn't helping, that I am still remembering that I'd like to make healthy choices in what I eat today. That my friend is bringing me an incredible camera to do with whatever I please. That my partner is right now waking up, and would love to be joined with a cup of coffee and be held.

The Altitude Talking

there's nothing authentic feeling about this -

if I have anything to share, it's that I feel an incredible rush as I get to know you.

I feel my muscles relax as you speak, as you lift the veil from my eyes that the cumulation of your life experiences have designed so intricately - that you have you placed on me and every other stranger so intentionally - that I find beautiful on it's own.

But now I stand before you, and you before me, with a pulse in the air. It's like the aura that you can see in Chinatown - except I don't really believe in those.

What it is is a cleansing of my nerves, and a closeness to something sacred. I'm humbled by it. I'm humbled by your complexity and the impact made with each step. I see you as something massive. As something brilliant and absorbing. I see the earth begging to share its history with you. It's absurd, and present.

I don't mind that you are really the only thing in the frame that matters. I'm not bothered by my lack of creativity when it comes to composition. I don't really care that the photo doesn't an encompassing story. You are likely the most complex element that my sensor is working to reveal. Every single crease of your skin, each frozen position of your muscle and bone is a communication that you have presented to me. Your body speaks even when you imagine that you have nothing to say.

We're not sad-sacked and distended in melancholy. Rather, and not the opposite, but, we worry about the naivety of our own comfort. Our own joy, or that its proximity lingers more closely and yet I look downward and I can see depression seeping into open cavities within my muscles tissue. Not enough to make bellows and humps, nor even adjust the size of my shirts and jeans. But still, I feel growth, and it's not the muscle engorging itself.

My mind is plagued by controversy that has nothing to do with my body or being or the world in which I actually live. Tim Heidecker seems like a real fucking dipshit, and Bill Maher seems like a real fucking cunt. What either of them say about each other, or what either of them wants to do with their spare time, has really nothing to do with my day to day.

We will say, "Have you seen _____?" And then be surprised when we respond with, "No." However, the next question could be a lead into intrigue - how do you spend your time? It may be interested that it is not how we do. But it's also true that bonding over similarities is lovely. Reaching out and feeling a touch similar to your own is a lovely thing. I suppose it just depends on the mood. It is good to widen your perspective, and it is good find comfort.

---

I do look down, and feel the fat cultivating inside of my red-filled body - and I think, "I'm tired." I wonder of what? I did expect going to the gym to change my life permanently, I expected the same of finding financial stability. Hours and hours and days and months and more minutes, and more hours - they pass so slowly in comparison to the speed in which I can act on impulse. To spend money that I understand I don't yet have is a comfortable act. To eat a snack that I know I will have to work off in order for it to neutralize is a comfortable act. I assume the best for myself, instead, I would benefit by assuming myself to find that other choice much more easily than I do. It's not self flagellation, it's talking to my actual self - the reality of my being. The humanity that sits in its chair at the party. It hasn't yet seen Anatomy of a Fall, but is worth knowing all the same.

It was always the faces - that people vary, that their skin carries the variances, that their each pore contains residue of a decision made either by them or by someone else near enough to them. In fashion, it was graphic. It was the use of the body, of the individual, of the piece, as object, as paint stroke.

Fashion, to me, is no bigger than that - it can't be, in my mind. It is expression in a basic sense. Outward, so what am I to say?

In all honesty, I love color study, I love shape study.

Fashion is the opposite of the documentary, it is the study of self, and the interlocked mesmerization of the influences that surround me.

Fashion is play, graphic and punctual. Pornography and true intimacy finding out where they meet each other.

It is the play of self, shuttering in terror, vs a joyous sound. A resounding gong of the inner child and outward adult playing roh sham boh, both hitting paper, then scissors, then rock, then paper again.

It is light demanding an entrance - and space demanding variability. Communication to an outside presence that never really appears. It is discomfort in what we're not, simmering in the ankle deep stock of what we hear all around us. What we only see briefly, and desperately hope to keep in our grasp.

It is an orgasm on set, because of the closeness, because of the vulnerability, the manipulation in every deep way of each element that speaks a note to us. it is romance in that we are going to fuck - sweaty and angrily. as I fuck towards you, you back towards me. watching each other feast in the spaces we've made.

It is theater, and script. Feigning and processing - questioning and destructive _because_ it is pretend. There is no authentication except the authentication of one's inner conversation. With self, with spirits.

I will only be guided by this conflict, by this perturbed growth, that rises into something I will never understand completely. But I pay my respects to it, I communicate as best I can. I write my intention down, and for everyone to see and know. I share as I can share, and ask how it was received. But I know myself all too well now, and no longer pity the poor decisions within my own small hands. I no longer fear my intentions - only that I share them and we communicate this exploration together.

It's a shame that dog erections look like something from a horror movie. And that dogs don't wear pants. But surely, at some age, they realize that they're _not_ wearing pants. They, of course, don't understand the shame.

Even still, they are asked to experience shame for their erections. It's unsightly in public. Something to point out, something to mock, or be disgusted by. Ever since we got Carmy, I thank g-d that no one really knows how often I have an erection. It's of course much less today than it was years ago, like in my teens and shit.

A comedian recently made a bit about the horrors of being horny on family vacations as a teenage boy. There is a ceaseless barrage of hormones pumping into my cock when my eye wanders onto a curve, and absolutely nothing to be done about it. Sometimes, the dick is erected without notice, without understanding. And stiffens as though it is pleading with me to break off of my body. Like my dog stuck on an impressive new scent, the collar _will_ hold as I wrangle him back, but for g-d knows how long.

I think about sex so much differently in this past month than I have in years. There's a new understanding in me as to why we romance. We, meaning humans in 21st century western culture in sexual relationships. The begging that I am willing to do, the groveling - I don't think it's in poor taste to discuss romancing in this way, it's all new for me, really.

Romancing, previously, has been about excitement, thrill, cleverness. These can lead to sex, but they were never about that for me. I never saw sex at the end of it. I saw communication that I cared, that I will continue to care, that you are and will be the person I link to and will love unconditionally. But we didn't necessarily need to have sex, and in fact, I likely never imagined that we would.

But now, I beg to fuck. And to find the inspiration to fuck, I know you would appreciate beauty, vulnerability, strength in relentlessly caring for you without assistance.

Building up into pressure that needs to be popped.

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