Did you know that there is liquid THC here in California? In tiny bottles, like a power shot, but instead of giving you energy its like a tranq-dart. Somehow, after having actually been careful to make a measured spritzer, and ingesting a mere 25g, I think that selling a tiny 100g, highly-concentrated bottle is actually grossly irresponsible. How could you even tempt someone to do the entire thing like a shot? So they could pass out, or black out? I won’t get into the implications of that here, but I can assume that could be highly dangerous. It could be easily slipped into someones drink without them knowing, or slammed on a dare or just out of curiosity, by teens looking for the ultimate high. At such a small size, it doesn’t even offer the slowness of ingestion, nor the possibility of reflection of having to sip something that is larger. It, too me, seems like it could be quite dangerous.

But that is not of my concern, now. I have had a rollercoaster in the past few days. Beginning on Sunday, when I had yet another 360° disagreement with my sister. It started with me watering a houseplant without her consent, continued with a story about my inappropriate actions during the time when our mother was actively dying, and ended up with me realising that I actually might not be able to go into an agreement about the house with her. I have realised that I am in a place in my life where I am not about to make anymore stupid decisions, ignoring the warning signs in front of me, the red flags that have been put out for everyone to see like it the trooping of the GD colours. I spent Sunday evening trying to get my head around this, crying my eyes out, so sad that things are how they are with my sister. I think I have finally realised that I might have to walk away from all of this in order to preserve my peace.

Sunday night, I slept in the woods with Bettie, at her place. What a magical place. The drive up her mountain was filled with ferns, flowers, and butterflies crossing the road. How magical! Monday morning was slow, had a lunch and then made it down to the chiropractors, then a yoga class. Now, after my liquid THC experience, I am exhausted in mind, body, and spirit. Yet here I am, drinking coffee with sugar and forcing myself to stay awake. Thinking of going shopping to continue the mind-numbing that I’m currently experiencing. I might as well, it seems like the perfect opportunity to just veg the fuck out, and perhaps I need this as much as anything, as much as honing in, focusing, healing, concentrating, processing, etc.

Sometimes things can be rolled back to a time of simpler therapies, like friends and shopping. Sparkles, bags, distractions… shallow promises of the possibility of a different life, from a shinier than the one I’m in now, overloaded by images from the boxes and boxes of family photos that must be gone through. All the times of my life shoved randomly into pretty boxes, each one holding some good and some dark memories. So many traumas wrapped into my story, our stories. Forgotten moments, archived by my camera – they are there, too. Times long forgotten, times when I was alone, and truly myself. Truly at peace. At least, there are records.

And so, my deepest fantasies return, my most secret, obvious desires, even drive to fulfil these dreams, these ambitions, so long cast aside. When I look at the picture, the good pictures in which I had really found myself, alone, pure, my vision and timing locked in tightly, working as one with the lens and the shutter, knowing how the speed of the film would take it in. The results were marvelous. They were worthy of being seen, objects of beauty in their own right, yet I was afraid. Afraid of trying, of again exposing my soul to be told that it wasn’t quite good enough, that it was immature, repetitive, redundant. Now I see, it wasn’t even me. It just was. These pictures have nothing to do with me. They are, both subjectively and objectively, art. They work. They tell a story, not a narrative, but a story of moments, actions, composition, and colors. What happened was individual. The photos were just the scenes in which the experiences took place. They set the stage for the drama, love, loss, and loneliness of us all – at that time and in that place.

Now I am finally ready to show this work. I only hope that there is more than the couple of rolls that I have found. I worry that that is it. I wonder just how much of my work from that time that my violent, war-torn, painter ex-boyfriend destroyed. On the eve of the dissolution of our relationship, he went into a scary downward spiral. Imagining a betrayal that wasn’t there, he attacked my work and my files with a knife, destroying several boxes of negatives. From what I remember, and I tend to remember those types of moments pretty well, that is was mostly my old work that he had hacked to bits.

There are pictures of him there, too. Pictures from my college graduation when my parents came, via last-minute plans, to see me, to see us, in Chicago. I look in everyone’s eyes in these pictures, searching for the real emotions, hidden by the fake, unaware smiles that were only possible in an age before camera phones. I look to see what anger, disappointment, resentment those smiles try hide. I know it was there, I remember it. Today I will continue to dig through the archives. I will try to enjoy the dragging sensation I feel, try to let it melt into relaxation, even a nap. I will try to embrace this funny process, at once upsetting and healing, as at least it brings all of this out into the open.