Sometimes I wake and still have trouble remembering where I am. Sometimes the darkness is both liberating and suffocating. Sometimes I can still hear the melancholy notes of High Hopes partnered with the lingering aroma of pot and Camel cigarettes seeping through the crack underneath my bedroom door.
Read More41//365 /
Memories of you rolled in with the fog. I missed you so desperately, so thoroughly, so lucidly. And the more I tried in vain to catch my breath, the more the air around me seemed to recede into nothingness. I missed you.
Read MoreStrange /
"This is so strange, we're so strange...whatever it is that he and I are trying to do here.
ot lose each other, I guess."
30//365 /
Sometimes there are signs or glimpses of warmer weather to come. This morning felt almost like Spring. By the time I walked out of my office at 6:30 it was dark and cold and blowing snow. Sometimes my bones absolutely ache in their yearning for warmth, for the warm sun on my skin.
Read MoreNonsensical Jibberish /
We've been talking so much, in fact, I told him I didn't, in fact, feel the aloneness I should really be feeling.
Read More22//365 /
How much of your brief little life do you live in fear? In anger? In sadness? How often do you say "I love you" ? How often are you paying attention? Staying informed? Standing up for something? How many injustices have you witnessed today alone? Did you feel more apathy than rage? What's your plan to rectify that? When exactly do you plan to start giving a shit? How often do you wake up in the morning and think "I just can't do it" ?
Read MoreInternal Discourse /
Try not to let the world get in your way. You were never part of it. You never wanted to be a part of it. Do what you want, do what you need to. What do you need? Breathe. Remember you're never alone. You're completely alone. You're completely alone. You're not soft. You're unappealing. You know you've never really fit in anywhere or with anyone. You're alone. You're lonely. You're fat. Smile more. Breathe.
Read MoreWords and Daughters /
"15 years ago a man moved into the next step.7 and a quarter centuries earlier, another man traveled on too. Their deeds, their lives, even their words and daughters are beautiful echoes. "The future is ours - it's ours to choose." - Clay Tillett "What you seek is seeking you." - Jalal ad-Dīn Muhammad Balkhi... better known as Rumi. This can be a hard day, but I think you know happiness today. The fact that you can feel it today, means you can feel it any day. I'm grateful to be a part of it. I would tell your dad that you are an incredible friend. I'd tell him you are a great human being. That you've grown into an amazing woman. I'd tell him how in love with you I am, and pray I've done good by you, and continue to. I'd hope he found me worthy. I love you, Becky. I'll never stop." —M. O'Shaughnessy
Read MoreBut I'm Here Now /
For the past year or two I've questioned much in my life; my work, my art, my motivation, but ultimately and unnervingly my biggest question has been about my marriage. Fourteen years ago I met my husband online, fell in love with him and before I was even a senior in high school, we moved out of our parents' places and into our first apartment. We confronted life's challenges and assumed very adult roles while we were still very much children.
Read MoreThrough the Head, Not the Chest /
Two nights ago I found out my dad shot himself through the head, not the chest. I can see why most people might wonder why such a thing matters. Dead is dead. But it does. For the last almost-15 years, I've been dealing with a tragedy based on facts that were actually WRONG. And I have no, no idea how I even got said facts. Did someone tell me that? Did I make that assumption when I was being pushed out of my own house and barely got a glance of him? Did I overhear it? Did I create some fantasy of what happened in my head, not really knowing?
Read MoreNotions /
"Sometimes the sadness creeps in and I spend time comforting him and hugging and holding him, telling him not to be sad and that everything will be okay. Sometimes my life feels so surreal I feel like I'm floating outside my body watching me moving effortlessly through the motions. I keep drifting back to preconceived notions in my head of what two people who have spent the last 14 years of their lives together who are going through the first steps of separating should look like. And no part of my life resembles or mirrors those notions."
Read MoreNothing Good Gets Away /
It's startling and even profoundly jarring how suddenly feelings of such fear and crushing defeat can sneak up on me; how small and alone I can feel in this painfully short and so quickly passing lifetime.
Sometimes life is nothing but a blur. Sometimes I think I'm predisposed to my father's eventual hopeless and fundamentally relenting inclination.
(Or worse even, my mother's living fear of being simply alone with herself.)
Read MoreToday I Now Have Two /
"It's said that you can not control the depth of a wound another soul inflicts upon you. But you can certainly control the depth of the wound you inflict on someone else. Since the age of 16 I've only had one regret: that I didn't tell my father goodnight and ignored him the night he shot himself. Starting today I now have two.
That I've so deeply hurt the one person I've loved the most in this world."
Read MoreBrutal and Full of Emotion /
"But things between us are too hard. Sometimes it's nice and weird and feels like everything's normal. Sometime's it's brutal and full of emotion and doubt, and sadness and 'What's wrong with me's' and 'Why won't you just stay's.'"
Read MoreDopo il Grande Splendore /
"Seemingly fragile creatures, the lost girls of Rebecca Tillett are alone in the middle of the desert of the American imagination. There are no icons, no pin-ups, and they celebrate nothing but the constant repetition of the great existential failures. There was a time in which those boundless lands gave dreams; subsequently those dreams became nightmares. Now, simply, there is nothing more.
Declared on several occasions as one of the purest voices of the new erotic photography, Tillett has maneuvered skillfully in the globalized fall of intelligence. She refused the ride to stardom. Refused Conde-Nast . Refused suitors from swollen portfolios. Her subjects - strictly feminine - celebrate the American lowlife, a flight from the black heart of the Empire that is as fascinating as it is effective. With floating pop and underground references Tillett is in the margins of every important movement over the past twenty years, a Sylvia Plath of photography."
Read MoreGod Love You /
God love you and love the piercing
Ache to belong to you, your past,
Your sins, your loves in contrast
To miss you, to need you, to want you
To consume you where you stand
Your inamorata in a vast wasteland
Every last drop of boundless brine
God is giving me a sign
To invite you to plunge inside me
To engulf you, envelop your desires
To succumb to your every whim
God love the piercing ache to belong to you,
With you, to feel you in my bones,
Until you're seeping through my pores I'm yours.
God love the you that fills the space
The pockets of bleak inhabiting me
The way I melt when I see your face
To glances toward you longingly
God love you and the stabbing ache
To belong to you, to be everything you Need.
To yearn for you, to dream of you,
o bleed, proceed, to plead.
Godspeed.
Half Yelling, Half Crying /
"He was distraught. He was filled with rage for the guy. He was worried about me. He said 'I had a bad feeling about you staying with him. I knew you shouldn't have stayed with him! I always knew he was a scumbag! Why didn't you listen to me?? Why did this happen!?' He was half yelling, half crying. I was bawling. I was apologizing. I should have listened. I should have listened. He's always right. He apologized. 'None of this is your fault. None of this is your fault.'"
Read MoreTorn Between the Two /
The reality is that I'm not home with Adam at the moment, smiling at our triumph. I'm in Austin proving something to myself, running desperately away from home, seeking time and asylum in traveling. And the friends and family I have scattered all over the southwest have audaciously come to my aid.
Read MoreBreak Your Own Heart /
"You are not a terrible person for wanting to break up with someone you love. You don’t need a reason to leave. Wanting to leave is enough. Leaving doesn’t mean you’re incapable of real love or that you’ll never love anyone else again. It doesn’t mean you’re morally bankrupt or psychologically demented or a nymphomaniac. It means you wish to change the terms of one particular relationship. That’s all. Be brave enough to break your own heart." —Cheryl Strayed
Read MoreRecent Snaps /
I wanted to share a couple of my favorite photos from some recent shoots. The first is my good friend Kathy's daughter who needed some senior portraits. Maddie and I had such a good time on this shoot. All she knew was she didn't want "anything typical" in the world of senior portraits and all I knew was her and I were in complete agreement on that desire. The second is Pepper Greene, one-third of the Hawkins/Greene family, whom graciously allowed me to stay with them in Phoenix last week.
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