It's not that you're not good enough

It's just that we can make you better

you quit drinking because it put you in impossible situations, and often you hated yourself for the punches and kisses and lies and long dark nights.

you quit the opioids because they never fixed the pain, only dulled it. made your guts thick as concrete. left you floating away from everything beautiful in life.

you quit the damaged, volatile and wildly exciting young women because you got old and your fat belly sagged like your hopes. mutual self destruction should only be a hobby, not sport.

quitting is sometimes the best you can do.

if you quit the right things.

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spring comes and we start anew. we commit our dead to the cold ground and shallow-bury seeds of hope for late summer feasts. the rains eventually come. sheets against the light, against dark—covering everything. rains impossible as love nourish all. wash us clean. feed for seed and dead buried. then trees barren so long, so fucking long, daubed-green explode.

we start anew, rare and ready

to be knocked down.

you hunt for ideas of things. outlines moving in gust fronts, shapes flickering in and out, shadows of what could be. maybe the next set of lips will be softer. maybe the next photo will touch your robot heart.

always in abandoning, always in abandon.

this is a dangerous way to treat a human heart. always throwing aside today for tomorrow. this, for that.

you have to quit the right things.

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a list of things to quit (so as to not quit photography):

1. sharpness

2. not having lens flares

3. not accepting the darkness into your heart—and shadows.

4. letting fences fence you off from more complex compositions

5. forgetting that the light is literally everything.

6. not using longer lenses. fuck your decrepit shoulder.

7. a lack of motion.

8. not posting what makes you excited instead of just sending it to daja and then forgetting about it.

9. forgetting you’re going to die.

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