10.15.05 - 3:23 p.m.

For 4 weeks straight I was assigned to take lots of photos, and my relationship with the world really went downhill. I wanted to usher the corners of buildings and the orbs of porch lights into my camera, but they came out the back like bad memories. So I wandered over the same streets squinting through my viewfinder for things that weren’t there. Lots of overcast days dropped a white sheet behind the buildings and trees closest to me, and obliterated anything far-away like an historical revision. Downtown became a flat billboard shoved in the ground, winter was coming, and I felt like I was going to put a foot right through the sidewalk like a rotten wooden floor.

This week, though, I only have to take self-portraits. I can resume a respectful distance from the world again. Now I’m the paper doll, and the pop-up book world has sprung back up around and above me, with sharp building ledges and soft porch lights. It directs sunlight over and past its cut-outs and into my body, and my head prints out the reverse in thin white shapes like this. Capital I is the clock tower at school.

see< >saw

i whisper hello to everything