A Visceral Love

Many symphonies, countless painted masterpieces, volumes of poetry, and the Taj Mahal all have something in common: their inspiration. All inspired by love, it is unnerving and reassuring all at once to know all of us wield this power. This undying source of beauty and purpose is what fuels and replenishes every mind, more than food or water does for the body.

To love someone, to truly love, means different things to different people. Some think to love someone is to extend yourself beyond your boundaries—to view that person as an extension of oneself. When the loved feels pain, the lover feels pain. When the loved feels joy, the lover feels joy.

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Others believe to truly love is to give a piece of your heart away. Author Elizabeth Stone once said, “Making the decision to have a child—it’s momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking outside your body.”  This view makes love seem almost like a risk. That to love is to have the most precious pieces of ourselves given forever to the person of our choosing. To trust enough to have that piece of us safeguarded as if it was still ours.

I believe to truly love is to lose oneself so much in that person that two become one. To love viscerally—to love them so much they become closer than the visceral flesh. That to lose that one would mean sure destruction, but to continue loving him would mean heaven twice over. Aligning the angles of personality and experiences, always breaking down the worn and rebuilding it better, relishing every fault and flaw, and patiently repairing the world’s damages are true love.

The full subtlety of love—the language of souls—is something I am only beginning to understand. Diving into the depths of each other’s personas is difficult at times. The innermost parts of ourselves are seldom felt by anyone other than us. Innate defense mechanisms must be turned off, shame must be put on the backburner, and growth must be at the forefront. I am only beginning, but this much is good news: I have begun.

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The Blank Canvas

Albert Einstein was a very wise man. That fact we all know because countless books speak of his glory and one can hardly read the word “physics” without seeing his name in the next sentence. Though I learned through textbooks and lectures of Einstein’s genius, I didn’t really come to realize it to its fullest extent until a few weeks ago.

I was sitting on the porch, the Florida heat lying heavily on my shoulders. Butterflies and birds flew lazily past me in search of escape from the midday drawl. It seemed as if the world was in a haze—everything was moving in slow motion. The trees’ branches reached for the ground, while the solar rays shooting from the sky beat down upon them. The clouds, like oversized zeppelins, sluggishly crept their way across the stratosphere. Reaching for my icy lemonade, beads of water crawling down the side of the glass, I came to realize something: I can FEEL time.

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I looked at the clock hanging on the wall behind me and saw the second hand taunt me with its slow mechanics, creeping its way to each number, counting down the death of the day. My heartbeat joined this deadly dance as it beat the seconds down in my life in time with the tick-tocks in the background. I thought of other times when my heart’s sounds would blur in my ears and my eyes could barely see the second hand swing around that stone-cold face on the wall. Five minutes seemed like one sixtieth of an hour at times, other times, one second felt like one twentieth of an hour. Einstein’s Theory of Relativism was awake in every syncopated move of the hand. Every beat of my heart and every move of the hands on the clock were singing the theory’s verses.

The notion is simple, but brilliant. There are moments in a person’s life when time rushes past in a blur and others when life seems to come to a complete stop. In my life, as I’m sure you’ve felt in yours,  there have been days when I barely notice there is a watch on my wrist counting down the seconds to when I put my head at rest. Then there are others, the periods of weeks and weeks where life monotonously drones by, hour by hour, day by day each day greyer than the next. The blur between them is insignificant and the feeling of night and day has been wiped from my mind. I wake up feeling the deadweight all around me, hanging on my walls, on my wrist, on the clock in Time Square.

I wonder if I could, if I tried, feel the proof of Time—unchanging and unflinching—standing at the sidelines of our life, laughing at the inevitability as we scramble to pick up the seconds scattered on the floor. A facet of life, totally separate of our struggle to make appointments, entirely detached of the yearly ritual of lighting candles and blowing them out, Time is unaffected. Like in a movie theater, the white screen that all movies are projected upon remains as vast a blank canvas as ever, Time is very much the same thing. It is the canvas our lives are projected upon. The dancing colors and vibrant activity of everyday life flicker momentarily on the screen…but as the light fades, what remains is Time. Time sinking into the far reaches of eternity, farther than any of us will ever see.

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A Shapeful Imagination

A series of photography devoted to the shapes and symmetry around us making up everything we see.

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Into the Night

A series of photography capturing the velvety darkness and shadows cast in the night.

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Eye to the Sky

A series of photography rendering the infinite subtleties of the clouds and atmosphere above.

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Rustic Reminiscence

A series of photography depicting the rough edges and worn beauty of familiar scenes.

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A Glimpse into Nature

A series of photography devoted to the quiet glimpses of this beautiful planet.

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