About joseph

Baltimore City
Joseph graduated from Rochester Institute of Technology in 1983, and has since been based in Baltimore, 3 miles from his birthplace. Joseph has shown his work in many local venues, as well as at Denise Bibro Gallery, the Woodward Gallery, and the Edward Carter Gallery in NYC.

Joseph was awarded a Maryland State Arts Council Individual Artist Awards in 2007, 2009, and 2012, and is a 2007 Black Spider Award Nominee and his photographs are found in the following collections:
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Lately What Preys On My Mind

I photograph trees, obsessively. I have for decades. In some strange way, I need to. There’s a spiritual nourishment I get from wandering through wooded places, but its also an opportunity to explore my thoughts and feelings. And that’s where the captions come from. Some of the words are mine, some are expressions of others more elegantly worded than my own, but capture my feelings precisely. 

I’m trying to find friends in the forest. Individuals I can relate and connect to in some way. They listen to me, patiently, and I love them for that. I wish I could do that for my real friends. Just be there and listen, and not add or interject anything. It’s such a lovely feeling to be really heard. 

In many ways these trees are my mentors. I admire them in so many ways. I love their organic forms and lines, so alluring, so very sexy. I love their gesture, posture, and body language. I love the variety, the individuality, not only of their appearance, but also of their experience. I love their commitment to place, their stoicism, and love of sunlight. I love their changes. I love their impartiality. I love their availability. I love their transparency, candor, and generosity. I love trees for these qualities, and I want to learn all these things from them, for myself.

I don’t wanna be a tree, I just wanna be like them.  

 

  • Mother & Child Reunion
    Mother & Child Reunion

    In thinking of America, I sometimes find myself admiring her bright blue sky — her grand old woods — her fertile fields — her beautiful rivers — her mighty lakes, and star-crowned mountains. But my rapture is soon checked, my joy is soon turned to mourning. When I remember that all is cursed with the infernal actions of slaveholding, robbery and wrong, — when I remember that with the waters of her noblest rivers, the tears of my brethren are borne to the ocean, disregarded and forgotten, and that her most fertile fields drink daily of the warm blood of my outraged sisters, I am filled with unutterable loathing.
    Frederick Douglass
    Letter to William Lloyd Garrison January 1, 1846

    Available for Purchase
  • Rialto Beach
    Rialto Beach

    However little we may be attached to the world, we never can wholly forget it, or bear to be wholly forgotten by it. Disgusted at the guilt or absurdity of mankind, the misanthrope flies from it, resolves to become a hermit, and buries himself in the cavern of some gloomy rock. While hate inflames his bosom, possibly he may feel contented with his situation: But when his passions begin to cool; when time has mellowed his sorrows, and healed those wounds which he bore with him to his solitude, think you that content becomes his companion? Ah! no, Rosario. No longer sustained by the violence of his passions, he feels all the monotony of his way of living, and his heart becomes the prey of ennui and weariness. He looks round, and finds himself alone in the universe: The love of society revives in his bosom, and he pants to return to that world which he has abandoned. Nature loses all her charms in his eyes: No one is near him to point out her beauties, or share in his admiration of her excellence and variety. Propped upon the fragment of some rock, He gazes upon the tumbling waterfall with a vacant eye, he views without emotion the glory of the setting sun. Slowly he returns to his cell at evening, for no one there is anxious for his arrival; He has no comfort in his solitary unsavoury meal: He throws himself upon his couch of moss despondent and dissatisfied, and wakes only to pass a day as joyless, as monotonous as the former. Man was born for society. 
    Matthew Gregory Lewis
    The Monk

    Available for Purchase
  • Bare Branch
    Bare Branch

    I thought scientists were going to find out exactly how everything worked, and then make it work better. I fully expected that by the time I was twenty-one, some scientist, maybe my brother, would have taken a colour photograph of God Almighty — and sold it to Popular Mechanics magazine. Scientific truth was going to make us so happy and comfortable.

    What actually happened when I was twenty-one was that we dropped scientific truth on Hiroshima. 
    Kurt Vonnegut
    Bennington College Address (1970)

    Available for Purchase
  • GraveYardCross.jpg
    GraveYardCross.jpg

    Religion is a totalitarian belief. It is the wish to be a slave. It is the desire that there be an unalterable, unchallengeable, tyrannical authority who can convict you of thought crime while you are asleep, who can subject you to total surveillance around the clock every waking and sleeping minute of your life, before you’re born and, even worse and where the real fun begins, after you’re dead. A celestial North Korea. Who wants this to be true? Who but a slave desires such a ghastly fate? I’ve been to North Korea. It has a dead man as its president, Kim Jong-Il is only head of the party and head of the army. He’s not head of the state. That office belongs to his deceased father, Kim Il-Sung. It’s a necrocracy, a thanatocracy. It’s one short of a trinity I might add. The son is the reincarnation of the father. It is the most revolting and utter and absolute and heartless tyranny the human species has ever evolved. But at least you can fucking die and leave North Korea!

    Christopher Hitchens

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  • Fall Change
    Fall Change

    I might think of the trees and how simply they let go, let fall the riches of a season, how without grief, it seems they can let go and go deep into their roots for renewal and sleep. It might be wise to imitate the trees. Lose in order to recover, remember that nothing remains for long, not physical pain, not psychic pain. I might try to sit it out. Let it pass.”

    May Sarton
    Journal of a Solitude

    Available for Purchase
  • Psycho Maple
    Psycho Maple

    Psychedelics are illegal not because a loving government is concerned that you may jump out of a third story window. Psychedelics are illegal because they dissolve opinion structures and culturally laid down models of behaviour and information processing. They open you up to the possibility that everything you know is wrong. Part of what psychedelics do is they decondition you from cultural values. This is what makes it such a political hot potato. Since all culture is a kind of con game, the most dangerous candy you can hand out is one which causes people to start questioning the rules of the game.
    Terence McKenna

    Available for Purchase
  • Face Tree
    Face Tree

    A few weeks into our stay, I made a friend who wanted to improve his English as much as I wanted to improve my French. We met one day out in the crowd in front of Notre Dame. We walked to the Latin Quarter. We walked to a wine shop. Outside the wine shop there was seating. We sat and drank a bottle of red. We were served heaping piles of meats, bread, and cheese. Was this dinner? Did people do this? I had not even known how to imagine it. And more, was this all some elaborate ritual to get an angle on me? My friend paid. I thanked him. But when we left I made sure
    he walked out first. He wanted to show me one of those old buildings that seem to be around every corner in that city. And the entire time he was leading me, I was sure he was going to make a quick turn into an alley, where some dudes would be waiting to strip me of…what, exactly? But my new friend simply showed me the building, shook my hand, gave a fine bon soirée, and walked off into the wide open night. And watching him walk away, I felt that I had missed part of the experience because of my eyes, because my eyes were made in Baltimore, because my eyes were blindfolded by fear.

    Ta-Nehisi Coates
    Between the World and Me

    Available for Purchase
  • No one can know in advance how and where the night will come
    No one can know in advance how and where the night will come

    We don't need to retire to a cloister or the desert for years on end to experience a true dark night; we don't even have to be pursuing any particular "spiritual" path. Raising a challenging child, or caring for a failing parent for years on end, is at least as purgative as donning robes and shaving one's head; to endure a mediocre work situation for the sake of the paycheck demands at least as much in the way of daily surrender as do years of pristine silence in a monastery. No one can know in advance how and where the night will come, and what form God's darkness will take. Tim Farrington A Hell of Mercy

  • they taught was that no one was ridiculous or bad or disgusting
    they taught was that no one was ridiculous or bad or disgusting
    I think about my education sometimes. I went to the University of Chicago for awhile after the Second World War. I was a student in the Department of Anthropology. At that time they were teaching that there was absolutely no difference between anybody. They may be teaching that still. Another thing they taught was that no one was ridiculous or bad or disgusting. Shortly before my father died, he said to me, ‘You know – you never wrote a story with a villain in it.’ I told him that was one of the things I learned in college after the war. Kurt Vonnegut Slaughterhouse-Five
  • only on the condition of humility and reverence before the world that our species will be able to remain in it
    only on the condition of humility and reverence before the world that our species will be able to remain in it
    We have lived by the assumption that what was good for us would be good for the world. And this has been based on the even flimsier assumption that we could know with any certainty what was good even for us. We have fulfilled the danger of this by making our personal pride and greed the standard of our behavior toward the world - to the incalculable disadvantage of the world and every living thing in it. And now, perhaps very close to too late, our great error has become clear. It is not only our own creativity - our own capacity for life - that is stifled by our arrogant assumption; the creation itself is stifled. We have been wrong. We must change our lives, so that it will be possible to live by the contrary assumption that what is good for the world will be good for us. And that requires that we make the effort to know the world and to learn what is good for it. We must learn to cooperate in its processes, and to yield to its limits. But even more important, we must learn to acknowledge that the creation is full of mystery; we will never entirely understand it. We must abandon arrogance and stand in awe. We must recover the sense of the majesty of creation, and the ability to be worshipful in its presence. For I do not doubt that it is only on the condition of humility and reverence before the world that our species will be able to remain in it. Wendell Berry The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays

Lately What Preys On My Mind

  • The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair
    The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair
    When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares.” Henri Nouwen Out of Solitude: Three Meditations
  • disappeared into nothingness
    disappeared into nothingness
    There is a time in the life of every boy when he for the first time takes the backward view of life. Perhaps that is the moment when he crosses the line into manhood. The boy is walking through the street of his town. He is thinking of the future and of the figure he will cut in the world. Ambitions and regrets awake within him. Suddenly something happens; he stops under a tree and waits as for a voice calling his name. Ghosts of old things creep into his consciousness; the voices outside of himself whisper a message concerning the limitations of life. From being quite sure of himself and his future he becomes not at all sure. If he be an imaginative boy a window is thrown open and for the first time he looks out upon the world, seeing, as though they marched in procession before him, the countless figures of men who before his time have come out of nothingness into the world, lived their lives and again disappeared into nothingness. The sadness of sophistication has come to the boy. With a little gasp he sees himself as merely a leaf blown by the wind through the streets of his village. He knows that in spite of all the stout talk of his fellows he must live and die in uncertainty, a thing blown by the winds, a thing destined to wilt in the sun.” Sherwood Anderson Winesburg, Ohio: A Group of Tales of Ohio Small Town Life
  •  everything tries to be round
    everything tries to be round
    You may have noticed that everything the Native American does is in a circle, and that is because the Power of the World always works in circles, and everything tries to be round….. The Sky is round, and I have heard that the earth is round like a ball, and so are all the stars. The wind, in its greatest power, whirls. Birds make their nest in circles, for theirs is the same religion as ours…. Even the seasons form a great circle in their changing, and always come back again to where they were. The life of a man is a circle from childhood to childhood, and so it is in everything where power moves. Black Elk Oglala Sioux Holy Man
  • my greatest fears have been realized
    my greatest fears have been realized
    Thousands of people who have had their lives dramatically altered by sexual violence have reached out to share their own experiences with me and have thanked me for coming forward…At the same time, my greatest fears have been realized—and the reality has been far worse than what I expected. My family and I have been the target of constant harassment and death threats. I have been called the most vile and hateful names imaginable. These messages, while far fewer than the expressions of support, have been terrifying to receive and have rocked me to my core. Dr. Christine Blasey Ford
  • where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocrisy
    where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocrisy
    Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid. As a nation, we began by declaring that “all men are created equal.” We now practically read it, “all men are created equal, except negroes.” When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read, “all men are created equal, except negroes, and foreigners, and Catholics.” When it comes to this I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretense of loving liberty—to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocrisy. Abraham Lincoln Letter to longtime friend and slave-holder, Joshua F. Speed 24 August 1855
  • Those who fail to exhibit positive attitudes
    Those who fail to exhibit positive attitudes
    Those who fail to exhibit positive attitudes, no matter the external reality, are seen as maladjusted and in need of assistance. Their attitudes need correction. Once we adopt an upbeat vision of reality, positive things will happen. This belief encourages us to flee from reality when reality does not elicit positive feelings. These specialists in "happiness" have formulated something they call the "Law of Attraction." It argues that we attract those things in life, whether it is money, relationships or employment, which we focus on. Suddenly, abused and battered wives or children, the unemployed, the depressed and mentally ill, the illiterate, the lonely, those grieving for lost loved ones, those crushed by poverty, the terminally ill, those fighting with addictions, those suffering from trauma, those trapped in menial and poorly paid jobs, those whose homes are in foreclosure or who are filing for bankruptcy because they cannot pay their medical bills, are to blame for their negativity. The ideology justifies the cruelty of unfettered capitalism, shifting the blame from the power elite to those they oppress. And many of us have internalized this pernicious message, which in times of difficulty leads to personal despair, passivity and disillusionment. Chris Hedges
  • What does a dragon in its shell look like?
    What does a dragon in its shell look like?
    You figure out one side of it - the human side, say - and the eternal side goes into shadow. Or vice versa. It's like the old saw: What does a dragon in its shell look like? Well no one can ever tell, for as soon as you break the shell to see, the dragon is no longer in its shell. The real disaster of this inquiry is that it is in the very nature of evil to be secret. Gregory Maguire Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West
  • promise you won't forget about me, ever. Not even when I'm a hundred
    promise you won't forget about me, ever. Not even when I'm a hundred
    "'Pooh, promise you won't forget about me, ever. Not even when I'm a hundred.” Pooh thought for a little. “How old shall I be then?' “Ninety-nine.” Pooh nodded. 'I promise'" A.A. Milne
  • the open space inviting me to leap out of the personal into the embrace of the nonhuman world
    the open space inviting me to leap out of the personal into the embrace of the nonhuman world
    I told the students that they were at an age when they might begin to choose the places that would sustain them the rest of their lives, that places were much more reliable than human beings, and often much longer-lasting, and I asked each of them where they felt at home. They answered, each of them, down the rows, for an hour, the immigrants who had never stayed anywhere long or left a familiar world behind, the teenagers who'd left the home they'd spent their whole lives in for the first time, the ones who loved or missed familiar landscapes and the ones who had not yet noticed them. I found books and places before I found friends and mentors, and they gave me a lot, if not quite what a human being would. As a child, I spun outward in trouble, for in that inside-out world [of my family], everywhere but home was safe. Happily, the oaks were there, the hills, the creeks, the groves, the birds, the old dairy and horse ranches, the rock outcroppings, the open space inviting me to leap out of the personal into the embrace of the nonhuman world. Rebecca Solnit The Faraway Nearby
  • Relationships must be like islands, one must accept them for what they are...
    Relationships must be like islands, one must accept them for what they are...
    When you love someone, you do not love them all the time, in exactly the same way, from moment to moment. It is an impossibility. It is even a lie to pretend to. And yet this is exactly what most of us demand. We have so little faith in the ebb and flow of life, of love, of relationships. We leap at the flow of the tide and resist in terror its ebb. We are afraid it will never return. We insist on permanency, on duration, on continuity; when the only continuity possible, in life as in love, is in growth, in fluidity - in freedom, in the sense that the dancers are free, barely touching as they pass, but partners in the same pattern. The only real security is not in owning or possessing, not in demanding or expecting, not in hoping, even. Security in a relationship lies neither in looking back to what was in nostalgia, nor forward to what it might be in dread or anticipation, but living in the present relationship and accepting it as it is now. Relationships must be like islands, one must accept them for what they are here and now, within their limits - islands, surrounded and interrupted by the sea, and continually visited and abandoned by the tides. Anne Morrow Lindbergh Gift from the Sea

Lately What Preys On My Mind

I photograph trees, obsessively. I have for decades. In some strange way, I need to. There’s a spiritual nourishment I get from wandering through wooded places, but its also an opportunity to explore my thoughts and feelings. And that’s where the captions come from. Some of the words are mine, some are expressions of others more elegantly worded than my own, but capture my feelings precisely. 

I’m trying to find friends in the forest. Individuals I can relate and connect to in some way. They listen to me, patiently, and I love them for that. I wish I could do that for my real friends. Just be there and listen, and not add or interject anything. It’s such a lovely feeling to be really heard. 

In many ways these trees are my mentors. I admire them in so many ways. I love their organic forms and lines, so alluring, so very sexy. I love their gesture, posture, and body language. I love the variety, the individuality, not only of their appearance, but also of their experience. I love their commitment to place, their stoicism, and love of sunlight. I love their changes. I love their impartiality. I love their availability. I love their transparency, candor, and generosity. I love trees for these qualities, and I want to learn all these things from them, for myself.

I don’t wanna be a tree, I just wanna be like them.  

 

  • When it can be said by any country in the world
    When it can be said by any country in the world

    When it can be said by any country in the world, my poor are happy, neither ignorance nor distress is to be found among them, my jails are empty of prisoners, my streets of beggars, the aged are not in want, the taxes are not oppressive, the rational world is my friend because I am the friend of happiness. When these things can be said, then may that country boast its constitution and government. Independence is my happiness, the world is my country and my religion is to do good.

    Thomas Paine
    Rights of Man

    Available for Purchase
  • No society wants you to become wise
    No society wants you to become wise

    No society wants you to become wise: it is against the investment of all societies. If people are wise they cannot be exploited. If they are intelligent they cannot be subjugated, they cannot be forced in a mechanical life, to live like robots. They will assert their individuality. They will have the fragrance of rebellion around them. They will choose to live in freedom. Freedom comes with wisdom, intrinsically. They are inseparable, and no society wants people to be free. The communist society, the fascist society, the capitalist society, the Hindu, the Mohammedan, the Christian — no society — would like people to use their own intelligence because the moment they start using their intelligence they become dangerous — dangerous to the establishment, dangerous to the people who are in power, dangerous to the ‘haves’; dangerous to all kinds of oppression, exploitation, suppression; dangerous to the churches, dangerous to the states, dangerous to the nations. In fact, a wise man is afire, alive, aflame. But he cannot sell his life, he cannot serve them. He would like rather to die than to be enslaved.

    Osho

    Available for Purchase
  • The Parent of Three
    The Parent of Three

    I understand now that no one else in the world knows what I should do. The experts don't know, the ministers, the therapists, the magazines, the authors, my parents, my friends, they don't know. Not even the folks who love me the most. Because no one has ever lived or will live this life I am attempting to live. Every life is an unprecendented experiment. This life is mine alone. So I have stopped asking people for directions to places they've never been. There is no map. We are all pioneers.

    Glennon Doyle

    Get Untamed: The Journal

    Available for Purchase
  • Entanglement
    Entanglement

    In the eighteenth and nineteenth century debates concerning abolition, passages in the Bible were used by both pro-slavery advocates and abolitionists to support their respective views.

    Avery Robert Dulles said that "Jesus, though he repeatedly denounced sin as a kind of moral slavery, said not a word against slavery as a social institution", and believes that the writers of the New Testament did not oppose slavery either. In a paper published in Evangelical Quarterly, Kevin Giles notes that, while he often encountered the claim, "not one word of criticism did the Lord utter against slavery"; moreover a number of his stories are set in a slave/master situation, and involve slaves as key characters. Giles notes that these circumstances were used by pro-slavery apologists in the 19th century to suggest that Jesus approved of slavery.

    It is clear from all the New Testament material that slavery was a basic part of the social and economic environment. Many of the early Christians were slaves. In several Pauline epistles, and the First Epistle of Peter, slaves are admonished to obey their masters, as to the Lord, and not to men. Masters were also told to serve their slaves in obedience to God by "giving up threatening". The basic principle was "you have the same Master in heaven, and with him there is no partiality.” Peter was aware that there were masters that were gentle and masters that were harsh; slaves in the latter situation were to make sure that their behaviour was beyond reproach, and if punished for doing right, to endure the suffering as Christ also endured it.

    Available for Purchase
  • The Cross
    The Cross

    It has often been said that the most common idols in the West are Power, Sex, and Money; with this I am not in any profound disagreement. However, inasmuch as these idols are connected to a larger vision of life, such as the American dream, or the inalienable rights of free people, they become part of a nation’s civil religion. I would contend, in fact, that the most alluring and dangerous deity in the United States is the omnipresent, syncretistic god of nationalism mixed with Christianity lite: religious beliefs, language, and practices that are superficially Christian but infused with national myths and habits.

    Michael J. Gorman

    Reading Revelation Responsibly: Uncivil Worship and Witness: Following the Lamb into the New Creation

    Available for Purchase
  • The End Is Near
    The End Is Near

    Hard to describe what those next years felt like to live through. Except as a hollowing out, a loss beyond repair...even as it kept begging to be repaired. While the promise of what had been so very close haunted me. In so many ways. 

    So much in motion, such energy, it disguised the decay of things, the incremental rot. How much was hollowed out.

    Impossible to tell how fast society was collapsing because history had been riddled through with disinformation, and reality was composed of half-fictions and full-on paranoid conspiracy theories. You couldn't figure out if collapse was a cliff or a gentle slope because all the mental constructs obscured it. Multinationals kept their monopolies, shed jobs or even their identities, but most did not go under. Governments became more autocratic, on average. 

    Here was fine, there was a disaster. But here was just a different kind of disaster. A thick mist drenched in the smoke of flares that kept curling back on us. Why fight a mist if all that lay ahead was more of the same? 

    Those of us who survived the pandemic, and all the rest, passed through so many different worlds. Like time travelers. Some of us lived in the past. Some in the present, some in an unknowable future. If you lived in the past, you disbelieved the conflagration reflected in the eyes of those already looking back at you. You mistook the pity and anger, how they despised you. How, rightly, they despised you. 

    So we stitched our way through what remained of life. The wounds deeper. The disconnect higher. 

    The shock that shattered our bones yet left us standing.

    Jeff VanderMeer
    Hummingbird Salamander

    Available for Purchase
  • Towson Garage Tree
    Towson Garage Tree

    Towson Garage Tree

    Available for Purchase
  • I'm feeling so yellow
    I'm feeling so yellow

    I'm feeling so yellow. Because I didn't get to choose my parents, and at some point I realized that just maybe my parents aren't able to parent perfectly, but we exist, and the only choice I've got in the whole situation is whether I'm gonna love them anyway. It's as simple and messy and complicated as that. Megan Jacobson Yellow

  • Ghosts of old things creep into his consciousness
    Ghosts of old things creep into his consciousness

    There is a time in the life of every boy when he for the first time takes the backward view of life. Perhaps that is the moment when he crosses the line into manhood. The boy is walking through the street of his town. He is thinking of the future and of the figure he will cut in the world. Ambitions and regrets awake within him. Suddenly something happens; he stops under a tree and waits as for a voice calling his name. Ghosts of old things creep into his consciousness; the voices outside of himself whisper a message concerning the limitations of life. From being quite sure of himself and his future he becomes not at all sure. If he be an imaginative boy a window is thrown open and for the first time he looks out upon the world, seeing, as though they marched in procession before him, the countless figures of men who before his time have come out of nothingness into the world, lived their lives and again disappeared into nothingness. The sadness of sophistication has come to the boy. With a little gasp he sees himself as merely a leaf blown by the wind through the streets of his village. He knows that in spite of all the stout talk of his fellows he must live and die in uncertainty, a thing blown by the winds, a thing destined to wilt in the sun.” Sherwood Anderson Winesburg, Ohio: A Group of Tales of Ohio Small Town Life

  • places were much more reliable than human beings
    places were much more reliable than human beings

    I told the students that they were at an age when they might begin to choose the places that would sustain them the rest of their lives, that places were much more reliable than human beings, and often much longer-lasting, and I asked each of them where they felt at home. They answered, each of them, down the rows, for an hour, the immigrants who had never stayed anywhere long or left a familiar world behind, the teenagers who'd left the home they'd spent their whole lives in for the first time, the ones who loved or missed familiar landscapes and the ones who had not yet noticed them. I found books and places before I found friends and mentors, and they gave me a lot, if not quite what a human being would. As a child, I spun outward in trouble, for in that inside-out world [of my family], everywhere but home was safe. Happily, the oaks were there, the hills, the creeks, the groves, the birds, the old dairy and horse ranches, the rock outcroppings, the open space inviting me to leap out of the personal into the embrace of the nonhuman world. Rebecca Solnit The Faraway Nearby

Lately What Preys On My Mind

I photograph trees, obsessively. I have for decades. In some strange way, I need to. There’s a spiritual nourishment I get from wandering through wooded places, but its also an opportunity to explore my thoughts and feelings. And that’s where the captions come from. Some of the words are mine, some are expressions of others more elegantly worded than my own, but capture my feelings precisely. 

I’m trying to find friends in the forest. Individuals I can relate and connect to in some way. They listen to me, patiently, and I love them for that. I wish I could do that for my real friends. Just be there and listen, and not add or interject anything. It’s such a lovely feeling to be really heard. 

In many ways these trees are my mentors. I admire them in so many ways. I love their organic forms and lines, so alluring, so very sexy. I love their gesture, posture, and body language. I love the variety, the individuality, not only of their appearance, but also of their experience. I love their commitment to place, their stoicism, and love of sunlight. I love their changes. I love their impartiality. I love their availability. I love their transparency, candor, and generosity. I love trees for these qualities, and I want to learn all these things from them, for myself.

I don’t wanna be a tree, I just wanna be like them.  

 

  • memories are bullets
    memories are bullets
    Memories are bullets. Some whiz by and only spook you. Others tear you open and leave you in pieces. Richard Kadrey Kill the Dead
  • Dissimulation
    Dissimulation
    Dissimulation, secretiveness, appear a necessity to the melancholic. He has complex, often veiled relations with others. These feelings of superiority, of inadequacy, of baffled feeling, of not being able to get what one wants, or even name it properly (or consistently) to oneself — these can be, it is felt they ought to be, masked by friendliness, or the most scrupulous manipulation. Susan Sontag Under the Sign of Saturn
  • Even the clouds get in on the the quirky
    Even the clouds get in on the the quirky
    I do love Northern California. You can order your omelet with avacado and tofu, and they won’t call the police. Even the clouds get in on the the quirky
  • casualties of the primitive rules of competition
    casualties of the primitive rules of competition
    There are people who make a complete and utter mockery of 'democracy' and 'equality' - they're the casualties of the primitive rules of competition which run our society, and the welfare state keeps them just barely alive. And that’s all. Michael Palin Diaries 1969-1979: The Python Years
  •  the shelter of this standing stone
    the shelter of this standing stone
    Traveling west from Petaluma to Point Reyes, I came across this lone oak tree that had probably sprouted from the shelter of this standing stone. I could well imagine this fellow enjoying significant protection from the powerful westerly winds coming off of the Pacific, at least until it reached some level of maturity. Wouldn’t it be nice if everybody experienced this kind of security during their most vulnerable years.
  • the deep interconnectedness I longed for
    the deep interconnectedness I longed for
    My glorification of independence and individualism made me and easy target for the myth of meritocracy, and overshadowed what in my heart I knew to be true: the deep interconnectedness I longed for with family, friends, colleagues, and even strangers is core to human survival. Interdependence is our true lifeblood. Debby Irving, Waking Up White: And Finding Myself in the Story of Race
  • The darkest secret of this country
    The darkest secret of this country

    The darkest secret of this country, I am afraid, is that too many of its citizens imagine that they belong to a much higher civilization somewhere else. That higher civilization doesn’t have to be another country. It can be the past instead—the United States as it was before it was spoiled by immigrants and the enfranchisement of the blacks. This state of mind allows too many of us to lie and cheat and steal from the rest of us, to sell us junk and addictive poisons and corrupting entertainments. What are the rest of us, after all, but sub-human aborigines? Kurt Vonnegut Bluebeard

  • When we don’t use our talents to cultivate meaningful work, we struggle
    When we don’t use our talents to cultivate meaningful work, we struggle
    As it turns out, it’s not merely benign or “too bad” if we don’t use the gifts that we’ve been given; we pay for it with our emotional and physical well-being. When we don’t use our talents to cultivate meaningful work, we struggle. We feel disconnected and weighed down by feelings of emptiness, frustration, resentment, shame, disappointment, fear, and even grief.” Brené Brown The Gifts of Imperfection
  • a country where everyone lives in fear
    a country where everyone lives in fear
    Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear." Special Message to the Congress on the Internal Security of the United States, August 8, 1950 Harry S. Truman
  •  just believing that I belong where I am and deserve to take up space
    just believing that I belong where I am and deserve to take up space
    It’s a struggle for me to remain open, and not shut down because I’m feeling defensive or scared or maybe my ego is getting in the way. And the other side of that is just believing that I belong where I am and deserve to take up space. I fight constantly between those two things, between not apologizing for what I want and staying vulnerable and creatively supple and not thinking I know better than everyone else. Amy Poehler