i am home

the time will come

when, with elation,

you will greet yourself arriving

at your own door, in your own mirror,

and each will smile at the other's welcome,

and say, sit here. eat.

you will love again the stranger who was your self.

give wine. give bread. give back your heart

to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you imagined

for another, who knows you by heart.

take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,

peel your own image form the mirror.

sit. feast on your life.

- derek walcott

i am home now.

clean and unpacked.

i read this walcott quote today.

i don't know how in the world i found such a perfect expert for this moment in time... on second thought it probably found me.

what can i say about all of this? it's hard. it's hard to find a sum of anything right now. i am sad and overjoyed. i am exhausted but the most alive i've felt in a long time. i am sort of sitting here on my bed. staring. thinking. smiling. crying. knowing. i have done something long overdue.

from this experience i choose to take with me, the ability of not stressing over minor mishaps (traffic, dying phone batteries, gas prices, plaguing thoughts of undeserving boys, etc). i don't want to spend a lot of precious time on bullshit things, that inevitably will continue to resurface...

instead i want to roll the windows down in my car. i want to listen to a little bit more bowie. i want to lay in the grass and watch animals take shape in the clouds. i want to smile at strangers and check my watch less. i want to eat more madelines and learn another language. i want to take pictures for me, not for art shows, or flickr, or expectations. i want to see my mother more. i want to write again. i want to laugh louder. i want to wake up earlier and to see the world in the hazy am light. i want to be good to my friends. i want to meet someone who is honest and who will love me. i want to love him back, and i want for that to be okay. i want to give back my heart to itself and feast on my life.

i took this polaroid in a bathroom in indian town FL. it was the last shot, of the last film pack, on the last day. it is sx 70 blend film and one of my favorite shots of the trip.