A thousand words in one picture.



Sometimes I find myself just staring at your pictures, scanning each picture for something new every time I go back to them. Looking for that different mark I didn’t spot last time, that slight change to your smile I never noticed or a new shade of colour in your eyes that makes my heart stop.

Today I started looking at them again, one of them, one where you are glancing over your shoulder, your eyes a piercing green, a little smirk on your face with your soft curls surrounding your face, completely stopped me dead in my tracks. I got lost in the moment, trying to imagine the very point at which this picture was taken and how someone so beautiful, can be so natural at the same time with everything wonderful about you being captured in that split second. A moment in time captured, I guess.

The stresses of my day are softened these days, softened with the ability I have to turn to pictures that allow me to dream, to get lost in a moment in time that belongs to you, but may also belong to us in the future. Pictures that allow me a glimpse into your life, past and present, to have watched you grow through the years, even though we have never met. The modern day has its many benefits and luxuries, this being one of them.

I love capturing moments in time, I love secretly holding my camera or phone and capturing my family and friends speak about life, love and all it’s up and downs, many times with them being none the wiser to my constant snapping, with the outcome being beauty captured in its most natural form. I want to capture you. I want to take your picture when you don’t know it or least expect it, to keep it in a special place that when we are not together and I am feeling alone or lost, I can pull it out and get lost in all its beauty. To feel secure that not just I, but we captured a moment in time together, one that will never ever be replicated again.

The future is bright...

Alone.

Sunrise over Shellharbour, 2009.

It's late, I can't sleep so what do I do? Look at photos of memories, both near and far. Not the best thing to do when some of those memories caused pain, or maybe it is. Sometimes it is those painful memories that remind us of what we have to be grateful for and not to ever make those same mistakes again.

I start with the pictures of a country I flew to on a last minute whim earlier this year. A trip that saw me being led by my heart over my head, something everyone told me to be mindful of. I wasn't mindful, nor did I really listen, rather I fell in head first to a romantic notion of some kind of tropical love affair. It was heavenly.

Don't get me wrong, I would do it all again in a heart beat, but I would go in slightly more guarded of my most valuable and vulnerable asset, my heart. I would never blame anyone or anything for this crazy notion of love other than myself, but people are not always what they seem. Or again, maybe they are but we just get so blinded by everything that we fail to see what is really standing in front of us. In my case, I failed miserably.

Many months later and I have made a number of new acquaintances from this very country, some amazing and some, well lets just say we no longer speak. I also find myself yet again discussing love, music and life with these people that I have never met, a concept that seems strange when we live on opposite sides of the world. I guess that is the power of technology and social media, the ability to connect.

One such person melts any icey barriers that I have managed to erect around my heart, in the hope that it will never be hurt again. He writes with passion and compassion, love and laughter, and the depth of his words and sentences jump at me from my screen to engulf me, leaving me yearning for the next paragraph. I am hooked. The adrenalin that rushes through my veins when I see him online is unlike anything I have felt for a long time.

But I stop myself. How many times can your heart take the pain of it potentially being broken again? Once? twice? or maybe it just never truly heals. I remember what I had written down on a piece of paper after my first partner passed away, "without the suffering and pain, I would never be able to understand the true meaning or feeling of what love is". Rather masochistic I know, but also very truthful.

The crossroads have arrived. I am staring them down head on and ready to charge. Which path do I take? Will it be the right one? What happens if I fuck up? Again? As I verbalise this out loud, a gentle answer sweeps through my head. "Follow your heart". Why? It has caused me nothing but pain in the past, but then I remember what I had written down all those years ago. Maybe now is my time, maybe I have culled all the suffering and pain away, maybe I am ready to receive and understand just what love is all about. Maybe the love is not about me and another, maybe it is about just me, learning to love me first. Finding out what makes me happy, what will bring about my smile again, a smile like my emerald eyed friend with whom when ever I see it, I lose myself in its beauty.

What I do know though, is at this time I am alone and I am cool with that. It has been a long time, but I am slowly making my way back to me...