Adrian eating his damn chipsApril 29, 2012

Alan at Cracker BarrellApril 29, 2012

sleepy boys in my living roomApril 29, 2012

saying goodbyeApril 26, 2012

very excited to finally get my Yashica T4 in the mail today! missed having a point & shoot so much. get ready for an influx of new photos!

for those of you who don’t know, my friend Jordan committed suicide about three and a half weeks ago. it was been one of the most devastating and unreal periods of time I have ever experienced. I don’t think I can really put into words the anguish and complete emptiness I’ve experienced internally these past few weeks. it’s been hard to keep myself engaged in school or even in being social with people who I love. I had kind of become a depressed recluse and I hated it. before this happened, I had been driven to push myself in school and I felt really confident in the work I was doing and how I was progressing within that work. when I heard the news, everything seemed pointless. I felt detached from everything, and nothing seemed important because a beautiful, radiant girl wasn’t here to experience the life I know is so intensely beautiful.  anyway. I have two, small tattoos and I had been contemplating what to get as a third for a few months now. I had been flip-flopping between several art pieces, drawings and ideas but nothing had really been sticking as something I’d want permanently on my body. I had read this website on symbols and their meanings and I read the symbolism of a circle. On this website, I read this: The circle symbol meaning is universal, sacred and divine. It represents the infinite nature of energy, and the inclusivity of the universe. Our ancient kin observed a circular aspect to the cycles of time, specifically in the movements of the seasons. In waltzing rhythms of time, and with the revolutions of the earth ‘round the sun, we can feel the same kind of evolution in annual time and seasons - just as our forefathers and mothers did. a circle represented something so infinite and beautiful. I knew the placement but there was something missing that was causing me to be unsure about having it on my body permenantly.  earlier last week, I had my first dream about Jordan since her death. in this dream I was at my school in the art building. I had arranged with the faculty and some students to help coordinate some small memorial installations around Arlington to commemorate Jordan’s life. some people who were close to Jordan from my graduating class came. a few of us, myself included, could see Jordan while we were working. others thought we were delusional and crazy for talking to thin air. everyone seemed to know immediately what kind of art they wanted to make for Jordan, as for me, I was coming up blank. I had separated myself from the group and was walking down a hallway. Jordan appeared to me and she asked me why I looked sad. I told her I couldn’t think of anything to make for her, and I was angry at myself because I felt like it should come so easily. she asked me if she could pitch in an idea, so of course I said sure. she told me she really wanted to have hundreds of those circular, bulb shaped, red Christmas lights wrapped around the bridge that connects my apartment to the other side of Arlington. at night, it would light up in a miraculous red color. I asked her why she wanted red. she told me because that way she could always see it from where she was. shortly after she told me that, I woke up. I felt really unsettled by the dream. it wasn’t reality, but I had a hard time distinguishing from the realness I felt from the reality of the situation I had woken up to. I was unsettled, and constantly thought about what she said to me in my dream.  this weekend I drove to Austin for a friend’s wedding. as I was driving to the hotel, I was thinking about that circle tattoo and it suddenly clicked to me that I should have the tattoo, not as a black outline, but instead as a red outline. it was so perfect and I immediately knew it was what I wanted. after the wedding reception on Saturday, I went downtown with a friend to get my tattoo. I had it done, and left around 2am. I dropped my friend at home, and drove back to the hotel. it was raining and I was driving alone the access road next to the highway. I was stopped at a light.  suddenly everything that was circular and red became extremely overwhelming. as I live in a largely metropolitan area and state, I see color and advertisements and things all the time but I kind of blindly look at them but never really see them. I suddenly felt like a blinder was ripped off and I saw the red. and I mean all of it. I saw it in all the breaks lighting up, I saw it in the traffic lights, I saw it in reflections off water puddles on the ground, off billboard marquees, reflections off stop signs, restaurants. I saw it all. I started to cry silently. it wasn’t a cry like I had been crying before. I wasn’t sad. I suddenly felt so overwhelmed with a sense of harmony, my tears were tears of joy. I have never felt so calm in any moment in my entire life. something was inside me, instilling me with so much understand and joy for the moment of clarity. everything that felt so lost and detached for me in the past 3.5 weeks all came together in such a rush of red light.and I felt her. I looked at my arm with my tattoo. I could feel the pain in my arm and I knew that was going to be the last pain I felt of Jordan’s death. she was all around, and she had been trying to break through for so long, and she finally did. I’m not a religious or even really a spiritual person, but something happened that night that I can’t really fully explain, at least not properly. all I know is I’m so happy to have Jordan represented on my arm. I know I’ll think of her often. I think of all the memories and things we shared together. but more importantly, I will have that night where I realized her true importance in her life after death. and that, to me, is the real symbolism of my red circle. I love you, Jordan. thank you for everything.

stormy easter

instagram while you work?

good ol’ Dallas (Taken with instagram)

garbage tree (Taken with instagram)

Taken with instagram

photographic journal of sorts

all photos are my own unless otherwise noted

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