There are few things I need right now.

My camera.
Some clothes so that I’m not naked.
And enough food so I can keep breathing, moving, absorbing, inventing, investing in, investigating, searching, wondering, wandering, smelling, seeing, knowing, thinking, wishing, hoping, loving, and living.

Life is not something that I take lightly. I refuse to let is fester and become stagnant.

I will not go gently into that good night.

I want to see it all, yet be content seeing nothing. I want to sleep in featherbeds but be content with cold pavement. To sip the finest wines but love the drinks of paupers. To read, read, read. But be happy with the quiet simplicity of sitting and listening. I want to travel and learn, but love my hometown. To know– and stare in the face– the darkest moments of humanity, but still, with all of my heart, hope.

“I am a frayed and nibbled survivor in a fallen world, and I am getting along. I am aging and eaten and have done my share of eating too. I am not washed and beautiful, in control of a shining world in which everything fits, but instead am wandering awed about on a splintered wreck I’ve come to care for, whose gnawed trees breathe a delicate air, whose bloodied and scarred creatures are my dearest companions, and whose beauty bats and shines not in its imperfections but overwhelmingly in spite of them…”*

With my work at my hip– my camera, slung over my right shoulder everywhere I go– I want to see the world, love it, absorb it, but desire it to be lifted up, beyond where it is, towards salvation.