Use it

While I have been wallowing in lack of motivation as of late; yes I admit it, I have been driving a lot. Driving allows me time to process those bizarre thoughts that eventually turn into a circus of scrambled small ideas that combine and become sort of whole due to this run on of ideas. I love when you drive and you realize that you have finally reached your destination, but you don't really remember any of the actions you took to get there. I, anyway sometimes daydream my way toward my destination. When the music is off and all there is to distract me is the road and the whipping of wind through the cracked windows, then is when I can truly dream. These ideas start as seedlings, something similar to the tickling of my foot that pushes my body to react with both a burst of great joy and panic that causes my body to withdraw from the action almost immediately. The withdrawing from the action represents my hesitation to pursue my ideas for photos and in the same token I am enveloped in the joy of thinking about where that one idea could take me.

During this warped time I usually dream about the equipment I could use if I had access to it and I ramble through the if this and if that's. But all that there is, is me and my will to do what I want. I have no right to limit my potential because I only have access to certain equipment. While I was bitter about this before I am learning to embrace it. I have very little financial freedom right now to spend on art. I have my smaller digital camera and access to the internet via Mary when I can use it (thanks mares). But why should this limit me? I would much rather learn to appreciate what I do have right now rather than dream up of what I could be using for equipment, etc. I have no stash of cameras on shelves or in cases. I work in a shoe store fitting way overpriced shoes to smelly feet. But I have what I have and I am where I am. If there is anything I can suggest for this post it is learn to use what you do have and appreciate it because not everyone has access to the same equipment that you may have, or access to the same people, jobs, etc. After a brief talk with Shane, I realize that there is only misuse of equipment. Every camera can take a photo, how do you take yours? YOur camera is your eye. Our eyes can see whatever they want to, so can our equipment. My digital camera allows me very little leeway as to if a shot will work or not but it also allows me to enter into more intimate realms than with a 35mm even. I still have my drive to take photos. Not even a smelly troll can take that away.

This summer has been humbling in terms of my art go. But an interesting quote from Bicycle Diaries often fills my mind:

"Maybe in a sense we are unique: the huge numbers of available combinations of traits, propensities, body types and experiences that make up each of us is unimaginably large. Our variety is immense, but still it must be restricted within certain boundaries or we wouldn't be able to recognize ourselves as types at all. What we are is somehow simultaneously "infinite," but always similarly shaped. Almost infinite variety within severely restricted limitations...Is anyone native to anywhere? I think, in most cases, not. And maybe, somehow, that might be where the answer lies."