Tags:   a boy at his volcano day 1093

© All Rights Reserved

© All Rights Reserved

we're forgiven
and we are forgotten

© All Rights Reserved

So, here it is.

Exactly one year in the life. Hard to believe, almost.
But only the first of many.

Not one day missed, never wanted to quit.

When I first started this project, I wasn't sure where it would go, but I made myself a promise to see it through. Somewhere along the way, I realized that I could never stop. For better or worse, it's become a central part of my life. Before I started doing this, I didn't take self-portraits much, I just didn't enjoy the process. But something this past year changed my mind. It made me understand myself better, helped my self-esteem in ways I would have thought impossible.

Frida Kahlo, when asked why she did so many self-portraits, replied:
"I paint myself because I am often alone and I am the subject I know best."

My life is a desperate, imperative thing. I need to be inspired, I need to keep going, I need to never stop. I feel incomplete if I don't photograph or write as much as I possibly can. I need to remind myself of everything every day. That's goes for my photos, my poems, my relationship with God. If I let any of it slip, I could totally lose it all.

I feel like a great white shark in that way. It needs to keep moving to breathe, to survive. If it stops, it dies. Maybe that goes for us too.

...

Great White Shark

I am like the great white shark who prowls the sea
It's feed or die, swim or sink

I felt like a book club nominated novel
Bought by many, read by none, put up on the shelf
I felt like a lifeguard was sent to save me
Only to put a finger under my chin
Enough to keep my head above water
But not enough to pull me to safety

I am like the great white shark who prowls the sea
It's feed or die, swim or sink

My eyes were bloodshot fanatical
My spirit, weak and lying low
I felt for it in the shadows
Getting my body drunk on tar and gasoline
I ran full speed ahead like a roaring, rushing, screaming freight train
Like a mountain lion barrelling, bleeding down the fast lane
I was shot up, shocked full of the atmosphere
Lost in the glory of God's manifestations
My life came in beyond expectations

I am like the great white shark who prowls the sea
It's feed or die, swim or sink
Feed or die, swim or sink

...
© steve skafte

© All Rights Reserved

Milk and honey were their lies, in years of well-worn weather, beaten-down years and dreams of rebuilding that never came true. We made it through with cracks in our skin, leaks in our roof, washed clean and bleached by the sun. It's hard to be a south-facing soul, you take the brunt of every storm, and the breezes bend you backward. All your stories end up forgotten, unwritten on pages blown away and moth-eaten. But it's a lovely, lonely way to go, and I'm glad to be here for the crumbling, stumbling through time. We're all travelers back to the beginning, to our foundations, or our skeletons, thinning.

Gone, baby, gone, are the houses in my head. On hilltops, down hollows, through the crevices called the mountains of home, all alone. But they've been together, once upon a time. They've stood in straight lines for a century or so before growing crooked with the shifting earth below. She's dearly departed, from Brooklyn to Heaven, no longer overlooking Middleton town. She's a bare spot on the ground, naked as the grass, the last remnant swept clean and blown dry with the winds from Spa Springs to Mount Hanley. But she comes in handy for a dreamer like me, something to keep my inspiration wide awake. It's a muse I can use when the day is uninspired, a constant run-down reinvention.

The past never gets old.

© All Rights Reserved