Where I Can See From Here Before
A Blockade Is Reached
Yes, I keep saying quartets when I mean
quatrains. I’m going through my photo
graphs, something I do in between bouts
of being actually busy, putting in proper
dates, tagging names to faces, deleting
duplicate files. I’ve been doing this for
years but now I’m up to March of 2015,
and while I never used to give away dates
this easily, I’m concerned that, since it
was soon thereafter that, let’s say, all
of my big troubles began, I’m now worried
that going through the remaining 11 years
might get a bit depressing. But so much time
has passed, it’ll probably be more, oh, I don’t
know, I don’t like to think I’m that nostalgic,
have gotten some criticism from people that
know me that maybe I should find a new hobby
since, well, the past. And I had one. And it was
pretty good up until, well, around the middle of
2015. Hell broke loose slowly after that, and in
evitably I wind up here, typing you this short
means of an escape from what that same past
has now, inevitably gotten me into. So what,
I might just learn something about myself,
I think, in rebuke of the criticism, a suggestion
clearly made by the few who know me and do
actually care about my well-being. Lately, I’ve
been thinking a lot about the fact that almost
no one I’m in contact with these days, especially
locally, knows me from before that year. Who I
was pre-2015. And that year was pretty fun, on
the whole. To pinpoint a moment where things
fell apart, still, would be toward the end of that
year, or it could go back to the previous one.
When did the good times end? What do I call
good times since? What are the reasons that
those seem to be so significantly rarer these
past few years? Anyone might say that it does
not have to be this way. But my focus has been
so significantly on bringing myself back to a
contentment, a happiness replete with pleasure,
that existed before then. But did it? As those
years and the one I exist in grow further apart,
am I losing objectivity about such things? As
an artist, I’ve adversely always been more left-
brained than I have been right-brained. And I
can see the formula that I followed for years
that seemed to work so wonderfully. But is that
just a fantasy or a mirage that my supposedly
analytical brain is giving me. False memories
or a false sense of whatever I was feeling and
whatever stress I went through back then as
opposed to that which I go through these days?
I stare at these pictures from 2015, an overly
abundant amount of pictures of me, often just
my face, selfies, and wonder, but cannot look
inside each photograph’s face to be able to
more scientifically analyze the differences
that exist due to the passing of this growing
percentage of my life’s duration. Perhaps its
time to shake up all of my routines and hobbies,
like this photograph cataloging, which I believe
eases my mind so. If it were so easy as up being
down and vice versa. I want to live that formula
again, with the edits that come from having lived
through and within it over and over. But with what
means? How can I shorten those old long-term
goals to fit within my lifetime? Is the key to feeling
like I hve it all just a mind-trick? Do I need a new
pair of glasses? What can I dredge up in order to
make any kind of substantial breakfast. How do I
get over this one last hump? I keep asking myself.
Whether or not it is the right question to ask.
