As I wander aimlessly down the slippery slope leading to Walden Pond, I grasp my Nikon D40 with all my might, slowly and thoughtfully lift it to my right eye, squint the other, change the aperture and light meter, and click. Click after click after click after click.
“Kiley! Put your camera down and just enjoy the moment! This place is beautiful!” My mom yelled out from across the pond, voice hinting with edge, yet understanding. I shuffle over with a smirk smeared across my face, shoulders shrugged, and posture hesitant.
I began my journey with photography the beginning of sophomore year, and was hooked on it since like an avid abuser of heroin. The thing about art is that I’m able to think provocatively and differently about how I want to portray just how much beauty I see in everything. And when I say everything, I mean it in all aspects of the word. The power of creating with my own two hands gives me some semblance of control over my life, as if I can choose how to show people what I see in the world. I wanted to literally put them inside my body and let them take in just how much strange, tedious detail I observe.
The Pond is glistening, reflecting and absorbing every angle and ray of sun omitted. I can’t take my eyes off the swaying pine trees, small plot of beach, soaring birds and happy visitors. I am overcome in a sea of calmness, but there is one thing eating at me: I need to remember this. If I can’t think about how I feel in this moment later on, it won’t be meaningful.
Something I will admit, not willingly, about myself: As hard as I try, I can only pinpoint a handful of times that I have truly been able to live in the moment, without being obsessed with remembering it.
In the fall of junior year I used to take drives with my friend Dana, whipping and winding through the ravines around four thirty when the sun hits the gravel, trees and branches perfectly. We would accelerate up a passageway deamed “private” in her blue minivan, and just as we reached the bend, the house we knew and adored shined brightly in the warmth of the light. Its windows glistened, its porch exuded welcome and for just a second, just one, I feel peaceful. Safe. In control and in the moment.
I read books. Lots of books. Kurt Vonnegut, Khaled Hosseini, Ernest Hemmingway, etc. Currently I am reading God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater. I read because it takes me somewhere else. I don’t have to deal with all the responsibility and, for lack of a better word, shit, in my life. I can escape if not for a brief period and reflect inward to my mind, allowing myself to live within the words, delve in the provocative phrases, swim between the descriptive language. I am solely focused on what is happening right then and there.
Canon Manual Rebel SLR. The first camera I ever bought. Cradled it in my arms, kept the lens cover on at all times and could not bare one scratch on that prized possession. This was the first time I began to imagine everything as a photograph waiting to be taken.
When I saw American Beauty for the first time, for some reason, the entire world fell into place. Almost like some sort of physical puzzle assembled correctly. Sometimes the beauty in the world really and truly blows my mind.
Jim Morrison said, “Expose yourself to your deepest fear; after that, fear has no power, and the fear of freedom shrinks and vanishes. you are free."
Do I think I'm free of my fears?
Not a chance.
Why do we live the way we do? Why do people work constantly and have a lust for success and money? Society tells us we have to. Everyone is so obsessed with planning for the future. It’s always what’s going on next week or next month or next year, and never how you’re going to make this day, right now, awesome.
I’m in Lake Tahoe this past summer, taking a boat ride with my family. We go here every summer and have been for the past 16 years. I cannot give you a place that is more unbelievably, breathtakingly beautiful. My little heaven sits on the border of Nevada and California. A crystal clear, ice-cold lake, one of the deepest in the U.S., surrounded by jagged, snow-capped peaks that never end. I sit on the front of the speedboat Indian style listening to Wilco and feel the motor crash against each wave with force. I am home, and I don’t think about my applications to college or responsibilities.
Agoraphobia. The fear of open spaces. Really, the fear of insignificance. In our vast atmosphere, we live in a universe that extends to infinity. What is infinity? Where does infinity end? Why do I think about this kind of thing so much? Sometimes I feel really awkwardly different from other people. I sore thumb, sticking out, unlike anyone else. I’m always considering what has no answer; the things that will drive you crazy if you continuously think about them. Yet another reason why I don’t live in the moment. I start to, and then these sorts of things pop into my head.
I am sitting. I am anxious.
