The End and the Beginning

poem # 2 (my apologies for those of you that despise poetry)

The End and the Beginning

After every war
someone has to tidy up
Things won't pick
themselves up, after all.

Someone has to shove
the rubble to the roadsides
so the carts loaded with corpses
can get by.


Someone has to trudge
through sludge and ashes,
through the sofa springs,
the shards of glass,
the bloody rags.

Someone has to lug the post
to prop the wall,
someone has to glaze the window,
set the door in its frame.

No sound bites, no photo opportunites,
and it takes years.
All the cameras have gone
to other wars.

The bridges need to be rebuilt,
the railroad stations, too.
Shirtsleeves will be rolled
to shreds.

Someone, broom in hand,
still remembers how it was.
Someone else listens, nodding
his unshattered head.

But others are bound to be bustling nearby
who'll find all that
a little boring.

From time to time someone still must
dig up a rusted argument
from underneath a bush
and haul it off to the dump.

Those who knew
what this was all about
must make way for those
who know little.
And less than that.
And at last nothing less than nothing.

Someone has to lie there
in the grass that covers up
the causes and effects
with a cornstalk in his teeth,
gawking at clouds.



to me she captures the essence of the ways we as humans live, remember, forget, destroy, and rebuild our lives continuously whether or not we realize our own roles. She has a talent for recalling of the forgotten and for drawing attention to the violent patterns that seem to dominate our history books.

Utopia

I am taking a course in the history of politics and have been reading Plato as well as Aristotle for the last week or so. I was reading through a book of one of my favorite poets, Wislawa Symborska tonight. She had two poems that have really resonated more than ever with me due to the fact that my head has been swimming so far out in what it means to find truth and justice in a world full of inherently flawed individuals such as myself.



"Utopia"

Island where it all becomes clear.

Solid ground beneath your feet.

The only roads are those that offer access.

Bushes bend beneath the weight of proofs.

The Tree of Valid Supposition grows here
with branches disentagled since time immemorial.

The Tree of Understanding, dazzlingly straight and simple,
sprouts by the spring called Now I Get It.

The thicker the woods, the vaster the vista;
the Valley of Obviously.

If any doubts arise, the wind dispels them instantly.

Echoes stir unsummoned
and eagerly explain all the secrets of the worlds.

On the right a cave where Meaning lies.

On the left the Lake of Deep Conviction.
Truth breaks from the bottom and bobs to the surface.

Unshakable Confidence towers over the valley.
Its peak offers and excellent view of the Essence of Things.

For all its charms, the island is uninhabited,
and the faint footprints scattered on its beaches
turn without exception to the sea.

As if all you can do here is leave
and plunge, never to return, into the depths.

Into unfathomable life.

Us

It has been a more challenging experience than I originally anticipated when I decided that photography was going to be my major. I somewhat innocently believed that being in classes that expected me to produce work would somehow lead exactly to that. The last couple of years have proved otherwise. I often had ideas or concepts in my mind that I found extremely difficult to translate into my work and even into words while attempting to present them in my classes. My last semester was spent studying in Italy and while it sounds cleche and really is, I feel like my time there led me to finding a way of joining photography with all of the other things in my life that inspire me. I have always had a strong interest in human interaction and the way that people experience their lives. This dynamic arises through relationships, perhaps isolation, and even mistreatment or misunderstanding from others.


Previous to my time abroad I felt a strong pull towards cultures and societies (customs, religions, stereotypes, gender issues etc.) . It fascinates me to connect the similarities and differences between towns, cities, and countries that are defined simply by lines that were created by the natural geography of the land or more likely by leaders with the power to draw them. Most recently, the focus of human rights and the feeling that my work should be a tool instead of something that feels too self-indulgent has really taken hold. I am not trying to convince myself that my photos can heal the world or any of that b.s. but I am passionate about giving some kind of voice to people who may otherwise be without one. Photography is biased in its truest nature. I am the one making the decision of how to present the people that I encounter but my goal is to try to show both the joy and sadness that everyone experiences in hopes that connections can be made between people that could support, learn from, or at least identify with one another. One of my first inspirations of this came from the "Human Rights Watch" which is published every year and documents crimes against humanity throughout the world. There are endless photo essays on many news websites (www.bbc.com, amnesty.org, and www.fiftycrows.org which is an offspring of Mother Jones) that could fall into the realm of what I want to do.