Ghosts and nostalgia / black-and-white Yallingup

The black-and-white 35mm version of this day. Western Australia, November 2012.

Ghosts and nostalgia / dancing and panic

After a hot shower, which is the best thing one one has a head cold, as my hair was drying, I lay on my bed in my underwear and listened to "Two" by The Antlers several times through, wanting to catch that part where he sings, Two ways to tell the story, because I needed to hear that part today.

I have always loved watching the play of afternoon light across my ceiling, no matter where my bedroom was. And there is something very soothing about the exercise of beginning a sentence with that phrase, "I have always loved..." or "I have always liked..." Something to say, I am here, I am all of me here, all twenty-three-and-a-half years, I have not been made new and thrown away every year — if I have been inconstant and filled with fear over the years about the ways in which I seem to leave myself behind, tear myself away, the days when I feel like someone has sent my body off walking without me and sent it back with unfamiliar clothes, a haircut I do not recognize — well, even then it has not been quite as terrible as I thought, not so terrible as to keep me from being able to remember and describe myself, my constancy, in some ways.

When I am confused in those ways about what I have done, the ways I fear I have flown off away from myself or whether I have, I practice telling the story in different ways, in stages, a different version for each friend, a different version to mull over each day. Was this what happened? and each time, hesitantly, some statement of truth about myself to try on.

1.
I was full of love and hate. Hate, and I loved it. I did exactly what I wanted. I wanted everything.

2.
Just some fun. Just a laugh.

3.
I feel myself floating away under the memory of strange hands. Empty flesh. Bold and stupid. Throwaway girl.

/

November 24, 2012, 4:49p

Ghosts and nostalgia / Avalon Beach

Western Australia, September 2012.

Ghosts and nostalgia / Circus

November 2012, Western Australia.

Ghosts and nostalgia / Sydney

September 2012.
1. St. Andrew's Cathedral
2. Cockatoo Island (site of the Sydney Biennale, which I also wrote about/shared photos from here)
3. One of the warehouses used to house Biennale installations
4. A detail on a Biennale installation
5. Part of a Biennale installation
6. My friend Belle in Newtown.
7. The Sydney Opera House
8. At Circular Quay, a tree I also photographed on my first trip to Australia three years previous — see the third photo in this post

An anniversary

Sunrise from inside Nadi International Airport (Fiji). September 2012.

Just a little over a year ago I left California for three months in Australia. Though my time out of the country was mostly quiet, spent in a little beach suburb where I had few social connections or formal obligations, I think my life would be quite different right now if I hadn't had that experience.

The anniversary of my leaving has me reflecting heavily upon that time and its impact on me. Over the next couple of weeks I'm going to share some previously unposted 35mm photos I took there, and perhaps some of my reflections as well.

Breathing was easy here

I told you about this backyard.Western Australia, November 2012.

Foreshore ghosts

Western Australia, November 2012.

Fox and keeper, Peel Zoo

Western Australia, November 2012.

A Sydney summer week / camera phone

December 2012.