words as photographs

From loaded dark to full bright to tinted half-light.

Um peito cheio de chumbo. De lixo. Tudo afogado num óleo preto. Tão exausto. Ele abriu as comportas e deixou fluir. Os seus olhos assinalavam incandescentes o início, um trilho de sal húmido à sua face era o catalisador. Rodou a chave e então a máquina tratou do resto. Um soluçar primordial bombeava toda a porcaria para fora de si. O som das suas engrenagens aflitas e emperradas que agora se faziam ouvir, contrastavam com a serena escuridão que o protegia. Alguém murmurava "toma conta de mim". O Homem de Ferro respondia "já vou, já vou". Esta cena só tem um personagem.

The Tower, I believe, is about 35 feet high. Standing inside it and looking up gave me a mix of claustrophobia and vertigo. Four looming walls all around me made me feel tiny. The amount of pegs and paths made me feel dizzy with options. There was a lead climbing demonstration. This means going up without a rope on the top holding you. Then every meter or so, you hook the rope to the wall for safety. You'll only fall as far as twice the distance from the last hook below, so around 2 meters? Maybe 2.5 factoring elasticity. One of the climbing instructors, fell (accidentally or for demonstration purposes) and put himself hanging upside down. Big smile on his face. All that time I was sweating from my palms, feet light with fear by proxy. Then the class began. I failed to make more than one quarter of that overhang wall. On one of the vertical walls, once, I failed to progress and had to quit half way. The second time I did it I went all the way to the top, but not with...

A couple is in a van roaring and squeaking across the desert. The sky is unusually grey, and the sun is a sad, faded button. A dim little thing that you can stare at without squinting. “Wake up baby, it’s time to die.” The driver Ray says. It’s proffered with abandon. An undertone of dementia sustains the sound, but it still comes across with a certainty and placidness that makes it bounce off the cheap metal walls and fill the van with foreboding. Ruth was pretending to be asleep for the last twenty minutes. She and Ray weren’t in the best of terms since the thing at Denver. She’d keep busy, or pretend to be busy, just so they wouldn’t have to talk. There was a silence between them now. A palpable sphere, that if opaque would cover the sight of the other entirely, but for the forehead. "Wake up baby, it’s time to die.” shakes her enough, touching awake a deep angst. It means they are close now. That whatever happened before would matter none in two hours or so. That whateve...

November is made of short days. Of dark, cold, worrisome days. I feel a convergence of difficulties rising around me like a spear-wall. I don't have documents to travel freely, so I feel stranded. I am very far away from someone I want to be with and get to know better, so I feel lonely. I am in a land where darkness comes sooner, so all of it feels blackened. My instinct is to fight. To push back at everything. My mind runs frantic, looking for openings in my problems so I can spring out of this hole. I want to run and scream and punch and be so overcome with something so magnificent, all my worries are crushed under my mighty boot. But the solution does not present itself. A fighter in quicksand must stop and relax. The more I move, the worse I get. Within the thunderstorm, if I can't overcome the dark, angry sky and the raging, foaming sea, I must close my eyes and sit still. I must be within the eye, and hold white-knuckle steady. I must be patient. I must keep breathing. A...

Foca-te naquilo que és bom, e não naquilo que gostarias que fosses. Porque na verdade nada realmente te foi negado, e onde estás hoje foi resultado das tuas vontades. E se elas não foram grandes o suficiente para te levar a ser quem gostarias de ser, é porque foram as de um homem comum. Sejamos, acima de tudo, objetivos.

If I can't solve the big things just yet, then I'll have to work the smaller things. Or bring a big hammer and smash the big things into little things.