everything

Updated: Jul 20, 2023

everything

I am in California. practically no one here, only some surfers floating on the water. Night becomes more night when one sees two surfers floating in dark water. Night gathers on the line where ocean meets the sky, and in the fact that they're so still, they don't move How can they be so motionless on the ocean? No one can answer my question, because there's no one here. Only the dark is here, breathing quietly with the sea. Ive been moving for months, watching the ocean from both sides of the continent, taking photos, spending time surrounded by love and curiosity. Unmoored, but alive. Living.

I came here to start a novel. Maybe something about language. But I can't, it conflicts with the time. I miss someone I love, and right now, as a person, my sadness conflicts with the spirit of writing a novel. Maybe I should admit that no one can write a novel about language, or that I as a person conflicts with the world that makes taking time off, away from oneself, impossible. Writing only needs honesty, no matter what it is about. These days I write about love, about the words and experiences we use to build love into reality, build ourselves.

It makes me happy to think most art ever created is never seen. It makes me happy to think so much art is made just because people want to make it. I write things and I'm very happy mostly no one is going to read them, that it will vanish eventually, probably disappear. I keep all my journals in a red suitcase that belonged to my grandmother, tied together in fists of pages. And I wonder these days whats the difference between keeping the suitcase under my bed or throwing it into the ocean.

Why should the invisibility of most art, including my own, make me happy? Especially here, watching the ocean, feeling the sadness that comes in like the tide every time I leave Portland. I have no idea. I can't know either. How can anyone know why they are who they are. I could have been obsessed with something else. I could have been obsessed with stones, or dinosaur bones, a horticultural obsession of roses, I could have been a hairdresser or a baker or a doctor or a clown, I could have felt this same humble pleasure from anything other than writing things and taking photos. But I don't.

I stand and look at the ocean, the waves are like a waterfall, enormous volumes of water cascade ceaselessly over an edge just before me. Out here it is possible the idea of language might subside for a moment, and I can just stand here, watching, not thinking. The amount of moving water is truly massive. If one were to focus only on the edge where it falls, where the water rushes and cascades, it might seem like it's one thing, but it is purifyingly incomprehensible that the drops of water are a system that comes from everywhere, that like the language of joy and sorrow, water falls in movement, where all this water comes from is inconceivable. Writing is like that.

my life has changed and my heart with it. And as a result the way I share my work is changing. I'm not going to be selling anything myself, my store here has been gone for a while. The films and books I make will be available through my creation partners and publishers and I'll still post about my work with them, but I won't be hosting my own store or memberships. My print shop will remain open, and my policy to sell any photo as a print remains unchanged ( ask and you shall receive ). I'm going to be releasing all new work I want to share on my blog, free, either as galleries or posts. The Blog will also begin to host the occasional free short story, some old favourites as well as new more experimental work.

Instead of sales, I have started a little tip jar. Tips of any amount will always be really appreciated to help me cover hosting fees, equipment and props.

I don't want to make products any more. I want to spend my time looking at the ocean and sunrises, walking in the rain, turning the whispers I find in my life into more stories and photos, a verse of poem. these last few seasons were like an argument ended in laughter. I want to write a good book, a good story, I want to offer things to you the way I would offer a ripe fruit that begs to be eaten, something given, something form the earth, like a season, night, something soft with fur. I offer you black-and-white photographs, whispers in the dark, a note on a post it.

Everything.

Love

Lauren