I’ve been in Palma for a few days now. Being here makes me feel slightly odd: suddenly all of my time is free and I feel a need to fill it with a creative process. And this reminds me of the void I’ve been feeling these past years (I can’t count them) during which I’ve done very little creative work. Since I returned from Palma to Paris last, I’ve been almost entirely focused on recovery from alcoholism--which is in itself a creative process. I haven’t had many activities other than going to meetings, doing my step work and working with my sponsees. My feeling is that it would be best for me to spend at least the next year focused on recovery. I’m impatient to get back to my my photography and writing but I can’t put them in front of my sobriety, because as they say, if you put anything in front of your sobriety you’ll lose everything.
At first when I heard people talking about putting your sobriety first, I didn't get what they meant. Then I let my work become more important than getting to meetings and doing my step work, and pretty soon I wasn't going to meetings at all--which is a dangerous place to be. And then I had a boyfriend who was insistent that I put him first, as soon as I gave in an started skipping meetings, I relapsed. Relapsing is scary because it can be fatal. For a long time I heard that, and thought it didn't apply to me. Looking closely at the nature of this disease, and at my own drinking history, I can see death as a real possibility if I continue drinking. It can be difficult for me to juggle other activities with my sobriety, so I'm working on finding a balance. There was a period when I was blogging a lot, taking a photo class and other classes, and just generally trying to be more active while going to meetings, but I ended up going to fewer meetings. What I need to do is continue to put my sobriety first, while pruning back my other activities and keeping them focused on my creativity.
When I arrive here, that sense of being busy that I have in Paris lifts. There are hours to fill each day even though I continue going to meetings and doing my step work. It definitely feels like vacation. Probably mostly because there isn’t a sense of purpose and direction that’s given by all of the things to get done in order to get my life pulled together, and which tend to stress me. Peter doesn’t get that I’m on vacation here. I wish he did, because then he'd understand that much better how much I appreciate these trips. To him my free time here is an extension of my free time in Paris--it’s all of the time because I don’t work. He works hard and he works long hours. His company owes him a month off for all of the overtime he’s put in this year. I guess it doesn’t really matter how he perceives my time and my use of it, it’s just that coming here makes me think about it. It makes me feel like I should be putting better use to my time in Paris.
In the program, we we remind each other and ourselves when we get stuck that you can start your day, week, month, life, over any time. Each time I come here, I become deeply relaxed, feel balanced, and full of energy, and I make big plans for starting over. But there’s a big difference between making plans, and starting over. Plans are for the future, they aren’t about being here in the moment. Last winter when I was here, I spent an entire night awake in bed, tormented by a sense of failure, counting all of the years I had not been doing my photography, thinking of all the opportunities that had been missed, feeling that alcoholism and bipolar disorder had robbed me of my life. Self-pity is something that alcoholics can ill afford: “Poor me, poor me, pour me a drink.” So I went to the other extreme and spent a second night wide awake in exilieration, with a new sense of hope, planning out and visualising a number of series of photos. I panned out how many images I could make per year, how many series I could complete. I was going to make up for lost time! The plan was too monumentalm and in the year since then, I haven’t made any progress on my shooting at all. First I need to make my objectives realistic, and then use another program tool, which is to break up a seemingly insurmountable task into a number of smaller surmountable tasks. Even that can be easier said than done.
I’ve been trying to overcome the seemingly insurmountable task of starting my photography over again, by telling myself to simply pick up my camera and take a photo of any old thing without worrying about whether or not it’s good or bad. And that’s really easy to do with digital photography, but that doesn’t seem to be quite the right way for me to go about things though, because I freeze up. Just the same way I freeze up when I’m depressed and someone suggests taking a walk. When you’re deeply depressed that seems impossible. Just getting out of bed is terribly difficult. When you’re lightly depressed, however, with some effort, it’s possible, and it lifts your spirits. But even when only lightly depressed I get stuck because I need a goal, a place to walk to. For me, taking random photos is like taking a walk without a goal. (Not that I haven’t spent years taking long walks around the city, but for now I’m having a hard time visualising a starting point.) When I walk around Palma, I look around perplexed, unable to find any sources of inspiration. I am going to start my “day” over by finding some inspiration, a creative goal for this trip. It’s night time now. I’ll do night photography, from within that, I can find a theme. I don't need any particular destination, I can just step out into the street and start walking.
I was in stasis for a long time while drinking. Since I became sober there has been slow but steady movement and growth. When I feel fully alive, in movement, is when I’m involved in the creative process. That is what gives purpose to my life. Involved in the creative process, I am here now. Spending hours in the darkroom, enjoying watching a print appear and perfecting it, or shooting, completely absorbed by each shot, until I’ve got the one I know is it, and yet continuing to shoot. I become mesmerized, and I'm living in the moment. While being in the creative process keeps me in the moment, it also gives me a sense of direction, of purpose, and of meaning. Each moment gives birth to another.
A central part of my marriage with Loïc was the aesthetic language we shared. We communicated playfully, intimately, and deeply, by sharing the aesthetics of objects, works of art, music, nature, and etc. The summer after I left him, we went on vacation together. There wasn’t any question of getting back together, we simply didn’t know how to go on vacation apart. One day at the beach we spent hours enjoying looking at the complex patterns of the waves advancing and eddying on the sand shimmering in the sunlight, and the patterns they created with the different colors of sand. It was a shared meditation, similar to the meditations I do while shooting. Our vacations were filled with moments like the day on the beach. With our idiosyncratic aesthetic language, we could express a wide range of emotions and feelings.
Loïc was my audience. For quite awhile before I got my galleries, he was the only person with whom I shared my work. Whenever I’d spent a day of developing and making contact sheets, he would come home from work, glance through them and point out the best shot with lightning speed. If he hesitated between two shots, it was between the same two I’d hesitated. In that case, we could we would dialog and compare the two with each other and consider how they fit into the body of my work as a whole. When I left the marriage, I knew that I would miss our aesthetic dialog terribly and perhaps forever. That prospect alone made it incredibly hard to leave.
It’s interesting that my hopes of seeing Takeshi again made my hope of doing my photography again soar, since Takeshi is the only person besides Loïc with whom I’ve shared an intimate aesthetic dialog. The hope of seeing him again must’ve triggered the hope of having such a dialog again, when I’d thought that it was almost certainly lost for good. Now that I’ve lost the hope of seeing Takeshi (not that I’m sure I won’t, but I’m certainly not counting on it, and I can’t imagine his being a regular part of my life) I’m back to feeling that that sort of partnership is certainly lost for good. After twelve years without a partnership, I find it terribly hard to believe that I will ever find one. (In fact, I'm convinced that I'll spend the rest of my life alone.) Before I met Loïc I didn’t need to have an aesthetic partner in order to do my photography, it was a solitary endeavor. Now I wonder how I will carry on without a partner. It seems like doing my creative work and having a partner shouldn’t be connected, and yet they are, in my mind. What I need to do is to seek out a broader audience. Not that I didn’t before, but it wasn’t a necessity. I need an interlocutor. Even if my creative endeavor is to be solitary, without an interlocutor it will be sterile. Human endeavors are meant to be shared.
This journal began as I flailed about looking for a man, like a person who doesn’t know how to swim, over their head in water. This journal was about reconstructing myself, my life, but the focus was finding a man. At the time I couldn’t articulate or define what it was that I was looking for. I vacillated between just wanting casual sexual encounters, light relationships, and a serious long-term relationship, without even defining what exactly I was looking for in a relationship. That didn’t get me any further than trying to take walks without destinations or photos without objectives. Now it occurs to me that I was utterly lost. I had set off in the wilderness with a map but no compass. Instead of being about my creative process, about reconstructing myselfm my voyage became about finding a man. I had become confused about my destination. For about a year I did work on a creative photo series, and then when my creative work floundered, I clung onto commercial work. Then all of the equipment that I’d worked for years in order to be able to purchase was stolen, which was at about the same time as when my divorce went through. I couldn't work, couldn't take photos, and I plummeted into a deep depression. That depression has since lifted, but I haven’t yet started taking photos again. I will start tonight. I do intend to go back to posting some of the older sections of this journal on meeting men, and meeting men may well come up in new posts, but my focus will be on recovery and creativity.
For years I defined myself by my work by my work. I couldn’t conceive of living without shooting. These last years have proved that I can: I continued to eat, breath, sleep and wake up, and do things, but then I didn’t really feel fully alive. I have been lost. Laurence Gonzales writes about being lost and the sense of self in his book Deep Survival. His working definition of being lost is: “the inability to make the mental map match the environment.” He writes: “Admitting you are lost is difficult because having no mental map, being no place, is like having no self: It’s impossible to conceive because one of the main jobs of the organism is to adjust itself to place. That’s why small children, when asked if they are lost, will say, ‘No, my mommy is lost.’ The sense is: I’m not lost; I’m right here. But without a mental map, the organism can’t go about its business and rapidly deteriorates.” In the topography of myself, I was a photographer, I had camera equipment, I took photos, made prints, and worked as a photographer. When I no longer did or had those things, I became unclear of where I was and hence unclear of where I was going. Even before then, come to think of it, my sense of self had been shaken down to its roots by the physical and especially psychological abuse in my marriage.
Since then, through the process of recovery from alcoholism, I’ve begun gradually to gain a sense of my core self, based on who I am rather than what I do, on being rather than action. This is all new to me. Gaining a sense of myself wil continue as I continue to work through the steps. A Buddhist friend recently told me: “Being Sonia is a form of meditation.” That really struck me. Practicing the art of being myself as a form of meditation. Funnily enough, when I think back through my life to high points where I felt particularly myself, I always felt at one with my environment, with nature, and more often than not I was feeling deeply meditative while taking photos. So even there, in my sense of being myself, there is action. In any case I continuing the practice of being Sonia is a lifetime job, and being Sonia is enough.
At first when I heard people talking about putting your sobriety first, I didn't get what they meant. Then I let my work become more important than getting to meetings and doing my step work, and pretty soon I wasn't going to meetings at all--which is a dangerous place to be. And then I had a boyfriend who was insistent that I put him first, as soon as I gave in an started skipping meetings, I relapsed. Relapsing is scary because it can be fatal. For a long time I heard that, and thought it didn't apply to me. Looking closely at the nature of this disease, and at my own drinking history, I can see death as a real possibility if I continue drinking. It can be difficult for me to juggle other activities with my sobriety, so I'm working on finding a balance. There was a period when I was blogging a lot, taking a photo class and other classes, and just generally trying to be more active while going to meetings, but I ended up going to fewer meetings. What I need to do is continue to put my sobriety first, while pruning back my other activities and keeping them focused on my creativity.
When I arrive here, that sense of being busy that I have in Paris lifts. There are hours to fill each day even though I continue going to meetings and doing my step work. It definitely feels like vacation. Probably mostly because there isn’t a sense of purpose and direction that’s given by all of the things to get done in order to get my life pulled together, and which tend to stress me. Peter doesn’t get that I’m on vacation here. I wish he did, because then he'd understand that much better how much I appreciate these trips. To him my free time here is an extension of my free time in Paris--it’s all of the time because I don’t work. He works hard and he works long hours. His company owes him a month off for all of the overtime he’s put in this year. I guess it doesn’t really matter how he perceives my time and my use of it, it’s just that coming here makes me think about it. It makes me feel like I should be putting better use to my time in Paris.
In the program, we we remind each other and ourselves when we get stuck that you can start your day, week, month, life, over any time. Each time I come here, I become deeply relaxed, feel balanced, and full of energy, and I make big plans for starting over. But there’s a big difference between making plans, and starting over. Plans are for the future, they aren’t about being here in the moment. Last winter when I was here, I spent an entire night awake in bed, tormented by a sense of failure, counting all of the years I had not been doing my photography, thinking of all the opportunities that had been missed, feeling that alcoholism and bipolar disorder had robbed me of my life. Self-pity is something that alcoholics can ill afford: “Poor me, poor me, pour me a drink.” So I went to the other extreme and spent a second night wide awake in exilieration, with a new sense of hope, planning out and visualising a number of series of photos. I panned out how many images I could make per year, how many series I could complete. I was going to make up for lost time! The plan was too monumentalm and in the year since then, I haven’t made any progress on my shooting at all. First I need to make my objectives realistic, and then use another program tool, which is to break up a seemingly insurmountable task into a number of smaller surmountable tasks. Even that can be easier said than done.
I’ve been trying to overcome the seemingly insurmountable task of starting my photography over again, by telling myself to simply pick up my camera and take a photo of any old thing without worrying about whether or not it’s good or bad. And that’s really easy to do with digital photography, but that doesn’t seem to be quite the right way for me to go about things though, because I freeze up. Just the same way I freeze up when I’m depressed and someone suggests taking a walk. When you’re deeply depressed that seems impossible. Just getting out of bed is terribly difficult. When you’re lightly depressed, however, with some effort, it’s possible, and it lifts your spirits. But even when only lightly depressed I get stuck because I need a goal, a place to walk to. For me, taking random photos is like taking a walk without a goal. (Not that I haven’t spent years taking long walks around the city, but for now I’m having a hard time visualising a starting point.) When I walk around Palma, I look around perplexed, unable to find any sources of inspiration. I am going to start my “day” over by finding some inspiration, a creative goal for this trip. It’s night time now. I’ll do night photography, from within that, I can find a theme. I don't need any particular destination, I can just step out into the street and start walking.
I was in stasis for a long time while drinking. Since I became sober there has been slow but steady movement and growth. When I feel fully alive, in movement, is when I’m involved in the creative process. That is what gives purpose to my life. Involved in the creative process, I am here now. Spending hours in the darkroom, enjoying watching a print appear and perfecting it, or shooting, completely absorbed by each shot, until I’ve got the one I know is it, and yet continuing to shoot. I become mesmerized, and I'm living in the moment. While being in the creative process keeps me in the moment, it also gives me a sense of direction, of purpose, and of meaning. Each moment gives birth to another.
A central part of my marriage with Loïc was the aesthetic language we shared. We communicated playfully, intimately, and deeply, by sharing the aesthetics of objects, works of art, music, nature, and etc. The summer after I left him, we went on vacation together. There wasn’t any question of getting back together, we simply didn’t know how to go on vacation apart. One day at the beach we spent hours enjoying looking at the complex patterns of the waves advancing and eddying on the sand shimmering in the sunlight, and the patterns they created with the different colors of sand. It was a shared meditation, similar to the meditations I do while shooting. Our vacations were filled with moments like the day on the beach. With our idiosyncratic aesthetic language, we could express a wide range of emotions and feelings.
Loïc was my audience. For quite awhile before I got my galleries, he was the only person with whom I shared my work. Whenever I’d spent a day of developing and making contact sheets, he would come home from work, glance through them and point out the best shot with lightning speed. If he hesitated between two shots, it was between the same two I’d hesitated. In that case, we could we would dialog and compare the two with each other and consider how they fit into the body of my work as a whole. When I left the marriage, I knew that I would miss our aesthetic dialog terribly and perhaps forever. That prospect alone made it incredibly hard to leave.
It’s interesting that my hopes of seeing Takeshi again made my hope of doing my photography again soar, since Takeshi is the only person besides Loïc with whom I’ve shared an intimate aesthetic dialog. The hope of seeing him again must’ve triggered the hope of having such a dialog again, when I’d thought that it was almost certainly lost for good. Now that I’ve lost the hope of seeing Takeshi (not that I’m sure I won’t, but I’m certainly not counting on it, and I can’t imagine his being a regular part of my life) I’m back to feeling that that sort of partnership is certainly lost for good. After twelve years without a partnership, I find it terribly hard to believe that I will ever find one. (In fact, I'm convinced that I'll spend the rest of my life alone.) Before I met Loïc I didn’t need to have an aesthetic partner in order to do my photography, it was a solitary endeavor. Now I wonder how I will carry on without a partner. It seems like doing my creative work and having a partner shouldn’t be connected, and yet they are, in my mind. What I need to do is to seek out a broader audience. Not that I didn’t before, but it wasn’t a necessity. I need an interlocutor. Even if my creative endeavor is to be solitary, without an interlocutor it will be sterile. Human endeavors are meant to be shared.
This journal began as I flailed about looking for a man, like a person who doesn’t know how to swim, over their head in water. This journal was about reconstructing myself, my life, but the focus was finding a man. At the time I couldn’t articulate or define what it was that I was looking for. I vacillated between just wanting casual sexual encounters, light relationships, and a serious long-term relationship, without even defining what exactly I was looking for in a relationship. That didn’t get me any further than trying to take walks without destinations or photos without objectives. Now it occurs to me that I was utterly lost. I had set off in the wilderness with a map but no compass. Instead of being about my creative process, about reconstructing myselfm my voyage became about finding a man. I had become confused about my destination. For about a year I did work on a creative photo series, and then when my creative work floundered, I clung onto commercial work. Then all of the equipment that I’d worked for years in order to be able to purchase was stolen, which was at about the same time as when my divorce went through. I couldn't work, couldn't take photos, and I plummeted into a deep depression. That depression has since lifted, but I haven’t yet started taking photos again. I will start tonight. I do intend to go back to posting some of the older sections of this journal on meeting men, and meeting men may well come up in new posts, but my focus will be on recovery and creativity.
For years I defined myself by my work by my work. I couldn’t conceive of living without shooting. These last years have proved that I can: I continued to eat, breath, sleep and wake up, and do things, but then I didn’t really feel fully alive. I have been lost. Laurence Gonzales writes about being lost and the sense of self in his book Deep Survival. His working definition of being lost is: “the inability to make the mental map match the environment.” He writes: “Admitting you are lost is difficult because having no mental map, being no place, is like having no self: It’s impossible to conceive because one of the main jobs of the organism is to adjust itself to place. That’s why small children, when asked if they are lost, will say, ‘No, my mommy is lost.’ The sense is: I’m not lost; I’m right here. But without a mental map, the organism can’t go about its business and rapidly deteriorates.” In the topography of myself, I was a photographer, I had camera equipment, I took photos, made prints, and worked as a photographer. When I no longer did or had those things, I became unclear of where I was and hence unclear of where I was going. Even before then, come to think of it, my sense of self had been shaken down to its roots by the physical and especially psychological abuse in my marriage.
Since then, through the process of recovery from alcoholism, I’ve begun gradually to gain a sense of my core self, based on who I am rather than what I do, on being rather than action. This is all new to me. Gaining a sense of myself wil continue as I continue to work through the steps. A Buddhist friend recently told me: “Being Sonia is a form of meditation.” That really struck me. Practicing the art of being myself as a form of meditation. Funnily enough, when I think back through my life to high points where I felt particularly myself, I always felt at one with my environment, with nature, and more often than not I was feeling deeply meditative while taking photos. So even there, in my sense of being myself, there is action. In any case I continuing the practice of being Sonia is a lifetime job, and being Sonia is enough.
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