Framing moments

Wow, so it's been pretty much a year since my last real post. Well here it goes again.


Someone was taking a photo of me the other day and it made me wonder how strange a photo is. I mean, isn't it a weird concept that people, things, places, feelings, memories and moments can be squashed into one frame?

The frame is of course physically flat - on a piece of photo paper, your phone, a computer screen - but at the same time, with so many layers. The flat version is available to everyone, but the layered, who is able to read it?

Not even the photographer and the photographed will see the same photo. The layers of thought, instance and relativity to one another changes the entire scope of what that photo is and what it means.

Photos cannot simply be images, but much more complex than that. The flat version will transform with consideration, even something you simply spot in a magazine or on a social network. It's hard to just skim past without your mind jumping to piece things together - the image, your relationship to it, how the colours or lines make something or the other more prominent.

Today, with all the available technology and media, billions of photos are being taken every day* and often shared, that all these stories are being thrown into the air (or rather, into the big scary world of the internet), and lines are crossing, jumbling, scrambling. Does the multitude of photos cause them lose meaning, or does it depend on the photo? Or does this highly saturated sphere enhance our lives in its cross overs of moments, stories and lives?


*Totally just made up that statistic.

Okay, I lied.

Okay, so I guess I lied before when I said I was back, huh?

This time I'm back for real. But first, I think, will be a revamp of the page. (What was I thinking with this colour scheme?)

Thank you to those who've dropped past and just read random past pieces. I appreciate you sticking around even in my absence.

Oh, look! I've completed some of those checklist items!

I'll be back soon. (Promise.)

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I'm back.

Wow... it has been a while. I'm not sure I can give a complete reason for such a long absence, except perhaps that I just needed a break. Sometimes writing this blog, as I gain more readers, I feel a pressure build that my writing has to in some way mean something for everyone, and I'm not sure if it really does. I mean, I hope it does, but then I feel like I'm writing more for my readers than anything. And I set out to write these pieces for both myself and for my readers.

So for a while there, I started writing things that were not invested in myself enough. I hope that makes enough sense; I don't mean I feel a need to constantly talk about myself, but I just need to be in my writing, I need to come through.

The drafts I have saved in the past couple of months are okay I suppose, but I think my journalism subject last semester kind of messed with my perception of audience. I don't want to think of you as 'audience.' I'm not writing for an 'audience,' I'm writing for you, the individual reading this, and for me.

And so, I will be back soon with me, for you.

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Reimagining.

I'm beginning to realise how much we actually rely on our memories. Every thought we have will in some way be connected to our memories; our fears, relationships, knowledge, taste, everything.

The way we think about things in the present and future will always depend on the things that have happened to us in the past. Or, more specifically, what we remember to have happened. Think of it in the same lines as post-traumatic stress disorder, but to a way less extent. You see, when we consider something - anything - our thoughts are triggered by what we know or remember about them from what we've experienced in life.

From when we are born, our only natural fears are instinctual. And so our fears are conditioned, and so too are our thoughts and feelings by each and every small moment in our lives.

Now, maybe you're thinking "Well of course, that's so straight forward. What's your point?" (Or maybe not.) But the point is this, what if we were to re-remember them? What if we took ourselves back to a certain memory and reimagine that moment, understanding it differently and thus changing how we think of it now?

I don't exactly mean tricking ourselves into believing something happened which didn't, but rather rethinking our reaction to an event or someone else's. We consistently misinterpret other's actions and reactions, so if we attempt to reimagine them, we can then change the connotations our memories hold for us.

In this way then, can't we change our future reactions to the things that hold a connected fear or resentment? Considering these different perspectives from our past can make for a better future. We're letting go, not of the memories, but of the possibly unnecessarily negative connotation they hold for us in the future.

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Adventures to be had #2.

A year of summers.

Days at the beach are days well spent!

Spending summer in Australia then moving on overseas during the winter to have summer again. (And avoiding the cold!)

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Why is this even a debate?

You know, I don't know much about this whole same-sex marriage debate, but really it doesn't seem like it's something that has to be very thoroughly read into as it's pretty straightforward – we're all the damn same. Why is it so hard for people to understand that?

It's an equality debate all over again. Sexism and racism are in the past – well, idealistically. Women, indigenous people and African-Americans are just some of these cast-out groups of the past that we now wonder what we were even thinking degrading them, giving them less rights than ourselves.

I say "ourselves" even though I would have fallen into the "women" category had I been a part of that generation, but really "ourselves" would in this sense refer to those who are allowed to have the same rights as the greater public. By disallowing someone to have the same rights as everyone else, you're discriminating once again against the person that they are.

How many times do we have to be reminded that we're all human? I can just see an image of the future – once everyone figures it out – of same-sex marriage, and people wondering why we ever made such a fuss over it; in the same way we wonder now why women hadn't the same rights as men, or indigenous children were taken from their homes, or segregation happened because of the shade of someone's skin. Really, you're punishing someone for being who they are. Shouldn't we be free to love who we love and marry that person if we wish to?

To put it simply: this is stupid. There shouldn't even be debate over it. I believe people should continue to fight for what they want, and those standing in the way (who, by the way, are in no way even affected by it) should just give up because you're simply repeating the mistakes of the past. And having apologised for those mistakes in the past is all being taken back, because if you had been sorry for discrimination, you wouldn't be discriminating again.

I'm sorry about those who disagree with this post, but if you are one of those people, you and your closed mind can find the exit at the 'X'

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I thought I understood it.

"I thought I understood it, that I could grasp it,
But I didn't, not really.
Only the smudgeness of it,
The pink-slippered, all containered,
Semi-precious, eagerness of it.

I didn't realise it would sometimes be more than whole,
That the wholeness was a rather luxurious idea.
Because it's the halves that halve you in half.

I didn't know, don't know, about the between bits,
The gory bits of you, and gory bits of me."

– Anna, Like Crazy

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