Gaze

I have the worst posture. Crooked, curved, hunched- a walking enclave I remain.

So, when I go to a tucked-away staircase to reflect, the first thing I notice is my back. I stretch along the marble stairs and all the bones begin to creak. They tell ghost stories. The corridor is dark and cold, but I fix my gaze on an upper right corner to let the outer lights fade away.

I have been thinking a lot about place recently. Maybe it's the senior year bug- in which everyone keeps asking what I am going to do after graduation yet no one acknowledges that the various where will we be after graduation is actually the force that is going to spread relationships- hearts, lopsided souls, comfortable giggles- far and wide. I keep wanting to tell everyone that the where matters because I think place can influence everything.

I have always been curiously obsessed with the aesthetic space around me; perhaps this is an effect of the creative deprivation wrought on by an upbringing in mundane suburbia, but outside surroundings have always been able to send my thoughts and dreams spiraling. Place is just so full of potential (its capacity so in beheld in the eyes of the creator). People are also full of potential, and while I have fallen in love with the potential of others many times, the potential for space and for place to alter something deep within me has always been astounding in a more magical way.

So yes, place matters a lot to me right now because places are going to change a lot in this upcoming year. However, places also matter because they beat within me. I look inside and look! There under my left lung is my childhood home. On the tips of my shoulder I can see my Cochabamba apartment. In the wrinkles on my toes I hold my current room and turquoise bed frame. Places are always with me and exist in transient affections- spurring my other passions in the democratization of public space, gentrification and housing rights. In both the physical and metaphysical sense, places drive me to bring my inner outward- and to carry a reflective lightness to whatever journey I embark on next.

https://www.tumblr.com/explore/gifs

https://www.tumblr.com/explore/gifs

(also I completely forgot to take a photo!!! I will go tomorrow and add one tomorrow!)