between colliding oceans
dreams of otherworldly delights
merge with my human body
decaying in bliss
as her eyes touch me
and her words draw me
on the canvas of her hands
surreal lines
crossing crashing waves
until we emerge
with nothing but
memories that seem to flee
An Ode to the Girl Who I Could Never Write
There is this point on the horizon, where dreams start to collide with reality, just like two different oceans try to merge but a perfect and distinct line emerges. There is no convergence, only a diverging line that perpetually and forever divides the two, dreams, reality, kisses from the gods and the harsh reality of a demon's laughter. The world becomes a strange place, only occupied by voices that try to lure you deeper into the dream, away from reality.
There is a point on the horizon that always seems to fade the closer you try to come to it, receding with every step you take to try and reach it. Just like trying to remember a dream that slips from your hands like sand falling between your fingers, this dot on the horizon becomes the dream itself. The harder you focus on it, to try and capture its transience, its ephemerality, the faster it tries to hide itself behind the very horizon line that divides dreams from reality.
The girl tried to escape into dreams, as she always does. The world collided with dreams, and collapsed into itself into a spectacular and delightful eruption of emotions.
She walked on the beach, a purgatory or liminal space that separated dreams from reality. I tried to get closer, but as I walked beside her, the ocean began pulling on her, tucking at her heart and reclaiming her drowning soul.
I share with you this dream, captured in photographs, so as to try and make the moment real, more real than the dream that evades my touch.
It was but a dream. A nightly fever that returns, taunting me to go deeper, to drown myself to become alive. Through death, as the portal to life, I might find the girl who I could not write. But, this seemed like the ultimate challenge for which I did not have the right virtue. For the girl was on the beach, inhabiting the in-between space. Through death we might be united, as the poets proclaimed, but for now, the words could not capture the moment in enough detail.
I could not jump.
I could not find the words that allowed me to not dream. Because the dream never ended, because I could not get to the horizon that kept on receding, I could not begin to find the words that allowed me to die a poetic death on paper. The dream was forever locked behind the lack of capacity to think poetically in this moment.
I could not write the girl, I could not write about the door I needed to walk through.
But she was there, in the dream, on the edge of reality, pulling me closer and closer.
It is funny how reality and dreams sometimes collide. Is the photograph not a kind of dream through which we can almost make sense of reality? Photography is the ultimate illusion, so close to reality, so close to dreams, a point on the horizon that always recedes the closer we attempt to get to it.
We live through the lens, we try to make sense of the world, we are poets but without words. Images are the metaphors we communicate with, only to realise that we lack the capacity to think differently. This is why the artists of old preferred painting as medium, as each brushstroke replicates millions of words, while the eventual product of their practice becomes a photograph, capturing everything in excruciating detail.
We photographers merely attempt to write with what we capture. We try to dream worlds that does not exist linked with what we find in front of us.
Alas, we can only write as much as we dream.
Happy photographing and keep well.
All of the musings and writings (and dreams) are my own, albeit inspired by the girl I could not write. The photographs are also my own, taken with my Nikon D300 and Nikkor 50mm lens (and Tamron 300mm if I remember correctly).