a year in photographs 2023

january
the new year begins with steaks, kisses, and board game stories. i realize that this also marks one full year of living in atlanta, and, instead of celebrating, i simmer in the guilt of watching time pass by.

mornings begin at 5am, and my sleepy brain is accompanied by memorized recipes of biscotti, sablés nantais, and brioche. the air smells of espresso and cinnamon by 6am just as cup of black coffee slides across the pass into my eager hands. there is a day when i zest and juice over 200 lemons. the memory of my stinging hands live on in infamy.

february
our homes are split in two, separated by a quiet street and crepe myrtle trees. last year’s scheming blooms into taking photographs of strangers for valentine’s day, and i think about the sweetness that permeates these streets while crouched by the portable heater.

march
our days are full of sanding wood, repainting walls, and developing film. the work is monotonous, but the building is lasting.

after knocking down one of our walls, we look at each other in all our exhaustion and immediately drive to tybee island for a weekend by the ocean.

april
the month comes and goes like a blur.

may
on an unassuming work day, he asks me to go for a walk to clear our heads. we round the corner of a nearby park while and he shows me a ring as i babble on about plans for who-knows-what. i say, “what a pretty ring!” before realizing “oh! it’s a ring-ring!”

june
sweet & sweat-drenched, just like the year before.

i carried a wedding dress home from san francisco and a plane full of strangers halfheartedly applause as we sink deeper and deeper into our seats. the word “fiancé” becomes less foreign in my mouth.

july
everything erupts in color. we visit friends, friends visit us, vows are shared between many.

august
the seriousness of our commitments become more tangible. stress disguises itself as fear and makes a monster out of me.

september
i find myself in alberta, canada surrounded by majestic blue skies and even more majestic friends. love and togetherness fills up the dark corners of my mind, and, for the first time in my life, i decide with absolute surety to walk down the pathway laid out in front of me without kicking and screaming.

october
one and one become one.

november
i mourn my mother while celebrating a new family. reflecting back on the year becomes difficult as i, once again, grapple with the passage of time.

december
the days grow shorter, making way for longer stretches of contemplation. the lack of creative output this year throws me for a loop and i wonder –– what makes a good year? despite how much i’ve grown, how much we’ve deepened, my identity continues to be inextricably tied to the art that i make. it all feels fraught.

i force myself to remember that there is so much more.

a year in photographs 2022

january
i ring in the new year with covid at our heels. it seems like everyone around us is falling sick, but it makes way for quiet contemplation for all the newness abound.

i move into an apartment with slanted floors and make a bed out of pallets i bought off facebook marketplace. my morning routine includes begrudgingly editing tiktoks for work in bed.

february
back in san francisco: one week of munis, overabundantly hip coworking spaces, an airbnb above burma superstar, and endless negative tests. i have a distinct distaste for this old life of mine but am forced to realize that it very much still is my current.

in atlanta, a lot of scheming occurs next to what we call ‘the smoking window.’ many dreams are written down on paper.

march

i start working part time at bakeries and move into a shared art studio space that eventually is home to our film lab. we build and build and life becomes naturally rhythmic.

my dark, empty apartment makes me feel trapped.

april
during a trip from denver to dc, i begin to understand that it is not my apartment but, rather, my career that is making me feel trapped. i solidify my decision to leave tech again... this time with more confidence that it will for good.

from there on out, my days are consumed by thoughts of the film lab, long walks underneath spring blooms, and connecting with family.

may
the city warms up and ushers us into the outside world.

june
sweet & sweat-drenched.

july
the days feel like they go on forever. we go to new york to soak in swelter + loved ones. in atlanta, i learn to pray.

august
august is a gentle cool down from the height of summer. a lot of atlanta firsts, like the high museum and eddie's attic and looking at houses we can’t afford.

september
there is so much excitement spilling over the edges of september that it falls right through my memory.

i am drunk off white wine & jaeger and chasing ducks along the dark coast. i say, i don’t think i’ll be able to remember all the things we’re talking about. and you say, it’s okay, it can be just for us for now.

later in the month, merlin the cat arrives from california.

october
there is celebration after celebration, from birthday paella to autumn foliage, halloween costumes to new homes.

november
an accident lands me in the ER with a left hand too cut up to use. elections happen, thanksgiving is full, opportunities unfurl, but uneasiness plants itself in the pit of my stomach and spurls into my dreams.

i lose my camera.

december
the fast-moving year catches up to me and all i yearn for is home while being anywhere but. i cry a lot. it takes me until the last day of the year to finally recognize how good i have it.

i often think of this dewy patch of grass beneath the palm tree-lined sky. and i often think about how lying down on it feels the same as being somewhere you belong.

a year in photographs 2021

january
i ring in the new year in austin, texas but barely recognize the clock striking midnight. after being around childhood friends for two weeks, returning back to an empty apartment in los angeles was startlingly painful.

february
long walks in empty places is the only thing saving me from the depths of self-isolation. a construction worker yells to me, “you’re doing great!” and i feel an uncanny warmth that resembles something like a cheap, feel-good movie.

march
sleep escapes me. i relish in the pink blossoms lining the city streets.

april
henry, a friend i met during the pandemic, and i wake up at 5am to drive to bakersfield to get vaccinated. most of my time on interstate 5 was spent thinking about how we’ll likely never forget each other because of this. a twinge of sadness emerges, but i don’t allow it to simmer for too long.

the vaccination lifts much of the weight from my shoulders, and everything feels okay for a brief moment. the world opens up, and i find myself talking and hugging and laughing with other people again, just in time for summer to unveil itself to los angeles.

may
i turn 30 and fall deeply in love with new mexico.

june
my time in los angeles is quickly coming to an end - much faster than i had anticipated. what was meant to be a temporary stop in my hometown extended out to more than a year, and it is time say farewell once again.

as usual, preemptive nostalgia settles into my bones and i start missing things that have become regular facets of my daily life: merlin’s little face squished under the pillow every afternoon, solo dance parties in my living room in between work calls, the baby blue car i’ve watched park every day beneath the same lamp post outside my window.

july
i spend a long weekend in joshua tree with friends i haven’t seen in over a year. we sit around drinking whiskey, playing board games, and watching movies underneath the starry desert sky. it feels magical to be reunited with my chosen familia. i went to sleep every night resting with the knowledge that they’ll always be a part of my life, no matter how much time and distance separates us.

in the latter half of july, i fly out to atlanta to visit henry. we glide around in the sweltering, humid air in between thunderstorms, buying and naming plants, taking swigs of wine by a moonlit lake, and hoping that any of this will mean something.

august
my goal at the beginning of the year was to put on a solo art show to honor my mum’s 10 year death anniversary before leaving los angeles, the city where she raised me. the show finally happens on august 28th. it feels like the night came and went in a flurry of stress; i meet incredible people and have life-giving conversations, but i simultaneously have a difficult time celebrating how momentous it all is.

all my belongings gets packed into a few boxes, and i trade in my apartment keys for the open road. august brought chicago, new orleans, and seattle.

september
i return from a series of flights & vibrant musical experiences and head north towards san francisco where i’m reunited with people who have shaped me at vastly different stages of my life. it’s odd, to be confronted with so much change and familiarity all at once.

i think about how lucky it all is, to have so many lessons to learn and relearn as i get lost in the upheaval of routine.

october
i spend a lot of time driving through utah, colorado, and texas… feeling lonely but very much like i am moving in a direction i am meant to, whatever that means. something ushers me forth despite my hesitance. the few moments i have with friends along the road are savored bittersweetly. i recognize all of this marks the end of something, but i can’t quite put my finger on what exactly that is.

the world is far colder than i anticipate. i wake up to snow often as the plants i brought steadily shrivel up in my car.

november
the road tires me. i fly back and forth between san francisco for work, making me realize being in the air tires me even more. i honor my mum’s 1o year death day with a small celebration in austin, texas with her best friend. we attempt to make bánh tiêu together but instead gather around our deflated pastries wondering how on earth my mom managed to make them so effortlessly.

henry flies out to austin to join me for my drive through the south. my favorite holiday, thanksgiving, lands us in hiawassee, georgia where i’m surrounded by a lot of warmth. what a welcome change from the cold.

december
i find myself in london at the end of the year. we wake up close to sunset every day and bundle up to waddle through the cold evenings, going park to park, museum to museum, bridge to bridge.

somewhere in between sips of cabernet on a sleepless night, we agree to be each other’s and i cry because nothing seems more frightening than choosing to love and be loved.

eyes searching for ones that do not wish to be found

i'm in love with the way you hold my face in the morning light,
your eyes searching for ones that do not wish to be found

the great conjunction

the great conjunction. charcoal, watercolors, acrylics. 22.5x30". 2020.

for just a moment, i thought i could fade into you –– a rare alignment of our ecliptic longitudes, bearing witness by naked eyes in starlight. how dizzying it is, to be drunk with the everything of you. to behold the everything of each other.

but it was just for a moment, a fleeting crossing of heavenly bodies. we are the conjunction that never became one, too tied to our separate pathways amongst the void. i rest in the peace of knowing none of it is real, in the knowing it will happen again, in the happening of falsity that begets real beauty. a trompe-l'œil to dream about.

one day, one day.

le chrysanthème et sa poupée

i. i remember sitting with you at the mall food court after we fled from our own home in tears. i was nervous when you were blankly staring down the road, nervous as you continued speaking in abstracts, nervous as you contemplated the worthiness of living this life. i was sixteen and begging for us to run away. you stared into the empty air. around us children were wailing in their seats, young couples were flirting with love, families were waving each other down with trays in their hands. the normalcy of it all cut through the heaviness that hung in front of us, tables empty of food, hands empty of each other's. why can’t we be like them?

ii. i'd get hurt. you'd tell me to apologize. we'd sweep the floors searching for scraps of happiness. then i'd get hurt again. or you would. we'd apologize. rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat. but why does it feel like we can never wash our hands clean of this?

iii. i thought it was just a phase. maybe the unwieldy anger, with time, with age, with distance, can shift and make way for what truly lies beneath. surely it's love. surely it's just sadness transformed. but when i saw him raise his hand with fires burning in his eyes, i understood that these things don't just fade by themselves... they're buried. we tried to smolder the flames with our hands, but the embers are still crackling and the ashes are still falling. rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat.

iv. someone told me yesterday that when he was a child, he would fill his backpack with juice boxes and dream of running away to see the world. i laughed into the phone and said i was exactly the same. but you and i both know it's the reverse, that i've been all around the world trying to run away.

i imagined what it’d be like if we had the chance to run together, le chrysanthème et sa poupée. i'd lay my head down on your lap and you'd stroke my hair. i'd cry and you'd tell me that i need to toughen up, that the world isn't kind to people like us, too fragile. but tell me, how do we toughen up now, when someone has already broken us into so many pieces? when can we stop sweeping?

v. today i watched the sunrise with eyes half closed and a mind half dreaming. i pictured you, in the vastness of the ocean, where we let you go and watched you dissolve into the pacific. then i pictured me, here, in the vastness of the los angeles sky, engulfed in the orange brilliance of a new day. and then i pictured us. i was wrong. we aren't fragile, we aren't broken. we are ubiquitous. we are here, there, and everywhere, across the sea and across the sky, you and i. no more rinsing and repeating. from the droplets of your waters to the condensation of my skies, cycling in and out of each other, being, becoming, and disappearing, over and over and over. we are so much more than we ever thought possible.

what a mess we've made

what a mess we've made. charcoal, watercolors, acrylics. 18x12. 2020.

i. my first kiss was in the dark, somewhere behind a pillar, at a high school i didn't go to, during a talent show i didn't perform in. he was my boyfriend of two months at that point, and we had only ever shyly held hands before. we had two radiant years of explosive vibrancy – so much music, art, and beauty before it all imploded. we self-destructed into fragments so small that only the mixtapes, photographs, and paintings we left behind could make sense of it all.

ii. i used to think kisses were sacred. until a boy kissed me without embracing me, held my hand without ever holding my gaze, and told me i was beautiful so often that i stopped believing in it. and in him.

iii. what is truly sacred, i've learned, are all the spaces in between. and it is in those spaces where things get messy, where we hurt and cry and laugh and dance and live in such a way where love can emerge. whether it implodes, transforms, or nourishes... the undeniable truth is that it at least means something. something, within all the chaos of two universes colliding. the kiss was just the beginning. and what a beautiful mess it all is.

becoming and being and not

he is becoming, being, and not. that is the majesty i see in thomson. as i write this, i can see the outlines of his figure standing in the middle of holographic waves where ripples from the waterfalls and the fish in the lake are erupting, expanding, fading… there thomson is, at the cross section of it all.

he’s simplicity
but also –
all the complexity in the world.

he holds all the hurt and joy of the world within him.

but how?
he couldn’t possibly.

and yet,
when i look at him,
i see the coexistence of all things.

and i can’t help but think,
he is coexistence.

the sturdiness of the earth

in jordan, i see the sturdiness of the earth. it’s not aggression that people speak of. it’s rootedness, it’s connection – not to anything in particular, just to all that there is.

all of that energy courses through him. the unbearable lightness of being interweaves itself in the way he moves. he sways with the meadow grass as much as he anchors with the rocks.

it’s a shame for all the beauty within him to be dwindled down to “aggressive.”

he is like air

charlie is like air – he seems to float just above. it feels like floating to be around him. he breathes, laughs, and cries all at once, almost like if evaporation, condensation, and precipitation were happening simultaneously. these cycles of being, of shifting, of changing are what i see when i look at him. he is the constant that we breathe,

ever present,

ever changing,

everlasting,

everywhere.