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a lullaby for suffering
Lately I’ve been re-listening to Leonard Cohen…
When I look at this scene, I am unable to decide if the sand is encroaching on the branches and will eventually cover them, or if the branches spend their time escaping the sand and will eventually join their colleagues on the next dune over.
The more I look, the more uncertain I am.
But what does this have to do with Leonard Cohen? Nothing, probably, except that my mind connects photographic confusion and his lyric:
There’s a lullaby for suffering
And a paradox to blame
But it’s written in the scriptures
And it’s not some idle claim
You want it darker, we kill the flame
Paradox. Darker. Flame. Suffering.
White Sands National Park, New Mexico
photographed 12.14.2025
a confused and ill-defined nature
Of course those are clouds, but isn’t it a little more fun to think there is smoke rising from that bush?
Or am I just being weird again?
White Sands National Park, New Mexico
photographed 12.14.2025
sand/snake, 2
Remember yesterday when I sort of made fun of myself about spending a long time taking photos of a stick?
Look what happened: the very next day I did the same thing with a different stick.
Consistency is evidently an important part of my process.
photographed 12.14.2025
sand/snake, 1
If I told you how long I spent making this photo and/or how many images I made you’d have one of two reactions:
1. WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU? It’s a stick. One stick. In an entire national park of stuff, you wasted that much time on…a…STICK?
or
2. Yes. That seems about right.
I do not think there’s any middle ground here.
White Sands National Park, New Mexico
photographed 12.13.2025
it’s a wide life
Lately I’ve been thinking about aging (because I am, of course) and what that may look like. Of course how long my life will be isn’t really under my control. What I can control is how wide it is: how much I can do, how much I can experience, how much I can learn, how much enjoyment I can find, how many interesting people I can talk to. My strong belief is that the width of what I do will matter more than how many years I end up doing it. I hope to make it as wide as I can.
Or as David Byrne says, using similar (though more melodic) words:
I know it, that’s how we start, oh-oh-ohGot some wild, wild lifeTake a picture here in the daylight, oh-ohAnd it’s a wild, wild life
White Sands National Park, New Mexico
photographed 12.14.2025
One Day | One Image 