Set fire to the silvering process, Mr. Niepce.

Overwhelmed. Yeah, I guess...I mean, I guess that would be part of it. No. No, not actually overwhelmed--over stimulated. Yes. This is much more fitting. Over stimulated. Not so cliche either.

Over. Stimulated. Over saturated. Over....

You know, pictures. Pictures are such strange things. Gross things. Not gross like that--god, you and your definitions. Gross in like, a perversity. See--no, not like the perversity you know but like the type dealing with a thing's nature--strangeness. Is that, well, is that more universal? Pictures have strangeness. They are strange and...and haunting. And grossly (as in largely) perverse (as in crudely unnatural) stamps of reality passed; thrust constantly into the present moment--stagnant and never changing. Trapped. A moment trapped. A ghost, a stolen ghost of time we conquer and chain to an endless present. Dragging a ball and chain of photographs--or frozen, pale, lifeless images.

And we are cruel. We duplicate them, alter them, strip them of the only truth and integrity they are born with. We cut, we tape, we rip, we post. And we catch ourselves, mostly. Self absorbed, self indulged and entranced by our own ghostly, pixilated snippets of time.

Look at your picture. Look at it and stop looking at yourself. Look at the moment. At the drained and imprisoned wormhole of ever flowing reality. You've created multiple dimensions. Memories--a singular moment from the past on repeat in the present, eagerly and gluttonously feeding on the future. For what is 'memory'? Reality: caught in a wormhole, created by illusions on repeat.

But then, what are illusions anyhow? Everything definable, such as "illusions", must have a foundation in something truthful. Yes, because, if we comprehend a given definition--then, there is truth within it that we ourselves can recognize. What then, is real and what is illusion when all can be explained in adequate and comprehensible definition? How do we categorize 'illusion'....more importantly--why?

So. A picture, in my own definition--is an illusion. Because it is something false. A falsified reality. And people believe it. People trust this impossible snippet of a reality dead. And yet, it is definable--so, it is as honest and true and real an illusion as anything else in the universe.

Reality and illusion are one in the same, sans our own cowardly categorizations. And shame on me, as I am typically, almost always...okay always...quite cowardly by my own standard.

This is the picture that started this whole rant. I was staring at it. It is me. It is a blunt and raw lamination of all my insecurities and most of my flaws. If you look at the moment, not the person, you'd see it. Se my...her....its...thoughts. Its before and Its after and since then, its everything in between. Its weight, its smell, Its illusions. Real or illusion. Important to know?

Both are equally truthful.

But. What does it matter. All this crap about real and not. At the end of the day, I am afraid of both conclusions. At least....at least I still have enough in me to care enough to be afraid. More frightening still is the absence of fear. And thus the loss of fight, and loss of drive, and loss of danger--willing us to survive. I still care about photographs.

--Apple.