HERE I AM

In February when I was in London I was taking photos around Verde in Spitalfields and this workman asked me to take his photo. Lots of building work going on around there.
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A few days ago I was writing in my journal sitting outside. I wrote HERE I AM in capitals and outlined the letters. Here I am sitting in my garden, the wind in the tree, clouds in the sky, cat sniffing the hedge. Here I Am.

A huge burden lifted off me. I didn't have to cloak myself in an activity in the future to justify myself Here I Am Making An Important Film About, I didn't have to qualify it by saying Here I Am Administrator/Co-ordinator/Life Model. I didn't have to qualify it with any kind of activity to justify my being.

So much of my time my head is a running list of to do's / undones' not done yets. And often they are linked to shoring up my sense of identity and worthiness. I do think that creative projects often also fall into that scheme of things. I'll write my novel and then I'll be worthy of notice. I'll become an artist and become a bohemian. I'll do X and show them! You are already enough, do enough. Just existing is enough.

Freed (I'm pretty sure this is temporary so I'm writing about it so I don't forget) from feeling a need to prove myself to myself and others I found myself walking across the city to an appointment and greedily appreciating everything, the leaves, the grass, the children wobbling across lawns, small dogs waiting for their owners in shops. Life immediately had a depth to it that has been missing for some time.

I love that photography is a way of seeing what is here already with more depth. I'm not scrabbling around creating something but just getting something already here. Of course at the same time its full of moments that I did not think had occurred. For example the black & white photos below of the beach which look like Fox Talbot. But they seem to me to be a revelation of something that was there but I didn't know was there. I find myself grappling with accepting the mysterious accidents rather than going out and thinking I can control the process.