˖𖥔⋆༺𝖃𝖞𝖑𝖆𝖘𝖃༻⋆𖥔˖

Been a while since I did a full goth face ~

When I take photos like this, I can’t help but wish I had a better camera. Ughhhhhhh such blurry zooomm.

California Coast- it was my first time realizing that not all coasts are considered beaches. Then again, I hadn’t seen the ocean in forever, so I was happy to freeze my toes off in the water.

We Exist in the Context

Perception lives in the same space as perspective. What we call reality is limited to what our physical minds can process.

If we were in an office and I asked what’s beyond the wall, you might say a hallway. Beyond that, another room, maybe a window, a tree, a street, another building. But after that next wall, what’s there? You could only guess. Maybe a room, maybe something else entirely. You have no real detail, just openness to whatever might exist.

Now imagine exactly one mile east of you. Even if you can picture a mile perfectly, you could only describe that place if you already know it. Suppose that exact point falls inside a windowless room you’ve never seen or heard of. Inside that room could exist something entirely beyond your ability to imagine. Not a ghost or a monster or anything you could describe- those are still within your mind’s vocabulary. I mean something completely unrecognizable, something your mind is physically incapable of picturing. And yet, if it were real, someone else could be standing next to it, fully familiar with it, finding it as ordinary as you find a chair.

That’s what I mean when I say our version of “truth” only exists within what we’ve been exposed to.

If I ask what color an orange sticky note is, the answer seems simple. It’s orange. But technically, it’s reflecting red and yellow while absorbing blue. So from one level of understanding, it’s orange. From another, it’s blue. Then there’s the possibility that it’s a color outside of human perception altogether, or that it carries markings invisible to us- like an unseen pattern drawn with invisible ink. Once again, what we call reality is only what our senses can process.

When I think about life or freedom, that same limit appears again. The more I think about it, the more I see myself as a collection of atoms, all cooperating within a system that creates the illusion of being alive. I think about how humans see faces in objects that don’t have faces, or how our movements in slow motion look strange and unnatural even though that’s what our bodies are always doing. Our brains filter the world in ways that keep us from confronting how alien it really is.

Knowing how warped our perception is makes me question what “freedom” could even mean. Maybe the closest we could get to pure, uninfluenced reality would be to lose every sense, memory, and instinct- to exist without perception at all. But that would mean not being alive to experience it. So instead, we settle for smaller definitions of freedom, things that fit neatly within our limited understanding.

This is one of my favorite ‘on the road’ shots. It was pouring rain and the contrast looked so dreamy.

I can’t quite tell if this photo embeds a dreamy or depressing feeling. I honestly take a lot of comfort in this dark and cold ambience.