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Hiroo Isono: Untitled (1982)

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Wigstock, NYC, 1980s. photo & caption by Mariette Pathy Allen [website] [instagram]

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Lous and the Yakuza By Corentin Leroux For Marie Claire France April 2021

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whoops lost myself for about eight years there

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Hmm what happened to those ideas for the future that brought me excitement and purpose. They work like magic for a while and then they leave. I feel so adrift again, less than alive. Why is it so hard to share myself with other people... I want to have fun, I want to start over, I want to be a part of the world, I want silence

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by Felipe Pantone

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Brett Bigbee

Oil on Canvas

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the years have made me weird and strange to talk to. but still i must post

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allow yourself to be a beginner

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Francesca Woodman

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Jonas Mekas • Diaries, Notes, and Sketches | 1969

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Missed Time, Ha Jin

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“Try to learn to breathe deeply, really to taste food when you eat, and when you sleep, really to sleep. Try as much as possible to be wholly alive with all your might, and when you laugh, laugh like hell. And when you get angry, get good and angry. Try to be alive. You will be dead soon enough.”

— Ernest Hemingway

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Mark Lang - Simulacrum (moon), 2022 - Oil on canvas

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A co-worker of mine was standing outside with me during a break from customers to share a cigarette with me, and told me about how he had lost his brother that he was close with some years ago. He told me about how they used to be in a band together with some friends, and how ever since he'd died, he hadn't played any music because he'd been too scared and anxious. I told him about how I'd lost my brother to suicide some years ago.

I went home and pulled out an old tiny wooden box my brother had given me before he'd died. I'd been using it to store guitar picks I'd collected over the years, including one guitar pick that used to be his. I haven't played the guitar since he'd died, my hands are too small to play some of the chords, so I play bass and piano instead.

I went to work the next day and gifted my brothers old guitar pick to my co-worker. I told him that it'd been sitting in a box for ten years unused, and would probably sit there for longer if I kept it there. Told him that I thought he deserved to have it, because I bet he could put it to better use than I ever would. Told him I didn't feel like it was coincidence that me and him would cross paths with each other in our lives, and that it seemed suiting that we had these similar experiences but split in two halves. That somehow, I felt like he was meant to have the guitar pick. I told him that I knew he'd not played guitar since his brother died, but that if he ever decided to play again one of these days, maybe he'd be able to honor both of our brothers by using that guitar pick.

He almost cried. He thanked me. Then he went home that night and for the first time in years he played the guitar.

I don't know what the meaning of life is or what my purpose is, but I do believe that love and human connection is one of the most important things in life. It's finding ways to tell strangers you love them and share experiences with others. I think it's all just about love.