It’s more difficult for me to capture an intentionally out-of-focus and backlit portrait in service of Winter Obscura than it is to get a clear, well-lit shot. All efforts for artifice. All in the name of grit and raw reality – and all in vain. By the time I got it to anywhere near a natural, on-the-fly catch, it was already a pose – a pretense – an assembled portrait. After fifty years of artifice, it’s all I know now. And maybe that makes it more real than not posing.

I don’t remember a time when I didn’t have an image.

This winter was supposed to tear all that down, and all that I find is more layers of protective artifice, more distance, more removal from the moment at hand. In trying to catch up to myself, I’ve only given advance warning and the opportunity to escape, right under my own nose. Mr. Oud has nothing on me; he was quicksilver, I am light. And shadow. And an unfixed heavenly body dangling far in the distance, and moving further away the closer I sense I’m getting to myself.

What if I never catch up?

More frightening, what if I do?

It’s not as easy to lose yourself as you might think. It’s like playing yourself in chess or checkers.

It takes years, it takes effort, it takes repetition and commitment to the process. It takes a reckoning and a ravaging, and a certain penchant for self-destruction and utter annihilation – neither simple to authentically effectuate. And when you do, when you finally attain the state and status of being lost, all you want to do is find yourself again.

A phrase struck me from ‘The Lioness of Boston’ by Emily Franklin – a novel on the life of Isabella Stewart Gardner – and it reminded me of cherished friends in my inner circle:

“…a potpourri of people who woke up and knew themselves to be more than the sum of their societal roles.”

What a wonderful grouping of words. On with this delayed weekly recap following the dullest, drabbest featured photo ever…

Madonna dominated the whispers of my algorithm, beginning with this madgical moment.

Unlocking a whole new level of gay.

Upon re-entering the world of the living.

The loveliness of Laufey.

Snowflakes of paper.

The one who speaks in memes should not be tolerated.

Hastening to hilarity.

The Madonna Timeline returns with a little help from Britney Spears.

A little crow post.

Karma police.

If Onlyfans.

Cry of dog, wail of wind.

Mom’s birthday.

How suite it is: a blast of Victoria Beckham.

This interminable edging session has gone on long enough.

The words of Angela Davis.

Dazzlers of the Day included Amber Glenn, Conor McDermott-Mostowy, Hayden Williams, and Erin Jackson.

Outside the single window of our attic room, sole portal to the winter world, the wind made a guttural moan. It rattled all, as judging by the barks of a dog that followed, nipping on the heels of those retreating moans. Aural signs of an unsettled evening: wails of wind and cries of dog. Both were comfortably muffled enough to be but mild reminders that life and movement existed beyond the confines of our attic.

These were the sounds of Winter Obscura – faded, abstract, fuzzy – if sound was a color these would be some drab and depressingly unremarkable gray.

Like a battleship, like an ending, like a dark pearl.

There is beauty in the unremarkable, and subtlety carries its own grace. Delicate renderings and minor reckonings. Winter upheavals run the gamut from life-altering to microcosmic. Sometimes the same event can be both at once. The power of perspective is too often unharnessed. I wear it around my neck like an ox wears a yoke.

Every once in a while I see something on social media that reminds me of its original wonder. The other day it was a fleeting sentiment posted by someone whose name now escapes me, and I can’t find it anymore, but the words live on, and they have wisdom:

“I need to be best friends with a crow.”

This is the energy I want to see, this is the attitude I want in my social media feeds.

Self-amusement is the simplest and fastest route to happiness that I’ve found. This was evident to me even as a child – not so much the way it led to a happy life – what could I know about life at six or seven? – but the basic mechanism of amusing myself was something I figured out relatively early. If there was one thing I had and honed more than most people around me, it was my imagination. Many children do, but we drill it out of them as they grow older, not trusting those flights of mental fancy found in frilly tea parties and the lives of dolls or stuffed animals.

Of all the rooms I inhabited as a child, my imagination was the one in which I spent the bulk of my time. As such, I would conjure lands and realms of fantastical adventure and delight, all within the space of solitude, and it was quite simple to turn this space into one of amusement and fun.

These days my imagination remains blessedly intact, taking the form of further self-amusement, which finds me laughing kindly at the foibles of myself and others, imagining the silliest of scenarios or reactions of friends to my various nonsense, and I’ll laugh – alone, in public, at inappropriate times, such as when I took these selfies during cafe culture – and I’ll absolutely love it.

The one who speaks in memes should not be tolerated.

#TinyThreads