certain steps, February 5th

Digital can diminish the practice, yet it offers the ore of repetition – rote memory through thousands of clicks. One must not fall into habit, squeezing the trigger for anyone’s sake, save the delicacy of photography lay trampled over by the technology and ill manners.

Film requires strategy, as does all of life’s tasks, a culmination of countless battles in composition, both sensational and numb, a fine sharpening, honing, tempering of steel by which to carve one’s own path. Poets and writers, even laymen may try your faith, insisting that the ‘image’ comes about after a set period, implying once trials, the right amount – no less, occur, the skill of film subjugates itself to one’s mastery.

My travels reveal that the journey is rarely so succinct. A bitter wind paints an event, that under most circumstances one could not withstand, brave even. Chicago, in January, sports a wintry bluster that presently, none compare. Umpteen floors or so above ground level, the insides of the stomach, very nearly the soul, does a flip – not out of jubilee – simply a sensation to remind the body need not cease function despite the unnerving height, arctic bite, an occasional helicopter chopping overhead – all of this distracts -- inhale, open sight, exhale, behold, perceive, near and far, then capture.

The body does not determine lower levels of oxygen in the air, twenty four hundred meters above sea level, en Aguas Calientes, the lungs fill real molasses-like, reminiscent of a toddler finding a seat on one’s chest, the nostrils flare upon intake, a show of defiance, as if to say “I’m still here,” and the legs lift off, heavy laden and meet the earth, walking, hiking, running, exercises simply in futility.

Yet the magnificence of Machu Picchu cannot be detailed sufficiently. That humility of the mind and body achieved at the brink of exhaustion, stills the spirit into hushed reverence like one’s first visit a La Sagrada Familia, finds me once again, a few feet from the Inki Punku – Sun Gate, a top the summit viewing civilization long before mine, come and gone, remaining all the same.

Long before sunrise, a fog visits, a specter of mystery, clouding the sanctity here, a fever consumes me similarly, hovering then draping, I must make this moment mine, inhale, open sights, exhale, behold, perceive, near and far, then capture.

^@juicyfruit

---

^{while studying the template}