crimes against humanity (Patreon)

i just finished my daily morning meditation... I'm currently staying with my parents in my hometown on the north shore of boston. spending time with them, helping with the house, taking walks and runs around the beaches, editing my photography and working on art. during my meditation i overheard one of their conversations about how someone should be charged with a 'crime against humanity,' during these auspicious times, there are so many conversations, opinions, hypotheses, points, facts, lies, truths, blurry lines. what do you believe when no one knows anything or when everyone knows everything? when the world is on fire? or falling apart or falling together? yes this is a time of great change, stress for some, release and relaxation for others. either way, we can breathe, we have time for that now. i'm truly looking forward to what the coming days weeks months and years bring. this is the age of Aquarius and its just the beginning. a few words and phrases occasionally play on repeat in my mind. i've never seen the movie 'Network' (1976) but part of the 'I'm Mad as Hell' speech played throughout some of my favorite mixes on soundcloud some years ago and the words have resonated with me ever since... i feel like they are very apropos at the moment, they keep surfacing and replaying in my mind:

I don’t have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It’s a depression. Everybody’s out of work or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel’s worth. Banks are going bust. Shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter. Punks are running wild in the street and there’s nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there’s no end to it. We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat, and we sit watching our TVs while some local newscaster tells us that today we had fifteen homicides and sixty-three violent crimes, as if that’s the way it’s supposed to be.

We know things are bad – worse than bad. They’re crazy. It’s like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don’t go out anymore. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we are living in is getting smaller, and all we say is: ‘Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials and I won’t say anything. Just leave us alone.’

Well, I’m not gonna leave you alone. I want you to get MAD! I don’t want you to protest. I don’t want you to riot – I don’t want you to write to your congressman, because I wouldn’t know what to tell you to write. I don’t know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Russians and the crime in the street. All I know is that first you’ve got to get mad. (shouting) You’ve got to say: ‘I’m a human being, god-dammit! My life has value!’ 

So, I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window. Open it, and stick your head out, and yell: ‘I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not gonna take this anymore!’

I want you to get up right now. Sit up. Go to your windows. Open them and stick your head out and yell – ‘I’m as mad as hell and I’m not gonna take this anymore!’ Things have got to change. But first, you’ve gotta get mad!…You’ve got to say, ‘I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not gonna take this anymore!’ Then we’ll figure out what to do about the depression and the inflation and the oil crisis. But first, get up out of your chairs, open the window, stick your head out, and yell, and say it: ‘I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not gonna take this anymore!’

 these images were taken in the early spring of 2017, almost exactly four years ago, shortly after I left New Mexico to restart my life in Colorado. the models are bonny and britt, my friends at the time whom i'd met in the mountains. they met one another the afternoon we took these images. i miss them. i miss this. but i don't want to go back in time. i was fragile then, just restarting life, yet again, existing a day at a time. even though time moves slowly now too, so much has changed. even though some may say and yearn for those 'simpler' times, i'm actually finding simplicity and solace in the current state of affairs. grateful for the past, the people, the memories, enjoying, embracing the present, and looking forward to the future.