These double exposures are from my very first #filmswap: I shot the roll in Bellingham, then Maya, whose poetry I feature here, shot over it a second time in San Diego. We had a vague idea of what each of us was planning, but every composition you see here and in the next two posts was completely accidental/providential.
I love everything about this. I love how our images were taken in two borderlands on the two far ends of this western coast; two liminal spaces mirrored and refracted in our contrasting choices of locations—public and impersonal landmarks in mine, private and intimate spaces in Maya’s.
I love that I’ve been following Maya for so long, having seen her #AdventWord posts a couple of years ago and thinking “this person sees things very similarly,” but never speaking to each other until I reached out to collaborate. I love how I basically said “hey soooo this is weird but” and she basically said: “hell yeah.”
I love how Maya’s confidence was infectious and that we didn’t know how these would come out until yesterday evening. We’ll post the rest on Christmas.
OBEDIENCE by @liturgy__
when you were young you went
when and where you wanted.
but one day someday soon
someone will stretch out your arms
and take you where you do not want to go.
walk and grope around the dark with your eyes closed.
BIRTH by @liturgy__
swollen, pregnant with the self
born, again new and crying
grown, pulled lifted from the ground
dead, hovering over the waters again
x
Today’s final #AdventWord is EMMANUEL, and @liturgy__ picked out this prayer for your Christmas morning. I remember being blown away when I first encountered these words at a church in Edinburgh where I was slowly making my way back to faith one long and fateful Creationtide to Advent season. It was exactly what I needed to hear at the time. It’s still good to hear today:
“Christ has no body but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which He looks
Compassion on this world,
Yours are the feet with which He walks to do good,
Yours are the hands, with which He blesses all the world.
Yours are the hands, yours are the feet,
Yours are the eyes, you are His body.
Christ has no body now but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks
compassion on this world.
Christ has no body now on earth but yours.”
(Attributed to St. Teresa of Ávila)
Merry Christmas.