Category: Poiesis

by jad

Assemblage & Photography

Someone said that the best camera is the one that inspires you to keep using it. This is my #FujifilmXT4 with an old #NikkorLens originally designed for film cameras, with a focus wheel that’s a little loose but is light enough to feel like nothing on this camera body. It’s fun. It’s imprecise. Adapted to this body, it’s completely manual. How does one assemblage inspire what another does not? x This is the same route I take every time I walk to work. Sometimes, things change and I notice them in a #superordinary way, but most of the time, things are exactly the same, and so … Continue reading “Assemblage & Photography” →

by jad

#Route101: Another New Year

As we recover from the motion blur of our epic #Route101 road trip, much of the past year is coming into focus for me in the rearview mirror. I spent much of 2022 and a good chunk of 2021 thinking and writing about meaning—discerning it, making it, communicating it. I tried every personality test and even got into tarot. I turned inward, coiling up tighter and tighter until I got sick of that spiritual exhibitionism and the leering that comes with it. I wanted out and I found an unexpected exit in photography, an ecstatic eye to thread new lines through. But … Continue reading “#Route101: Another New Year” →

by jad

Christine’s Project: Qadisha

One of the highlights of our trip has to be the road trip we took with Stacey and Antoun to the holy valley of Qadisha, the spiritual and ancestral home of the Maronites. I’ve been here before, but never experienced it in this way: once, because I was absolutely terrified in the back of a vehicle that was much too large for the narrow valley roads (post-terror tabbouli was definitely delicious at the Nahr Restaurant though), and another time because I was still in the thick of an atheist rejection of my roots, so I didn’t soak it in that … Continue reading “Christine’s Project: Qadisha” →

by jad

#AdventWord 2022: Maya

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 … Continue reading “#AdventWord 2022: Maya” →

by jad

Juxtaposed

“I basically just write the same line a million times in slightly different ways to see what clicks.” Someone said that to me the other day and I think it’s a mark of genius. I’m trying to be a lot less precious about the photos I take and post. Still thinking about how I might approach this new hobby more like my approach to writing, but I haven’t figured out what that means yet. Thoughts? x Let’s getjuxtaposed,juxtaposed-Just supposeI juxtaposewith you. (Super Furry Animals – Juxtaposed With U) x “Now why should the cinema follow the forms of theater and … Continue reading “Juxtaposed” →

by jad

ADVENTWORD 2022—PURIFY

Today’s #AdventWord is not one I’d have picked myself; there’s almost no choice but to read a word like PURIFY in, well, puritanical terms, and, if you’re anything like me, maybe even a James Hetfield twang: TRUTH AND DAREPEELING BACK THE SKINACID WASH GHOST WHITEULTRA CLEANWANNA BE SKELETON Metallica’s “Purify” perfectly captures the unrelenting reductionism of how we tend to hear & deploy the concept of “purity”: a sweet turpentine to burn off all excess & filth. PURIFY OUR CONSCIENCE! cries this Sunday’s collect: “Purify our conscience, Almighty God, by your daily visitation, that your Son Jesus Christ, at his coming, may … Continue reading “ADVENTWORD 2022—PURIFY” →

by jad

AdventWord 2022—TRAVELER

Today’s #AdventWord is TRAVELER, and for the longest time, I’ve been fixated on a phrase that came to me repurposed from an album title, a phrase that became a kind of philosophy of life in molecular form: “I am traveling with another.” I ran that through a readability analyzer and it apparently corresponds to a 10th/12th grade level, which makes sense, because in many ways it captures a high school senior’s style of overthinking the world. Like an essay about serendipity that compares the concept to looking over the school yard fence and noticing a storybook style house you describe like a … Continue reading “AdventWord 2022—TRAVELER” →

by jad

#AdventWord 2022: Corinne

Corinne isn’t really on Instagram anymore, but this is how we connected: pouring our little hearts out into this app until we became friends a couple years ago around this time, after a chat about some #AdventWord posts I’d made. Since then, we’ve worked together on a couple of things, including the coolest battle vest you’ve ever seen and that gorgeous set of portraits that David took for @inconjunct. Though I’ve known her primarily as a visual artist, I’m touched and honored to share Corinne’s moving poetry in the next three posts: x WILDERNESS by @cascadiacore Once a wolf swallowed me, andcarried me in … Continue reading “#AdventWord 2022: Corinne” →

by jad

Let The Reader Understand

Over the years journeying with Christ, I’ve found myself returning again and again to the same sort of affect when searching for God: a sense of feeling God’s presence most deeply in the margins and fringes—the uncanny things that reach out and grab ya, as the Halloweentide song goes. My theological reflections have almost become predictable; sooner or later, I’ll be using the word “strange”—and this Advent reflection is no different. What a strange line we have in this already bizarre Gospel telling by Matthew: “let the reader understand.” It’s the only interjection of its kind in the whole New … Continue reading “Let The Reader Understand” →

by jad

#AdventWord 2022—Messenger

Today’s #AdventWord was meant to be a collaboration, but it didn’t quite come together that way. And yet, even though someone else picked this word out for me, MESSENGER just happens to be one of my more favored from this year’s list. Charlie Brown wasn’t the first to wonder about the meaning of Christmas. From day dot, the Christ event has been the riddle that somehow turned the key on a cosmic mystery; everyone could sense it, but few had the words to describe what it meant, and we still fumble with the language til now. For me, the meaning of Christmas … Continue reading “#AdventWord 2022—Messenger” →