Awake 2022-2023

There is a hum beneath the noise of the world, a song that doesn’t wait for us to hear it. I’ve been chasing it—this quiet, wild hymn—through forests and streets, into the pulse of waves and the cracked skin of stone. Animism, they call it, the belief that every soul is awake. But it’s more than belief; it’s a knowing that settles in your bones when you stand still long enough to listen.

The camera feels like an inadequate tool some days, but it’s the closest thing I have to a pen for writing this story. Through the lens, I try to trace the invisible threads that bind us to the world. I’ve seen it: the way the light slips through the canopy of a forest, touching each leaf like a blessing. The way the ocean breathes, exhaling mist that clings to your skin as if it’s trying to tell you something. Even the asphalt of a city street feels alive when you catch the shadows just right, the cracks whispering secrets from the earth below.

I think of Jeffers, his cliffs and hawks and relentless truth. He knew the vastness, the wildness, the way humanity is just one small flame in an eternal wind. Yesterday, I knelt by a stream, watching water carve its path through stone. It struck me then: this is a conversation older than time. The stone doesn’t resist the water; it listens, gives way. The water doesn’t dominate; it flows, adapts. I clicked the shutter, but the image felt secondary to the moment itself—a communion, not a capture.

River 2022.07