Letter to Life.

I think a lot - too much. When I write, I think - so instead of writing, I sit there, paralyzed. I look at the blinking cursor; stare blankly at the equally empty page of my notebook - so many ideas, and a chance to make them all that much more real - the only way I can convert them into more than thoughts, cement them in reality, is to scream, not write; to run away - from thoughts, from paper, from reality - a notoriously different means of communicating than writing.

So I swallow it down, and write.

When I was young, I found a means of absolution from the at-the-time-unknown-to-me plight of having thoughts - a Canon my mother rarely used. I learned to walk, I learned to hold a camera, I learned to talk - born in Moscow post-Perestroika, I learned that the world is often in flux and that hope for tomorrow has been exhausted a century ago. I learned to be quiet when my drunken grandfather banged on our tiny apartment's locked bedroom door; I learned to love him carefully when, sober, he taught me to play chess; I learned to hide myself lest I anger the wrong person - I learned to observe, and to fear being observed.

When we moved to USA, when I moved away from my parent's home in small-town Southeast Texas; when, after graduating college, a feat that the younger me thought impossible -- because how am I to live long enough to make it to the age of being a college student? - I knew that, to remain invisible, is to maximize my chances of living to tomorrow. Life, it's spotlight, they were there too - any time it dared to be pointed in my direction, anytime that I did anything that may have gotten people to notice me, I ran for my life. When all that Life occurred - through my sure-fire knowledge that I must remain out of harms way, I missed so much.

Lately, I have been learning something new - to Live; to shed the corpse of past experience, the pain and suffering, survival, coping - how to take the present in all of its unfiltered glory, with my chin held high, ready for more pain, if only for a chance at glimpsing joy. I've seen so many try this, too - for causes so noble that anything I have ever aspired to feels trivial. I've seen them be cut-down in their prime by the very life which they so desperately sought for others. I feel I've seen it all, and I am still so young - I've seen enough to know that there is so much more to see. It haunts me - because there is no shedding that which happened to others, which I have only observed - there is only moving forward - all of me; all of them in me. There is no shedding of the past, or better tomorrow; there is only Life - here & now.

My camera has been my salvation, my art - the means of screaming my thoughts into the world. Yet even that, I often do with my own hand over the mouth - lest someone ever hear me. No more - my dear Life, this is for you - I cant stay silent any longer. I beg you - hear my scream, take notice - I've so much left which I am yet to show you

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