I've nothing Else - to bring, You know - / So I keep bringing These- (E.D. #253)

Emily Dickinson feels about right for the present moment, am cooped up, looking out a lot of windows, in my case moving between the couch and the bedroom. This morning, the light in the living room seemed more white than yellow, the light in the bedroom more yellow than white. But everything still felt blurry. Or, like I had to find the blurry in the sharp to tell the truth of right now.

Am sick. Am a lot less sick than I could be and let’s hope it stays that way, knock on wood. But still definitely, actually sick. I look sick. I sound sick. But, again, I don’t feel as bad as I know I could. I wish I weren’t sick. In fact, I wish I could go back in time and do one or two things differently, which might have prevented this, but.

That’s impossible. The light now is different than it was this morning. No surprises there. The light in the bedroom feels drab, even beige, but the bright red-orange-blue paisley of the duvet cover brightens the scene. Still, though. That’s the background. Not the foreground. The foreground—in the metaphorical sense, though not necessarily the artistic sense—is the gaze always looking out, or, in some cases, looking in. To extend rather than define the boundary.

Living room scene, white light. Blurry, out of focus, but the colors pop. Blue-gray sofa, white pillows, red quilt. White lampshade with a gold lamp post in the background, poster on wall. All set against a bank of windows, light streaming through the blinds.

Self-portrait of a smiling me, purposefully out of focus and overexposed. Gray watch cap set over brownish hair—side ponytail visible—and pink sleeveless shirt against white wooden bedstead. Motion shows in the photograph. Something’s wrong, but I’m showing up the way I want to and maybe that’s the most important thing.

Blurry bedroom. A white wooden chest of drawers, a brown hamper with a folded piece of clothing on top, a bank of windows covered in blinds but that hardly matters because the light streams through. White AC window unit. Radiator covered in cream paint below the window with a gray cat resting on top. Extremely blurry. Like watching a still tableau form underwater. Maybe the light isn’t yellow after all, or maybe it was at one point, just not at this moment, not in this frame. The truth is, the best way to blur an image is to get your subjects to move, but if that can’t or won’t happen, just move the camera instead.