โStart in the middle of things, no prologue is needed.โ Is what some writing teacher told me somewhere, sometime during my time studying this art, this thing that has become a way of life for me.
But is that what we need as humans, to be dropped right into the middle of things?Take this picture above. That fluffy Seussian tail belongs to my dog, Ruby, and that fire hydrant is something she is attracted to. But thatโs not what drew me to this picture, at least not at first. It was a cast off, a photo I initially ruled as a mistake. Itโs only now going over it a few months later that I can see this photo for what it was/is. A moment in between caught in between. But instead of being in the middle of things which is the advice most writers get at some point in their study, this shot seems to be more about being right in between things. Between a clear image with a subject in focus, and a blurry mess of nothing lies this frame which depicts life between frames, and is more of what Iโve been feeling lately.
It is possible to live between two giant things. Between teaching and parenting, between being a creator and a consumer, we spend more of our time in between things than we do in the middle of things, yet we apparently donโt want to write about something that shows the moments before everything clicks into place. To me, in these strange times, in images like these we can see who we are about to be. We see that most of life is this way, strange, thrilling, and not yet imprinted upon the senses of history and time.