Emptiness
originally created: 29/01/2023
last updated: 04/05/2024
WARNING
This album has surpassed the acceptable amount of pictures for easy navigation in this website (125 photos!😲), so it is officially being archived. There won't be any more pictures posted here, and all that relates to the category (emptiness) will be in a new album: Emptiness II. The same will be done with any albums that surpass 100 photos, moved to the One-shot section at The Trove's main page. The dropbox folder will remain the same, though, if you use that. Changes will take effect on the next update to the category.
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Emptiness. Solitude, abandonment, inspired longing in empty space — isolated individual in time, intracorporeal experience of self-enlightenment. Not mindfulness, but the ability to smell the stench of the self, feel the texture of sorrow, and sorrow not as disadvantage, but advantageous gift of the divine, such as the soothing smell of flowers or the greenish peace of mellow fields; dark in reality, dark and cold in the after-hours, when the city sleeps. Emptiness. Of street, of person, a thousand people snore around you, the ground is infested by foot prints. Not loneliness, but the experience of what comes after. Ruling over memories, over ghosts.
One day I'll write a book on the idea of emptiness, as in the journey of an individual in an empty world, but to be clear, not about the journey, about the stinging feeling of being the only one. A poetry collection maybe? A No Weeping In the Outhouse of sorts? I feel so connected to this "school of feeling" that I could write a bible of books on the lows of living, and maybe I really will, who knows?, what's important at the moment is what I got to show right now: emptiness in pictures.
When the hanging out is over and my friends are fast asleep on their beds and I'm too drunk and too dopeless to blink an eye, this is what I see, emptiness, everywhere and all around me. No one's in the streets besides me, vehicles appear rare and far between, and all the street-lights blink yellow, even on (before) busy avenues. It's the city telling me that I should not be there, and since I am, there's no responsibility to what destiny could bestow upon me. I could remove all my clothes and roll naked on the street and nobody would ever know; I could run until the burning in my lungs and legs became unbearable, screaming threats to all human kind, and nobody would really care to bat an eye; if a masked robber shot me in the back of the head, it would be hours until someone noticed I wasn't just a hobo. This nudity makes reality so potentially risky, but in truth so incredibly lonely; it's safer than it seems, even if you're singing your songs and stomping your rock boots. This safety made me a lurker.
When I'm spinning my stiletto, sat at an empty park watching the stray dogs sleep, I truly am a ruler to that world; a meritless, vain tyrant of worthless ruling, leading no subjects. In a world of solitude you are the everything, and for that reason you're absolutely nothing. The hierarchy of the self, an empty roundtable, the void consumes you and all that's certain is the livid absolute of power. Tyranny. Emptiness. The puzzle of the human. Now, pictures, lots of them:
Exploring a rainy afternoon...
...I noticed there wasn't much life around. Snapped a picture, screamed, people appeared.
A street sign within radius of the skate park
A hollow sidewalk
Uncanny architecture of emptiness
bandOf course, at night some buildings may look "empty" and "uncanny" and "lifeless", and that's perfectly normal because they really are supposed to be like that. But some other buildings are just built different, and that feeling becomes more prominent within the same context. Looking at them makes you feel uncomfortable, there's just something wrong about it, and these are a handful of pictures of buildings like that.
The architecture of this one is way too simple, the houses look way too basic, and from a certain angle it feels like they just stretch out forever. I was way too drunk when snapping this one so it's not the best example, but still.
Lonely orangishness
because street lights
An abandoned downtown
Where activity reigns in day and dies at night.
A not-so abandoned downtown
When young souls lurk about
Sidewalk bread
It's unholy how many pictures I took of this bread when I found it, but these are the two best ones anyway. It also appears in Eat, sing, fuck and die.
The Car Store
Junk fridges
The Tap Store
100% white people shit
People
Definitely one of my favorite spots. So full of people, full of life, so many different characters to observe and explore, experiences to write about. But when the cars are all at the garage, and there's no reason for anyone to be there anymore, this is what you see: emptiness and ghosts.
A mile to be walked
The start of many urban journeys.
gangbang
The other "stores"
The outer town
Busted cars and not-busted cars
Designer house-store
Truck parts
Hidden building
The warehouse
Tires
Midnight saviors
In those moments and places when your hand is in the back pocket, ready to pull the blade and cut throat of any evil lurking about in the shadows, lit up windows and porch lights become surprisingly soothing. They're safe zones, where you cannot be harmed; molochian lights as ethereal wings to protect a mere mortal — midnight savior.
The piracy department
Loosies
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You can use these pictures for non-commercial purposes, I probably won't oppose, but give proper credits and let me know through the e-mail on the About section if you do.