Juliana's Lovely Land of Neurosis: June 2010

"Tara at Rockaway Beach", Rockaway Park, NYC, Date Unknown, Juliana Beasley

The day started too late. I should count my blessings that despite the drizzly cloudy day, it is warm outside. But, I am inside trying to motivate myself to do the unthinkable--that is what has been sitting on my hutch for months. Yes, that wretched task of organizing paperwork.

I can wash dishes, I can make my bed, I can even create piles of paper to clear off surfaces--all self-taught in adulthood-- but, I become terrified and befuddled and lost when it comes to going through papers, making order and putting them away in files.

This is my dire attempt at hitting those piles of receipts and I don't even know what anymore... since as they say, out of sight, out of mind.

I need to trick this sneaky mind that will find anything to do that will distract me from the inevitable of organizing these sheets of hell that continue to infiltrate my attempts of keeping a still and unpolluted mind... as they say, "Quiet Mind". My mind however is still not quiet or still and might never shut up. But, even if to live in the delusion that I have some kind of control over the material things around me... I am determined to put these blaring nuisances away in folders.

The trick is this:

I put up photographs on my blog to cheer me up. Every photographer knows this. Sometimes, a refresher of looking at past images taken can lift the spirit, especially, if fond memories are attached to them. And always the reminder of "Yes, i am a photographer"! That ego bolstering can then be transferred into the courage to fight that bastard called procrastination. Or at least, it has been helpful medicine in the past.

So, I present photographs from the Rockaways.

Yes, the Rockaways, that never ending seaside retreat that has been part home, part sadness, part sweetness and love. I have not been out there in a very very long time. For a variety of reasons of which I regret that I will not inform you at this point in time. As we all know, with the passage of time, any event can seem less intense, it mellows and a whole new interpretation is found.

I will return to my adopted home, however. The Atlantic and sand beckons me and so, do the stories and voices and hugs of my friends out there. Upon finding these old files of negatives scanned, I unearthed my seconds... pictures that I have not shown publicly.

Photographs that I took with 35 mm film, with my fab Contax( I forget the number of it actually) and some with the Contax T2.... damnation! I miss the Contax.

So, here goes.... I hope to continue to pull out some of these "seconds" till I can come to reckon with this past year... a new book, a new home shortly and a relationship rekindled.

I plan to put up more over the next couple of weeks.

All of the following photographs have shoot dates but I haven't taken the time yet to look through my notes and negatives to tell you when. All I can tell you is that they were taken more than 3 or 4 years ago. Things have certainly changed out there since I took these photographs.