leaking light.

Yes, I am still very much alive. I'm terribly sorry for being missing in action. I am still here, I still catch up with what my friends post, and I do have this incredible need to share my ramblings with you. I just don't take enough pictures. Maybe because I live a pretty static life. I don't move from place to place, I surround myself with the very same people I knew few weeks ago, few months ago, even in 2013. However, my life does change. Unfortunately, life's cruel (or maybe just people are), so this is how much I'll share. Please just know, that I am, in fact, happy. And I try my best to cherish this happiness that I've gotten from the universe. I told myself, K, you really need to finish a roll of film this week. You've got to. You've got to write.

I'm glad to tell you that I've accomodated. I accepted the changes the fourth term at med school brought, and I embraced them the best way I could. It was a killer, though. But I'm doing alright now, thankfully. I'm currently on this line straight up to holidays. March, April, May and June. Lack of sleep (at least 4 hours a night, okay?), lack of social interactions, lack of time, suffering through Microbiology classes. While all I want is to live my life like a Mumford & Sons song. Recklessly, at the top of my lungs. God, oh how I want to be spontaneous. Wake up next to someone, again and again. Feel inspired. BE NOISY. Spring's an amazing season, hands down. I can feel it in my bones, on my lips and in my heart. Days like these, I am actually certain that we will be alright, whatever happens. In the last post, I wrote that March '14 has a lot to live up to. By that I meant not only the first two months of this year, but perhaps mainly March '13, which seemed to be a pretty special month. Now, I'm mature enough to finally face this comparison, and to say that last year I was just a child, ready to hold onto anything, anything at all, that felt alright. I did waste some time, some terrible amount of time, that I had on my hands back then. But most of all, it was all in my head. March '14, even if a bit further away from one hundred percent clarity, is something real, which can be touched with my hands, pulled closer, tapped with my fingers. How fantastic is that? My mountains are so high, my valleys will seem like they're all the way down in hell, when it all ends. But screw that, it's not my fault I'm happy.

I am in mood to write love letters, but I don't even write in my diary anymore. There's this unstoppable stream of thoughts, flowing down my mind. I enjoy having certain dates to look forward to. Even though nobody knows what's going to happen tomorrow, and yup, plans might turn to dust as we turn to ashes, yet for me, a moment of blissful ignorance of the odds, so naive, but so soothing, is all I dream of whenever I open my eyes in the morning. I dream of it all being easier for both of us. Of the misadventure part being out of focus, just like in the first picture of that post. 

Love & Misadventure. The book I told you about back in December, finally making an appearance! :)

"Can I ask you something? Anything.
Why is it every time we say goodnight, it feels like goodbye?"

To say a few words about the pictures included in this post. Probably the one that stands out the most is the photograph where my whole year can be seen wearing white lab coats, right before we went to see an actual autopsy, thanks to our Patomorphology class. Quite unusual moment. Thank you K for making me capture this :) Other than that I included some light leaks that especially caught my attention while browsing through my new pictures. I absolutely love Agfa 400, but next time I'll be opting for 200 again :) It was lovely trying wider perspective with that new 28mm lens, but I do miss that insane bokeh Helios 44/2 has going on! :)

Please, be safe. With love, K.

memories in black and white.

Life’s too short to drink crappy coffee and cry over boys who don’t care.

How alive am I? Much, and painfully. To the point of strolling the city mindlessly and thinking whether that nice guy asking for directions just a sec ago, was perhaps destiny knocking on my door. Nah, I don't think so. February was an ass kicker. But most of the month I was shooting with a black and white film inside of my camera. Nostalgic. Yes, that month was nostalgic in some kind of way.

When life gives us lemons, we either make a lemonade or throw those damn fruit at someone. Have it your way, we say. Or we make an orange juice and leave the universe in awe. We're so cool, right?

I hate feeling the changes approaching, their silent breathing down my neck, and my insides twisting when my hopes fall to my feet. Been there, done that, survived. Nothing's ever as bad as we predict. I get laughed at when I say that in my life I follow one simple rule 'enjoy the little things'. I do, though. I do. Either it's a door bell, caffeine dose or an afternoon with someone lovable. That's the closest we ever get to happiness. And this is what I cling to and what recharges my batteries :)

helios 28mm

I genuinely thought you were my way to equanimity, when in fact you're my way down. All the way down to places I have been before and always wished I would not come back. But I'm here again, and I'm freezing. It feels like being pushed into an air-hole on a lake in the middle of the winter of the century. Maybe you're the winter of the century, and I should have known that earlier, before I stepped outside completely bare. Yes, I have definitely been there before. Felt the guilt, the tiredness, lack of hope.  There's this lump in my throat, which I feel like I could swallow back down, but it keeps appearing and it keeps killing me from the inside, just as I try to keep the tears in. Over the years I have learnt to cry silently. My most sincere tears are tears cried in complete silence.

As a kid, I would count backwards from ten and imagine at one, there would be an explosion– perhaps caused by a rogue planet crashing into Earth or some other major catastrophe. When nothing happened, I'd feel relieved and at the same time, a little disappointed.

I think of you at ten, the first time I saw you. Your smile at nine and how it lit up something inside me I had thought long dead. Your lips at eight pressed against mine and at seven, your warm breath in my ear and your hands everywhere. You tell me you love me at six and at five we have our first real fight. At four we have our second and three, our third. At two you tell me you can't go on any longer and then at one, you ask me to stay.

And I am relieved, so relieved–and a little disappointed. 
 

But on the other hand, I've got a new lens. So there's at least this tiny piece of good information that I carry. After a long time of whining, searching and mourning high prices of lomo equipment, I finally found something to add to my collection. Since I could not be happier with my Praktica, which was cheap, but most of all - reliable, instead of changing the camera, I reached out to get myself a new lens. I have been using the 58mm Helios 44-2 since last summer, when it totally stole my little heart with its precious bokeh. Having found a 28mm Helios lens with a price that was not mindblowing, I decided to buy it and take it for a spin! What lens are you looking forward to adding to your collection? For now I am stuck with the M42 mount, so let there be light for me and my new Helios lens. Cannot wait to start shooting! And since right now I feel like buying a one way ticked to Guatemala and never coming back, looks like the adventure's about to begin. Or end. Or whatever.

You can stack misery, you can pack despair, you can even wear your sorrow – but come tomorrow you must change your clothes. Everyone knows pain. We are not meant to carry it forever.