Trace Elements
2019—2022
Compiled in 2024
Photography (B/W) + Text
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The fog’s lifting—
not all at once, but enough to see a further than usual.
My mind holds a lightness that’s been absent.
Thoughts string together more coherently.
A line of possibilities begins to take shape:
practical thoughts—coffee, shower, tidy up—running alongside deeper lines of concern.
It usually takes me a few days to notice the change.
I take my meds.
I move through the house without dropping anything or nudging anything over.
There’s a deftness to my movements.
I’m more deliberate with things.
It took me too long to learn that depressive spells are just that—spells of time.
They pass, like feelings of regret after a fast food meal.
Within depression, things are not all bad.
Nor is it right to say that depression = sadness.
It’s more nuanced than that.
There are different sides to it—
it can embrace me with the familiarity of an old friend,
or hurt me in ways that only someone close can.
Mine’s been diagnosed as dysthymia.
It sounds like the name of an Narnian nymph.
Or the title of a disstrack.
Etymologically, it’s rooted in Ancient Greek:
dys—difficult, bad;
thymia—soul, spirit, mood.
It’s considered a low-level chronic depression—
not acute, but persistent.
It waxes and wanes like the moon’s phases.
The water’s boiling.
But I’m not ready to move.
Instead, I watch the mountainside through the window.
Greens shift subtly as the day moves across their surface.
It’s still today, though the lighter fronds of palm trees tremble in the lazy breeze.
A certain kind of beauty becomes visible in the slow hours of a depressive period.
It seeps through my consciousness.
It’s not joy, exactly,
but something steadier.
A form of clarity.
A moment of solace that insists gently:
‘Even now, this is the world, and you’re still in it.’
There are days when the sun bleaches the world’s details, and we feel like coral reefs in ever-warming tides.
Other times, darkness settles in—
not with violence,
but like a slowly drawn curtain.
Eventually, our eyes adjust.
Details emerge.
I’d like to live in a world of balance.
And I think, sometimes, I can see a path there.
On days when I float through the world like someone else’s idea.
And also on days when I don’t.
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