On Longing (NSFW)
On Longing
One day I woke up and I realized that I miss you. It was a strange realization because you had been dead for weeks. It was the way you always said my name when I called that did it, like my call was all that mattered to you.
Now I miss you so much it hurts.
My hands and my eyelids ache from being clenched tight in grief and anger, and I want to fully exhale and not breathe again so that I make myself miss the air that I breathe and that you do not.
I long for you, my friend.
It wasn’t until I no longer had my best friend that I realized I had something to say to the world. He always told me I did. He was right, and unfortunately, will never know it. These pictures are not made for him, or because of him. They do not have anything to do with him as a person, only as an idea. These pictures are simply a response to the realization that I miss him. Grief came into my house, and this is what came back out. This body of work is my “morning rose”, and my “rainbow of the salt sand-wave,” to paraphrase poet John Keats.
These are pictures are about flight, death or our lost loves, physical beauty, intimacy, and grace. They are drawn from my dreams and waking dreams, as well as existing poetry, literature, and photography. I can imagine most people longing for at least one of these things, and that is how I first approached my own mourning process: by admitting I am not alone.
As an atheist ex- Christian, death becomes difficult to deal with because I no longer have that ‘blessed assurance’. Where a Christian believes they will someday be reunited with their loved ones in a holy city in the sky, I do not know if I will ever see my friend again. If grief is longing without hope, as the saying goes, then, according to simple algebra, hope is longing without grief, and longing becomes the intermingling of hope and grief.
Somehow through all this I still hold hope, although that gets more difficult as time progresses.
Frank Rapant Nassau, NY February, 2011 Statement revised September, 2014
Email me at contact@frankrapant.net for pricing details.
Read MoreOne day I woke up and I realized that I miss you. It was a strange realization because you had been dead for weeks. It was the way you always said my name when I called that did it, like my call was all that mattered to you.
Now I miss you so much it hurts.
My hands and my eyelids ache from being clenched tight in grief and anger, and I want to fully exhale and not breathe again so that I make myself miss the air that I breathe and that you do not.
I long for you, my friend.
It wasn’t until I no longer had my best friend that I realized I had something to say to the world. He always told me I did. He was right, and unfortunately, will never know it. These pictures are not made for him, or because of him. They do not have anything to do with him as a person, only as an idea. These pictures are simply a response to the realization that I miss him. Grief came into my house, and this is what came back out. This body of work is my “morning rose”, and my “rainbow of the salt sand-wave,” to paraphrase poet John Keats.
These are pictures are about flight, death or our lost loves, physical beauty, intimacy, and grace. They are drawn from my dreams and waking dreams, as well as existing poetry, literature, and photography. I can imagine most people longing for at least one of these things, and that is how I first approached my own mourning process: by admitting I am not alone.
As an atheist ex- Christian, death becomes difficult to deal with because I no longer have that ‘blessed assurance’. Where a Christian believes they will someday be reunited with their loved ones in a holy city in the sky, I do not know if I will ever see my friend again. If grief is longing without hope, as the saying goes, then, according to simple algebra, hope is longing without grief, and longing becomes the intermingling of hope and grief.
Somehow through all this I still hold hope, although that gets more difficult as time progresses.
Frank Rapant Nassau, NY February, 2011 Statement revised September, 2014
Email me at contact@frankrapant.net for pricing details.
