This is a digital alteration of a polaroid picture I took when I was 6. The original was purposely out of focus.

This is a digital alteration of a polaroid picture I took when I was 6. The original was purposely out of focus.

Peering into the past
lenses initiate selective focus
a fantastication brought about
through a child’s eyes
prismatic sensibility only possible then
encased in the vault of unextinguishable incunabulum

developing the picture as it emerges
revealing the essence of a life
showing one moment, one side of perception
in its inability to capture without speciousness
(the exposure length is too short)
belying motion, upheaval and change

in the niveous nature of memory
my meandering dreams recast
glimpses of truth like halations appear
ocular glitches hinting at tathata
of what can be distinguished, claimed
flashbulbs of burning visions

encoding through elaborative rehearsal
all known and unkenned phenomena
to create a picture story, a meaning,
yet these converging lenses are limited
by one focal length expanding as
depth of field grows, patulous schemas incubate

my evolving mind forms eidetic imagery
uniting as episodic memory stitches an identity
holographic retrieval reveals
clarity amidst the circle of confusion
a positive memory distortion prevails
polaroid process makes positive images

without negatives (they were never created)
artmaking acts as my nepenthe
coalescing strands of experience
collaging each image of striving
into a concatenation of aspects of a self
lighting recesses in this house of mirth

Notes: Method of Loci: A mnemonic device that relies on memorized spatial relationships to establish order and recollect memorial content. Selective Focus: Is a technique in photography that allows one part of the image to be sharp while the rest of the image is out of focus. It works to great effect in macro shots where the foreground should stand out intensely from the background. Fantastication: Action of framing in fancy. Incunabulum: Early stages of development. Speciousness: An appearance of truth that is false or deceptive; seeming plausibility. Halation: Spreading of light beyond its proper boundaries to form a fog round the edges of a bright image in a photograph. Tathata: Ultimate nature of all things, as expressed in phenomena but inexpressible in words. Encoding: The process of transforming information into a form that can be stored in memory. Elaborative Rehearsal: A memory strategy that involves relating new information to something that is already known Unkenned: Unknown, strange, unperceived, unexplored. Converging Lens: Lens such that a beam of light passing through it is brought to a point or focus. The lens of your eye and that of a camera are converging lenses. Focal Length: The focal length of an optical system is a measure of how strongly the system converges or diverges light. In most photography where the subject is essentially infinitely far away, longer focal length (lower optical power) leads to higher magnification and a narrower angle of view; conversely, shorter focal length or higher optical power is associated with a wider angle of view. Depth of Field: In optics, particularly as it relates to film and photography, depth of field (DOF) is the distance between the nearest and farthest objects in a scene that appear acceptably sharp in an image. Although a lens can precisely focus at only one distance at a time, the decrease in sharpness is gradual on each side of the focused distance. Patulous: Open, expanding, gaping Schemas: The integrated frameworks of knowledge and assumptions a person has about people, objects, and events which affects how the person encodes and recalls information. Eidetic Imagery: The ability to retain the image of a visual stimulus for several minutes after it has been removed from view. Episodic Memory: The type of declarative memory that records events as they have been subjectively experienced. Circle of Confusion: In optics, a circle of confusion is an optical spot caused by a cone of light rays from a lens not coming to a perfect focus when imaging a point source. In photography, the circle of confusion is used to determine the depth of field, the part of an image that is acceptably sharp. Positive Bias (Memory Distortion): States that pleasant events are better remembered than unpleasant ones and memories of unpleasant events become more pleasant over time. Nepenthe: Something capable of causing obliteration or reduction of grief or suffering. Concatenation: A series of interconnected or interdependent things or events.