As most of you know, I have a strong familiarity with death and its unfolding, especially in humans, and a fondness for and kinship with death and dead things, all in the most holy, positive and beautiful sense… in the way one honors the combined soul and humanity of a teacher they have come to not only respect but to understand to such a depth that they recognize in them a truly kindred spirit.
iPhone 17 Pro + DistressedFX
Endings speak a language I have learned well: honest, unpretentious, and oddly comforting once you understand and accept that there is no escaping them. In fall and winter, I find that endings, at least in nature, also make for the most interesting and oddly beautiful subjects. Therefore, prepare to be lovingly spammed with my perspectives and perceptions. 😌
iPhone 17 Pro + DistressedFX
Death is our friend precisely because it brings us into absolute and passionate presence with all that is here.
— Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet (1929)
entry sixteen — scattered light, fractured grace: a quiet archive of light, loss, and what remains.
iPhone 17 Pro + VSCO + DistressedFX + Lightroom Mobile (watermark only).
Evening gathers in a bluish-purple hush, and the crunch of dirt and rock seems to echo around me. Steadily and with intention, I put one foot in front of the other.
The birds fall silent, and the wind begins its quiet work. Loosening what I’ve held too tightly. Lifting the thin, trembling pieces of me that never settled into place.
They rise like seeds learning the shape of their own release, drifting out of me in a soft unspooling. The silhouette remains. Stem, leaf, the stark line of what endures. Everything lighter unthreads itself into motion.
What once felt like a tangle becomes a brief choreography, a small mercy in the dimming light. Loss, I’m learning, is sometimes only a shifting of weight.
The wind carries the rest. The jumbled thoughts. The old ache. The unspoken sentences that kept circling my ribs. Let them scatter. Let them drift beyond reach.
What stays is quieter, but honest. A rooted shape against the fading sky, held together not by certainty, but by the simple grace of letting go.
The sunset this evening caught my eye as I glanced up from the command prompt to rest my eyes.
“cmd —> DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth” be damned, I forgot the problematic machine.
I gravitated outside as though an unseen force beckoned me… and instead of me capturing a backyard moment, the moment froze me in place and then swallowed me whole.
It happened quietly, the way revelation always does: when the day was no longer sure of itself.
The horizon drew one long, trembling breath, and the sky exhaled light like a confession, soft and burning all at once.
For a few heartbeats, the forest became a cathedral. Oaks turned to stained glass, every vein of every leaf catching the final ember of the sun’s breath.
The air itself seemed to glow with a kind of surrender, as though heaven was remembering how to let go and reminding me all over again.
I stood beneath it, small but aware, suspended in that thin seam between the living, the leaving, and the memory of the already gone.
The colors didn’t ask to stay; they simply poured through the cracks of the canopy and into me, as if to say, “grace doesn’t vanish when the light fades. It only changes hue.”
When the sky went gray again, it felt less like an ending and more like an exhale finished.
Fall is already upon us. Nature seems to have gotten ahead of itself in recent weeks and the world around me, from my backyard to the vast wilderness, has already begun to experience the cycles of death and decay that the fall season brings to prepare us to enter a season of rest.
I’ve found myself meditating on this as I’ve observed the process and explored the details of it with my camera lately. Here are some of the fruits of these meditations — especially the ones I experienced while studying this little corner of my backyard that has been unseasonably filled with the tiniest but cutest mushrooms.
We so often use falling leaves as the symbol of letting go in autumn — but mushrooms tell another side of the story. They are decay in action, the hidden transformation beneath the surface, breaking down what once was so that life can be nourished again. They remind me that endings are not passive; they are active processes of renewal, just as necessary as the more obvious metaphors we tend to notice.
What follows in this post may not feel “light and pretty,” but the deeper work is still life-giving. Much of it was born from reviewing and processing my recently captured mushroom images — small, humble, not glamorous, yet quietly essential. These considerations and introspections, though they may seem less than inviting, have at their core offered me encouragement.
When you strip away the politics, money, and power structures, what you’re left with is a spiritual war. That’s the root of it all.
The “deep state,” the “new world order,” whatever names we slap on it in the 3D — those are just costumes. The real battle is what Paul described in Ephesians 6:
“We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, powers, rulers of the darkness of this world, and spiritual wickedness in high places.”
In short, demonic and low-level forces that have always tried to mimic, distort, and overthrow the authority of God.
From Babel to Babylon to Rome to today, it’s the same rebellion recycled. Every empire that tries to erase God ends up becoming a shadow play of Babel — the same arrogance, the same lust for control, and the same inevitable collapse. The schemes shift form — empire, propaganda, deception, perversion — but the spirit behind them hasn’t changed.
It’s the same old serpent trying to counterfeit creation and place itself on the throne. But here’s the thing you need to remember, if you are of the light:
Humans can choose to align with that darkness or resist it. That’s why it looks like whole institutions, movements, or leaders are “possessed” by this agenda. But the truth is, they’re vessels. Some willingly, some blindly. And even when people align with darkness, they are never the true source of its power — and they are never beyond God’s reach if they repent of and rebuke the darkness.
The vessels may change, but the spirit behind them is the same counterfeit. It’s not their power. It’s borrowed power, and because the Devil is a trickster and a liar, it cannot outlast the sovereignty of Source truth.
That’s why, in the light of evil tragedy, the instinct to pray “God bless and protect” is attacked and pushed down so brazenly by some, and depended upon and held on to so tightly by others. The only way for the dark to win is to try to sniff out the light.
The only shield that stands against the dark, though, isn’t more politics, more anger, or more fleshly fight — it’s divine covering. That’s why light beings, from Buddha to Jesus, called us salt and light — because no matter how deep the night gets, even the smallest flame cannot be overcome.
Light exposes. Truth cuts through lies. And no empire, no “order,” no demonic hierarchy driving human ego has ever been able to out-rule the Source of the Universe: Love.
The darkness may rage, but it has already lost. Its decay is inevitable. Our task is not to fear its noise, but to keep carrying the light that cannot be extinguished.
if you are only just beginning to see the reality of this battle and sense that light, do not be afraid of how small it may seem in you. Even the faintest flicker is enough to drive back the dark. Nurture it. Walk with it. Let it steady your steps.
The path may feel unfamiliar, but you are not walking it alone. Every spark joins the greater flame, and together we rise.
Keep going — the light you carry is already proof that the darkness has not won.
This image wasn’t meant to carry all this, but tonight, it does. It holds the rupture I didn’t know I’d been tiptoeing around all week.
A decade ago today, my father died. Not on the 13th, when the machines started breathing for him—that was just when I knew he was gone. On the 18th, at this hour, the veil broke open for real. And now here I am—ten years later—haunted by dreams I couldn’t explain and a sudden stillness in my creativity I couldn’t shake.
Until now.
I thought I was just tired. Distracted. Stuck. But it was grief. It was reverence in disguise.
My soul remembered the date even when my mind forgot. That’s the strange thing about grief that matures—it doesn’t scream anymore. It hums, low and holy, beneath everything. It clouds the light, then sharpens it. It takes your voice, then gives it back with new timbre.
This image—originally photographed by Mikhail Nilov—became a sort of altar. I edited it using Mextures, VSCO, DistressedFX, and Lightroom, layering texture over color, blurring presence and absence, trying to capture what it feels like when sorrow doesn’t knock—it just saturates.
Sanctum.
There’s chaos in this. Petals and light blurred through glass and rain. Beauty you can’t quite hold. A yellow rose—like the ones we laid at his grave—folding in on itself. A daisy, centered in clarity, yet surrounded by blur.
That’s what this night feels like. Clarity in the middle of confusion. Stillness in the swirl.
Earlier tonight, as I outlined these words in my head while I felt my way through the shift I felt in real-time in the energy, I said to myself:
“You didn’t lose your creativity. You’re in holy pause. This isn’t numbness—it’s reverence. You were unconsciously grieving a resurrection-day anniversary, and your spirit bowed its head before your body could even name the loss.”
And now, I feel it even more deeply: Tonight isn’t for making things happen. It’s for honoring what already did.
Tonight is for prayer—prayer and intercession not only over the souls of loved ones who have already crossed over, but over one very important soul who’s still here. One who I know doesn’t understand why I had to go.
The truth is, those crossed over souls didn’t leave to hurt me…even though it did. They left because it was time. That was my burden to bear. The lessons they left me with were my responsibility to sort through, clean up, and learn.
Likewise, I didn’t leave the living out of anger or rejection, or even lack of love. I left because God Himself guided me in a different direction, even if they didn’t want to go that way, or grow that way, too. I will never have a choice above God. And I know that hurts…it hurts me, too.
Forgiveness is an ongoing action, reflected not in words but in the quiet practice of letting go. The love is, and always will be, unconditional. “Anyway love” always is. And my soul will carry a piece of all of their souls within it. Always.
A lot of things are coming full circle for me tonight. Invisible messages carried by unseen energies are releasing a kind of clarity within me—one of deeper substance and fuller understanding, puzzles pieces arriving and falling into place in a way I’ve never experienced before. The spiritual warfare, the dreams full of ghosts, the aching grief—none of that is new. But the understanding I have tonight…it reaches deeper than anything I’ve ever touched before.
Tonight isn’t for sorting through the rubble, cleaning up the floors of my memory, or putting all the lessons learned into neat little compartments in my mind. After all, I’ve already been processing through that, and slowly overcoming it all, for some time now.
No, tonight isn’t for being swallowed by the hauntings of my own heart. Tonight is for letting grief rain gently through the window, washing my soul—and watching how even the blur, when looked at with love and patience, can be textured out, shaped into a symbolic snapshot in time—capturing both the beauty and the chaos—and become art.
It is the emblem of the closure of what has, all at once, been the most painful and the most beautiful decade of my life: the one where, in the end, I finally met God.
I speak the name of Jesus over you In your hurting, in your sorrow I will ask my God to move I speak the name ’cause it’s all that I can do In desperation, I’ll seek Heaven And pray this for you:
I pray for your healing That circumstances will change I pray that the fear inside will flee in Jesus name I pray that a breakthrough Would happen today I pray miracles over your life in Jesus name I pray for revival For restoration of faith I pray that the dead will come alive in Jesus name
A random, inexplicable flux. That insatiable need to create. Some unseen force guiding me to conjure, to express, to birth something.
It happened again last night, but in the same instant that I felt the proverbial tap on my shoulder, a heaviness threatened to settle there. Born and bred creatives know this experience, all the way into their bones.
It comes with a dread, and creates a dangerous, self-sabotaging pre-regret. It manifests from a complete lack of vision:
No concept. No plan. No brilliant idea waiting to be realized. Certainly, no idea where to begin.
Lost but not lacking awareness, and determined to win over the weight of what really boils down to fear of failure, I asked, “what do we want? What is the spark?”
As expected, the silence answered with more of the same cryptic transmission: “Just ‘do.’ Ripples turn into waves.”
So, I rummaged.
I plundered through the old tools and the old toys. You know the ones—the “Ghosts of Projects Past,” our artistic Scrooge’s worst nightmares. The ones tucked away in dusty, overflowing “Likely Garbage” photography folders and long forgotten apps.
The ancient, the analog, the abandoned fragments of another era.
I pulled out the remnants of what once inspired me, not because I knew what I was doing, but because whatever had stirred was creating a riot within me.
These moments are never a question of choice, so I just…explored. Guessed. Played. Flowed.
s e n t i n e lg r i e f
Sometimes, perhaps most often, that is the best option. Even if the outcome feels unfamiliar or strange, or doesn’t resemble the “usual” desired outcome. Even if the result is wildly imperfect or impossible to explain…
It is in this uncertain, instinctual process that magic lives and breathes. This is where it sizzles and crackles and arcs, like a furious current from Tesla’s coil—except in this case we don’t need Faraday’s cage.
Creatives—artists, writers, dreamers, philosophers—need the opposite. We need this chaotic energy to touch, and to consume, us. It is the rejection, the not allowing it to, that kills us…and that is always a slow, excruciating death, from the inside out.
In art and creativity, exciting results are not found in safety. They’re not found in perfection. Organic process is not found in planning. Everything in and about the Creative archetype is found in the act of simply showing up.
Creative inspiration doesn’t ask for permission. It asks for presence. It asks that you show up and let it burn through you. The only wrong move is not moving at all.
📷 Lumix GX7 + Panasonic Leica DG Macro-Elmarit 45mm f/2.8 ASPH Mega OIS ⚒️ Fragment + Mextures + Lightroom
entry ten — scattered light, fractured grace: a quiet archive of light, loss, and what remains.
Black-eyed Susan (Rudbeckia hirta), a fading ember of late summer—graceful even in decay, still holding the shape of sunlight after the bloom has passed. Lumix GX7 + Panasonic Leica DG Macro-Elmarit 45mm f/2.8 ASPH. MEGA O.I.S., VSCO (A10PRO), Mextures (personalized texture formula: MEZPZZC), Lightroom Mobile (watermark only).
My mother always told me, in every possible circumstance a child might ever need encouragement, “Do your best, and leave the rest. It’ll all come right some day or night.”
It was a line from “Black Beauty, by Anna Sewell.”
She was a third grade teacher, a grammar Nazi, and a mother trying her damndest to connect with me and, well, do her best.
And, as ornery and difficult a young person as I could often be, she never knew that I believed her…
…even when I forgot I did.
Black-eyed Susan (Rudbeckia hirta), a fading ember of late summer—graceful even in decay, still holding the shape of sunlight after the bloom has passed. Lumix GX7 + Panasonic Leica DG Macro-Elmarit 45mm f/2.8 ASPH. MEGA O.I.S., VSCO (A10PRO), Mextures (personalized texture formula: MEZPZZC), Lightroom Mobile (watermark only).
There was so much distance between us as I struggled through high school with her overbearing “sin obsessed” guidance, and she struggled to save my soul.
Even when the days were so long, when they bled into each other, and when the nights felt like punishments I hadn’t earned, as her brain and body were swallowed by Alzheimer’s.
Even when the thread broke, or maybe I cut it, when she died…I honored and nursed a clean, holy wound in the shape of freedom for both of us, from past grievances, from debts yet unpaid, from fear, from tension, from aching hearts and confused minds and the evils of that horrific disease.
Still, that line stayed, like a soft breath. Like a healing balm. Like the part of her that couldn’t leave, because it lived in me.
Black-eyed Susan (Rudbeckia hirta), a fading ember of late summer—graceful even in decay, still holding the shape of sunlight after the bloom has passed. Lumix GX7 + Panasonic Leica DG Macro-Elmarit 45mm f/2.8 ASPH. MEGA O.I.S., VSCO (A10PRO), Mextures (personalized texture formula: MEZPZZC), Lightroom Mobile (watermark only).
Do your best. Not more than that. Not perfection. Just presence. I tried, truly.
Leave the rest… The story. The tragedy. The one who couldn’t stay.
entry nine — scattered light, fractured grace: a quiet archive of light, loss, and what remains.
Weevil (Meibomeus musculus), a quiet laborer of the forest and the fields…carrying the weight of being, petal by petal. Vision: Lumix GX7 + Panasonic Leica DG Macro-Elmarit 45mm f/2.8 ASPH. MEGA O.I.S. Tools: VSCO (KP3), Mextures (personalized texture formula: QBHASZK), Lightroom Mobile (watermark only).
There is a kind of presence that doesn’t announce itself.
No sound. No shimmer. No need to be noticed. Just a body doing what it does.
Clinging to a petal, breathing the moment, belonging to the quiet. Sometimes, that is the work.
Not saving, not proving. Just being.
And somehow…it shifts the entire forest, the entire field.
For some souls, there is a burden in being seen —not the fear of visibility, but the ache of being misread when presence itself was the offering.
catacosmosis 