Now I feel a little silly and a little regretful because jealousy is not an emotion that you mention, it's a little too self-indulgent, a little too whiny. And saying that is just turning this blog into a major feelings-party. None of this would happen if I had new photographs to attract my attention and enforce a change in direction. But instead I've just been taking hundreds of photobooth pictures and hoarding finished, undeveloped rolls of film as is my wont.

I was thinking, on a Friday last month, of how film photography has honed my sense(s) of desire, how it surfaces constantly in so many ways - the instantaneous realization of desire that moves my shutter finger, the feelings of excitement and dread that simmer until the film is developed, when I want my pictures to be something before they are anything. The moderation of wanting during waiting in an often-in-vain attempt to protect myself from the consequences of desire, and the related though different modulation of desire that comes with not being in control what's on the other side of the lens. The wanting to lose control and the wanting to clutch at it with all ten fingers. The knowledge that there's always the possibility of everything having collapsed into nothing, a flat denial of every one of those wants.

Nothing about this is coming out the way I thought it then, or the way I would ideally want it said. It is making me want to take pictures, though. It's a thrill I haven't gotten from digital photos, although I don't want to say that's not possible.

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