My whole life I have vacillated almost entirely between two states. One consists of dwelling in alternate versions of reality tinged with the painful sting of a nostalgia for time and places that might have or might have not existed. The other consists of a yearning-tinted version of a future reality steeped in possibility and outcomes that are usually worthy of being pined for with an intensity reserved for when my head hits the pillow at night. I have always had a hard time with the present because the present has often been painful or incredibly dull in comparison. Everything I could possibly want exists in daydreams of other realities or times or in visions of future pasts.

This present is the first time I have alternated between wanting to dwell in it while also having to come to terms with a lot of darkness and circumstance that has ultimately made me have to confront a lot of things about myself.

I was telling my boyfriend earlier today that this image is one that I planned specifically to take during a raging blizzard because I wanted to convey how New York City feels to me in my mind when nothing else makes sense. The snow swirls there around the lights in a way that reminds me of a night in a snowstorm when I was a child when the rest of the present was painfully dire but a glimpse of the snow around the city lights made me think of stars. It was as if the universe was right there swirling around me. I could hear my heart and the sound of the snow on the hood of my jacket as the present was completely silenced.

A lot of things don’t make sense right now and having been pulled into the present for the first time in four decades in an often immensely beautiful way, I can’t stop thinking about how painful it was to get this image. I climbed through snow drifts up to my hips and had walked about 5 miles before I got to this spot. And everything hurt for weeks after this night. But I knew when I walked back from this spot that this moment was captured the way I wanted.

And now when I look at this image, I don’t immediately remember the pain because all I can see is the universe swirling around me.

