The Last Collected Season

I have a habit of taking photos out the window of my room, wherever I live, to capture the passage of time and the changing of circumstances. This first began when I studied abroad for the first time in Perugia, Italia in the summer of 2007. Almost every day, I took a photo out my window toward the church in the parking lot below. Time passed so slowly and so quickly then, and five weeks melted before I could truly register what had happened.

When I lived in Ferrara, the dawn woke me with a brilliant omen on my very first morning.

In Puerto Natales, I watched the Patagonian skies warp and change by the minute. Time seemed a different animal there, unfettered by our petty attempts at clocks and schedules.

I’ve collected every season here in Korea. It’s the first time for the same place for a full year, the same job, the same apartment…since I moved into my dormitory for my first year of university in August 2006. I’ve been on the road in one form or another for over six years. It’s strange and oddly beautiful that I’ve seen that little tree change from a single springtime blossom, to green and verdant summer, to burning fall, and finally silent winter.

The last in the collection.

Burning fall, complete with harvest!

Wild, hot summer.

Spring has arrived

The fogginess of 2013 has already invaded my life here at the end of 2012, with everything seeming to suddenly lift up off the ground and fly around in a storm of unstable circumstance and confused importance. Nearly nothing is certain. I was a bit naive in recent weeks, pretending to have a plan and a set idea of what would happen in the future. I must train myself to give that up.

Once again, I have no idea where I will be in six months, much less twelve.

I can’t decide if that feels liberating or like I’m being cornered. At times it seems both. Time doesn’t really care for my tiny confusions and my vacillation between alternative futures. It plays its longer game. One day a year from now, I’ll looks around and take a photo out my window, marveling at how long and short it’s been. It will all change, and yet nothing will.