adventures in film– looking through the lense of borderline personality disorder
I used to do this on my old website a lot and I’m so happy to be bringing it back. When I’m not writing about BPD or doing my social work thaang, I’m trying to take photos as much as possible. I shoot with a Canon t-70 and hustle my ass down to my local London Drugs to spend my pennies on developing film. Theres an old man there that always tries so earnestly to get me to obtain some sort of rewards membership. I have yet to do so, and it gets more awkward everytime. Here’s some of the last roll he developed for me.
I walked around a lot this summer. Trying to carry a camera with me when I felt the rest of the load was light enough, I always stopped at the little poster boards and graffiti I’d see along the street. I have enough pictures like this to make a whole new graffiti wall of wall graffiti. we settled in parks in the summertime. sitting with k in the grass looking at all the passersby, talking about delicate relationships over cheap espresso. everyone lined up at a church across the street for free food. harry, claire and derrick were my everything in the summer. it was like we had this crazy, connected friendship that was impenetrable to others, and we all just existed together. walking to their house, then mine, doing absolutely nothing we filled the time with stupid conversation that I already forget but will always remember the feeling of– it was a unity that was unprecedented by all else.at some point I bought a string of pearls. they made me feel fancy, and I called up julie because I knew she would get fancy with me, and we would dawn kimonos and drink lemon water in her apartment, or lay on the grass– half shade, half sun, listening to 90’s pop like sugar ray and some other one hit wonders. eventually scooping ourselves up from the ground to light a fire in the backyard or head back downtown to mosh around with the best of ’embeautiful jule take me to school and then there was the surprise party, for julie’s birthday. julie was my best judy this summer. her boyfriend aaron had thrown a shrek themed surprise party and everyone came out to boogie. we all ended up taking mushrooms and putting on cowboy attire and listening to ‘all star’ on repeat for hours.
It was a summerroll of sorts. and it reminds me that despite the episodes and the turmoil that came with this summer, I had a damn good time through the best of it. all these photos make me feel like a kid again, and developing them and sprawling them out on my bed made me feel like I had tangible nostalgia that hadn’t even escaped my psyche yet. which is a wild feeling. Developing film gives you that. Its different from saving something to your camera roll, because there’s a purpose for each frame. You didn’t just pull out your phone and snap something quick, you manually focused, set the light, picked the subject for a goddamn reason. There’s not nearly enough reason in this world anymore. But at the same time, film doesn’t have much reason either. Why spend so much extra money? Why take the extra time?
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