Tara Cronin
I used to hate laughing.
Not any laugh, but a joyous laugh, with others, that lets my spirit free for a brief moment. I hated it because in the millisecond that I began to almost laugh, something inside would realize that if I began, that moment would soon end, and the laugh would be over, and the joy would be gone. Everything felt contrived, far. But these happinesses can be only in moments. I experienced psychiatric illness and hospitalizations for about a decade of my late youth; I became very interested in this human race as if I were observing from afar. From this distance Humans seem always a fascinating phenomenon, despite that I am a part of them. I am interested in the in-betweens of life. Small discoveries often largely alter perspectives. Many of us have been familiar with a dissociation from ourselves and the world around us; I try to explore that feeling of that disconnect, the development and re-development of memory, and the mindset of a fleeting feeling becoming a constant. Tactile and sensate experiences such entering a dim room or holding a piece of heavy paper keep me grounded. It is exciting knowing that this contrast exists: here is a millennia of stories that become profound, full of heart, full of determination and Will; here is a body with a personality and with a hand and fingertip-cells that “Know” to be shaped in a genetically predetermined way. Beneath all of the epic-ness, the laughter, the losses or gains, we are all merely Blood, Sinew, Synapses Bone.