Yesterday was my 34th birthday.

Thirty-four.

What does that even mean?

I can’t say I know what 34 feels like — or what it’s supposed to feel like. And when I say I don’t feel 34, I don’t actually know what I mean by that either. There’s something strange about the way we’re taught to think about age, time, and identity, as if they should conform to a script we never actually agreed to.

So much of what we believe about ourselves and the world is just inherited misinformation, and only now, collectively and individually, are we beginning to untangle the mess.

Maybe it’s just my perception, or maybe it’s a real phenomenon - whatever real means. Because, perception is primary. You have to be careful what you believe, and even more careful about the angle from which you’re looking.

A small shift in perspective can reveal an entirely new reality, like adjusting the tilt of a prism and watching the light refract in ways you never expected. That shift is an alignment; a recalibration that pulls you back into the flow of the present, where information unfolds naturally, without distortion.

But so often, we resist that flow.

We cling to ideas not because they are true, but because they feel good, because they give us something to own. And that ownership, that egoic attachment, is dangerous. It calcifies. It turns what could be curiosity into dogma.

I spend a lot of time outside alone. I walk outside, talking to myself, recording thoughts as they come, capturing them before they disappear. Maybe it’s just another way of making photographs — freezing light, freezing moments, organizing them into something that makes sense. Writing this is no different. It’s just another way of reaching for that deeper thread, the one that runs through all of us, the one that makes sense of the mess.

The older I get, the more I realize that life is fucking interesting. It’s endlessly complex, and the more I learn, the more I see how little I know.

But one thing I do know — light is everything.

More fundamental than food, more fundamental than anything we usually think of as nourishment. Light dictates the rhythm of our cells, the efficiency of our metabolism. It tells our bodies what to do, how to function, how to be.

And yet, we forget.

We forget the foundations, the unshakable principles that shape our reality - gravity, electromagnetism, polarity, resonance. These aren’t abstract concepts. They are the scaffolding of life itself, the invisible forces that govern everything we experience. And at the heart of it all, is light.

Seek good light. Not just physically, but in every sense. Light in thought, in perception, in perspective.

The difference between clarity and illusion is often just a matter of what angle you’re looking from.

Happy birthday.

Photographs made with my Leica M262.