I thought about how I would write this up while I was out there today. I thought, how do you really express all of this? How do you talk about how dusty and broken it is? How do you tell about the steps you take and how you have to place your foot each time with absolute caution so you don’t step on a nail, or worse, fall through the floor? How do you explain how each door you walk through shakes your very basic definition of time?

I wasn’t quite sure how to do it until I realized that something was continuously catching my eye, it wasn’t the broken windows, the garbage, the pealing paint or the countless toppled buildings (I mean, I noticed those things, but…) it was the spiderwebs. I couldn’t seem to get enough of them. I saw them everywhere. I shot dozens, some of the photos are good and some are shit but it might have been the 7th or 8th web when I realized the beautiful poetic connection between those delicate webs wafting in the wind and these aching buildings we were sneaking around in.

You see, the structures were every bit as fragile as the spiders webs were if you just stretched out your interpretation of time. A fresh spiderweb is perfect, it is beautiful and it is home to the spider, just as I image those old buildings were to the folks who built them. Some of them were shacks, build for utility, I don’t imagine there was much pride in their craftsmanship, but some of the homes were built, brick by brick, the staircases had hand carved banisters. Under the pealing paint and marks of time, the molding was hung with care. These homes were lived in, and I suspect, at one time, loved.

My curious nature cant let this story end here, and I will now go forth to learn about Ardmore and Igloo South Dakota. I am forced by compulsion to discover what caused these places to spring up in what seems to be oblivion, and in some aspect, thrive only to be deserted and left to fall back to the earth. I suspect I will write again to fill you in on what I uncover, but perhaps I wont and this is the last I will speak on the matter. All I know today for sure is that permanence is an illusion, and given enough time, all we know will someday be gone. We have two ways to interpret that fact, we can choose to believe that nothing matters, time ticks on and we are just as fleeting as the spiders web, OR we can choose to see each moment as something unique, fragile, and beautiful; these moments are gifts, something that by their very nature we don’t get to hold onto forever… so your best course of action would be to give them weight, appreciate them, and then let them go to dance in the wind with the spider’s yesterday-web.