by jolina demmings
@jolinademmings on instagram
I am overwhelmed by the need to be elsewhere.
The need to exist in a hundred different photographs at once.
I want to be decorating a christmas tree.
I want to be wandering the streets of a dead town, huddling against the invisible cold,
finding beauty in the drearily ordinary.
I want to be on a porch in the south, soaking in the orange sunset,
savouring the humidity of the summer evening.
I want to be on the east coast, running from the flat sands of the beach
to seek shelter from the rain in a house with many windows.
I want to walk through venice, taking pictures in a daze.
I want to be on an airplane at midnight, watching the city lights fall away,
drifting to sleep knowing I'll wake up and be home.
I want to trek through a foggy abyss towards something exciting.
I want to be in Italy, in the summer, eating fresh fruit and basking in the dappled sunlight.
I want to eat Thanksgiving dinner in somebody’s home town.
I want to sit on a balcony in greece, marvelling at the colour of the sea.
I want to explore an unforgiving desert, feeling the heat protrude from every inch of space, watching lizards dart among cacti.
I want to gaze upon a city skyline from a hilltop at night,
fuelled only by the excitement of those around me.
I want it to snow.
I want it to snow so badly.
I want to watch the snowflakes flutter violently towards the ground,
I want to see the world around me utterly transformed, see the energy in everybody’s eyes.
I want to drink tea in a skyscraper, observing every texture in the sky on a cloudy day.
I want to sit in a warm field, gluttonously drinking in the last of the unearned summer day.
I want it to be christmas eve in a city, joy brimming out of nearly every person.
I want to wade in the ocean in Hawaii as the sun sets into it.
I want to ride a train through europe, hoping my next destination is as spellbinding as the last.
I want to blearily load suitcases into a car in the early morning light,
too tired to be excited for what is to come.
But most importantly,
I want to wake up and wonder ‘what next?’
a note from the artist-
"i wrote this after looking through the pictures i’ve saved from photography accounts on instagram. i desperately wanted to exist in every one of them"