important reminders/caveats/disclaimers....

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Like most of us, I've never before had reason to take a magnifying camera to my skin, my cat's fur, the dining room table, or a tree trunk.  I had no way, therefore, to know if what I was documenting was out-of-the-ordinary. I also never before paid attention to my skin and my surroundings with such obsessive care, so I wasn't able to distinguish an increase in symptoms from an increase in awareness. 

Along those lines, for purposes of comparison, it's likely helpful to familiarize yourself with the magnified photos/video of healthy human skin as represented in medical textbooks and shared online.  It's also helpful to spend a bit of time searching "macro photography" and noticing how very odd basically everything--from an ant, to a piece of zucchini, and so on-- looks under magnification! 

As I detailed in the "About" page,  I like to approach the world according to the tenets of "standpoint epistemology."  I suspect there are some material stimuli that exist independent of human perception, but I trust that we are, by definition, unable to identify those. So, instead, I choose to learn about our shared realities indirectly, by triangulating the perceptions derived from various--ideally antagonistically positioned--standpoints. This means always taking the perception and the standpoint from which it is experienced in dialogue.  To allow others to do the same, we have to help them understand our "standpoints" (and most importantly, the material --or economic-- pressures therein).

As you can see, I've already spent an inordinate --almost embarrassing-- amount of time trying to figure out what this whatever-it-is actually....is. I'm acutely aware that I might have just spent the last 2 years of my life taking pictures of dust and light distortion. I, therefore, have an immense psychological investment in documenting that there is something more than mere dust and lint at work here. With hopes that this project --regardless of where it ends up-- can afford some novel anthropological insights (read: something I can publish or use to support my work towards earning a PhD in anthropology), I've also tied this project to my own material livelihood (and as history shows, there is little that will bias anyone more strongly than that!). I don't share this as reason to dismiss my perspective but rather, as context with which to wrestle with it. 

The health of the human body is irrevocably tied to its microbiome. We need many of the bacteria, fungi, and so on that make up our microbiome. I do not want to contribute to the distorted ideal of the "sanitized" body. Contrary to popular "germ theory"-- which positions  microbes themselves as the "enemy"-- holistic/functional/integrative medicine repeatedly shows that it's far more helpful to focus on the relationships amongst the body's terrain (e.g., strength of the innate immune system, level of toxicity, state of autonomic nervous system, etc,) and the environment (including--but not limited to-- various microbes).  For helpful discussions of this perspective, see Dr. Dietrich Klinghardt or Dr. Zach Bush, in addition to countless others.

Throughout human history, we have repeatedly made the mistake of vilifying, demonizing, and systematically eradicating that which we do not understand. Not only does this tendency cause needless violence. It also prevents us from learning new ideas and ways of life, and it often leads to a path of self destruction. Apropos to the above point, much of the contemporary obsession with constant sanitization has wreaked havoc with our microbiomes, making many of us far more vulnerable to the microbes which likely would not have been so detrimental had we not decimated our bodies' innate ability to adapt and evolve. I, myself, was originally pretty terrified of whatever this "mystery organism(s)" is/are-- it led me to spend a fortune on various tools and products meant to rid that "intruder" from my body and home. Related to the first point, there's no reason to conclude that this whatever-it-is is a new or a rare companion. Magnifying cameras are a very new invention--what's to say this whatever-it -is hasn't been with us all along? And if that's the case, waging an arguably futile war against it might very well cause us more harm in the end.