As the day begins, a somberness permeates my senses, coloring the mind in a cloud of dust. One cannot describe in words a pain like emptiness or loneliness, they can only express it in pictures chosen to describe it.

What makes a person sad? Somber? What makes them happy? Joyful?

A world without pain and suffering is a world with pleasure and freedom.

If this shared human experience called life aims to transcend all pain and suffering, then what place does it have here and now?

We experience something painful naturally; it does not require us to create it, cultivate it, or even spread it. Stress is akin to pain, and so much stress is unnecessary, a pushing or pulling of a desired state, desired relationship, or desired experience.

These photos remind me of that natural state, rare yet ultimate, where we are just being, not trying to be, not seeking to be, not planning to be, just being.

Most of them were taken long ago when I had a decent Sony Alpha 6000 mirrorless camera with a simple 50m lens.

It was a time when I was first looking through a camera at a whole new world, a world that stopped for a second every time I pressed the shutter.

A message is deliberately placed in the middle: relax. I captured the message in the basement of a big Airbnb in Scottsdale, Arizona.

Do not try to relax, it tells us. Relaxation comes like a state of mind, to be earned rather than created. The day creates plenty of activity, and relaxation is an experience that comes before and after all that activity.

As dawn begins a new day, so does it bring the chance to relax, to embrace relaxation, and to feel all that the state brings, good or bad.