More stuff about the Panasonic CM1, for those interested, to add on to my previous CM1 post.

• They can be had cheap. I paid like a fourth the price of what it’s listed for on Amazon. Low enough to sell my Galaxy Note 4 and come out ahead.

• Agencies are accepting the output. I have placed a decent pile of CM1 photos now with agencies. No sales yet, but some zooms and lightboxes. It’s only been three weeks or so.

• Don’t use wifi. The wifi upload was taking like 10 minutes per photo no matter which app or method I used. I was disappointed at first to see no stock USB mass storage mode, but I eventually installed Android File Transfer on my Mac and now can download at USB 2.0 speeds.

• Screen protectors are out there. Hit eBay. There’s a place in Utah producing them, and they run basically around a buck each. They’re not super fabulous, but they’re real, and they get the job done.

• Protect the lens. It’s a great little lens, but it has an extending front element and is vulnerable, seeing as how it’s part of a smartphone. There is a lens tube made by a company called “Cotta” that is around on eBay. Part of the lens bezel unscrews, and you can then screw the metal tube on. You can mount a 28mm UV filter on top of that. Then, everything is protected.

• It’s good. I did my first shoot (an event with a decent number of people) using both the CM1 and my Fuji XT-1 with XF 23mm f/1.4 lens. With careful foot placement and shooting at f/2.8, it’s not at all obvious to viewers which shots came from which camera-lens combo. That is an excellent performance for a smartphone.

It’s a real camera, folks. I’m sad that Panasonic has apparently decided to end this form factor, making it one of those delicious technology one-offs that comes and goes and someday will cost a fortune to get ahold of.

Sometimes my heart aches for what might have been.

Right now is one of those times.

There is not enough time to do anything.

To be in love. To be a parent. To have a job. To build a life. To live a life. To smile. To cry.

All of it will be lost, and lost too soon. That is the way of things. It does not matter what it is or how much time you think you have. If it is meaningful, there is not enough time. You will run out of time. All will be lost. And you will live forever in the state of about-to-lose.

And yet it is only because it will be lost that it is meaningful; without the pain of loss, nothing would matter anyway.

This is the core of everything. When the Buddhists say that life is suffering, or when the Christians talk about death and resurrection and redemption, what they are talking about is the fact that nothing matters unless it ends. That nothing can be good without first being temporary. That beauty exists only once death and decay are the rule. It is not about Good and Evil in capital letters, but about the nature of being, which is intrinsically valuable to us—moves us forever to tears and joy, fury and collapse—because it encompasses mere good and evil, which dance forever together so that they do not collapse—as they would if they were to coincide—into essential nothingness.

That is the tragedy of existence, but it is also the only beauty of existence. Eliminate the tragedy, and you eliminate the beauty. Peace requires war. Grace requires fallenness.

There is not enough time, because if there ever were to be enough, there would be no need for time in the first place.

All is nothing. Only not-all is something. That’s the way of things.

— § —

Corollary: Death is always sudden. Whether of things or of people, whether yours or someone else’s, it is always sudden.

Even if it was expected.

One moment there is life. The next moment there is death. There is no “almost” to connect them; death is transcendental.

But so, then, is rebirth, as death is—inevitably—the birth of something new.