I love you, my hope
November. 24. 2011
Purple sunset on a crisp evening walk with a friend today- unaltered I swear!
Friends often question my exuberance, asking me what makes me a happy person and I struggle to articulate that happiness is a spontaneous state of being. The list of reasons I rattle off when questioned begins with having breath and consciousness, but inevitably ends with the love I find everywhere.
I remember walking to my student job beat after three all-nighters spent dissecting form and space, on an ordinary Louisiana afternoon beaming in the bliss of just being there, then; I remember wiggling my toes in green grass on a warm evening watching a murmuration or tearing up in waking meditation simply feeling “So much joy! So much love!” That is the ecstasy of being- what is joy but synchronicity with existence and its magnificent flood? Even when it’s bad, it’s good- it’s all good. Happiness is a state of mind, I choose to exist in joy through and through the shit. And the love I have for and get from my family and friends, helps me shine on- they are my hope.
This Thanksgiving I am evermore grateful for you beautiful people who keep my life whole. Forget the miles between us, I feel the sweetness in you.
I love you, my hope- Happy Thanksgiving!
Like this:
the thing about the sea
June. 10. 2011
I am my family’s self proclaimed memory keeper, even though I arrived last.
This is Daddy and Aku at the beach, in a world where I didn’t exist, photographed by my very young mother. It’s a strange thought- the world without you in it- perhaps because no memory of it has survived in the stories we are become…even so, it seems to stay afloat whether we drift in or out
I think she was scared of the ocean, even wrapped in a sailor’s arms. So it looks to me they just stood there a while, toes in the sand. And that’s the kind of father mine is. Patient, and ever so gentle, he may just be kindness personified.
Happy coming birthday, Ak…we’re all missing you on it already : )
“The thing about the sea, it’s bigger than you and me,”
goes this beautiful new track, local artists Hope Trust’s throw me overboard
silver beach
January. 15. 2011
Might be because I’m a sailor’s daughter, but I don’t care how many beaches I’ve seen, standing at the foot of the sky with an endless expanse of water is always elating.
Beaches have always been summer things for me, until I saw the snow come in close to the water, and turn the sand silver. It helps the sand soak in the clouds and the whole thing gleams…
I will always remember making this picture: my sister waiting far behind, hiding from the sub zero wind-chill around lake Michigan, my fingers numb, and my stuffed hoodie getting in my eyes as i struggled to find the shutter and wheels with those frozen fingers.
A picture, is so much more than a picture.
“We are all creatures of our memory” said Frank Welch on a sunnier afternoon to me, and I know that pictures to me are the language of my memory; thought, feeling and emotion swim in me together.
Therein probably lie the origin of my love affair with photography- browsing through fat piles of family albums and remembering through the years, feeling my ways back in time, constructing, dreaming…
down the road Ak, this one will surface too…winter beaches, sunlight, my sister’s shadow and I- set up for good pictures right there- below or above zero.
