and from my tiny home under the clover, i can look up and see that maybe the sky is clearing and the rains have stopped. the whole town has put up black umbrellas; some are bent from the wind and most are taller than they are wide, so it’s still easy to get caught in the downpours. and i can see – over there – the brown fulton birdcage umbrellas all set up, rounded bubbles – but everything that has been drenched is now drying a bit and it’s all verdant green and lush. it’s time to carry on.
i’m leaving my little home under the clover to go back out into the world. to see its giantness and feel the arriving sun and appreciate the balance of sunsoaked and rainsoaked, to try and understand the relationship between lack and abundance, to navigate the seesaw of positive and negative.
i see that it is quite possibly all about perspective. for the birds flying over our umbrella-world don’t see us here and, from our vantage point under the umbrella canopy, we don’t see them there. it’s only in the open field that we see each other, in the open field we can discern and hear each other, in the open field we can find truth.
my perspective has gotten lost from time to time, focused merely on my own parched landscape and drenching rainstorms. stepping out, looking around, taking stock – i see past the tiny market-umbrella-town in which i’ve taken shelter.
and i am no longer silent. there is much to be said, much to be learned.
and in the sun i’ll revel. and in the rain i won’t carry an umbrella.
i grew up loving protractors and mechanical pencils, slide rules and really good erasers. it’s a wonder i didn’t pursue a career where these were valued or necessary. digging through bins recently, i came across a pencil case with yet-another protractor, yet-another slide rule, a very sturdy compass, some fine-point drafting pencils. a treasure! from long ago i can feel the slide rule in my hand and the circly swirl of the compass. even without a specific purpose for these (save for the pencils) i am planning on keeping them. and the pencil case as well. because who doesn’t love pencil cases?
and so, it was without hesitation i immediately eye-measured the angles in this photograph. the north side of our house, rooflines as they meet the sky. this old house is filled with angles – crown molding meeting crown molding, wood floors as they run an expanse of a room to partner with another room, ceilings over a reversing stairwell, ceilings in bedrooms that long ago housed matchbox cars and barbies.
there are photographs in the bins-in-the-basement as well. i study them for a bit. it’s obvious i was always looking for a different angle – a different way to view what everyone else was looking at, to compose my image. closer-up, upside-down, the horizon on a deliberate tilt. but, most always, tighter-in, to feature some subject matter.
it was when i was in the canyonlands sharing precious time with my daughter that i learned a lesson. we were both snapping pictures – the expanse, the red rock, the sky, the immensity, the 90 degree angles to the canyon floor – it was all overwhelmingly take-your-breath-away. we took photographs of each other in this incredible terrain. her images were a teaching.
there, taking up barely any space in the middle third of the left side of the photo, i stood on the top of the cliffside. the sun was almost down, the deep chasm below dark, the red rock upon which i stood still lit orange. i am the smallest percentage of this photograph and, yet, it is one of my favorite photos of myself – ever.
it was that day i learned little bit more about perspective – through my daughter’s brilliant creative instinct to give the visceral gift of seeing tiny in vast. to back up, to wide-angle the view. i remind myself of these amazing moments with her often.
i hold my camera ready – to consider all the angles of what i’m seeing. and, most especially, what i might see, what i might be aware of, from a distance. the bigger picture.
the colors intensified as the day drew to a close from our little spot on the deck. i didn’t take any more pictures. instead, i watched it. sometimes, in the taking of photographs, it is possible to miss it, the moment. usually i take my chances with this, but not this particular evening. i just needed to hold tightly to the summer night’s glory, the east bounceback of the setting sun, the quiet.
though i appreciate all the filters out there – on my iphone, on photoshop, on snapseed, really on anything that edits images – i never use them. i come from a practice of manual 35mm cameras, sans filters – though they were available and you could screw them onto the end of the lens. i was always more of a purist in my photography. no filters.
and i’m from new york.
the other day we were talking with friends about people asking other people questions. we live in the midwest so that’s not a simple matter. there’s a silence, a reticence to question here. even in some pretty disconcerting circumstances, confusing circumstances, circumstances that beg investigation, people hesitate to ask questions. they are even question-averse.
six days a week now, d and i blog. i’m quite certain that there is no one on earth who wishes to read every single word we write – sometimes a mountainous plethora of words-words. we have completely different styles of writing and, once you’ve read a few blogposts, you can recognize our individual voices. david’s posts tend to be informative, filled with teachings and learnings from writers, scholars, philosophers, artists. mine tend to be a bit smushy – thready – experience-based stories, like i’m tawwwking to you, my leading heart wide open. but both of us are sans filters. he spent years on the west coast and, remember, i’m from new york. so, yeah, no filters.
i would imagine that there are some readers reading who think, “whoa! that’s too much information! waaaay too much information!” and yes, i would say we can be pretty transparent. perhaps people would prefer filters (or less words or even opaqueness).
but this is art and the work of an artist is to be open, to communicate, to elicit emotion, to provoke thought. it’s to be vulnerable.
without filters.
otherwise, you will wonder every time you look at a photo of a sunset: is this real?
“if left unchecked, teasel can form large dense patches and severely impact a habitat planting. teasel can be very difficult to manage because once established it pollutes the soil with durable seed that can germinate throughout the growing season.” (plantscience.psu.edu)
“leaves have spines on the underside of the midvein and smaller spines on bases on the upper leaf surface. the stem leaves are opposite and prickly, especially on the lower side of the leaf midvein.” (nwcb.wa.gov)
“handling teasel is best done with heavy gloves, every part of the plant is prickly to the point of piercing human skin.” (fairegarden.wordpress.com)
“once teasels become established in an area, they are hard to eradicate.” (fllt.org)
“if left unchecked, teasel quickly can form large monocultures excluding all native vegetation.” (illinois.edu)
if left unchecked…
it would seem these teasel beg the metaphoric reference to people within communities. it is no wonder – in these times – that my mind immediately goes there.
but teasels are beautiful, with interesting texture. like the flat-back-hand-carder for the vintage spinning wheel in our basement that cards wool or raises the nap on fabric, they were utilized for decades and were initially cultivated from the old world. they appear in planted gardens for their dominant sculptural presence and in meadows, growing wild and free.
on a quest – every day – to take photographs, i find myself back at 18. i was given my first 35mm camera when i graduated from high school early, my parents pretty certain i would love it. i did. i was out the next day, walking the beach in winter, reveling in capturing it all. i took that camera everywhere and took pictures of everything, reveling in the freedom of aperture and shutter speed. the deliberate taking of photographs brings one to center, into presence – there is no need for speed. instead, it is about slow movement, about noticing, about paying attention.
and i am – lately – feeling a tad bit back-there. at 18. the tiny lone flower, the shadow, the curl of bark – they get my attention. i pause.
these teasel stopped me. there was a teasing tension between their color, their thorns, the sky, the pine trees in the background. the juxtaposition of the bristle and the luminous. beautiful. i, too, couldn’t resist the teasel.
“despite its noxiousness, it’s impossible not to find the teasel rather endearing…” (jacqueline stuhmiller, fllt.org)
we are mutually reading a book – the measure – in which every person in the world over 22 years old is gifted a box. in that box is a string which represents the length of one’s life. we are about a third of the way through so making our way along the trail of this story. we can’t help but wonder if we would open the box.
it’s all blurry from here – the future. no matter what, we do not have any idea what’s out there, what is to come, what will or will not happen. even with the best of planning, the field of vision is not crystal clear.
our video of choice on-pillows was a pct hike. no surprise there. but the youtube we watched was extraordinary. an “older” couple – 61 and 60 – backpacking this thru-hike, exquisite photography, even more exquisite narration. more than a few times we wished we had jotted down his words, wisdoms from the trail, wisdoms from blurry life. they called their hike “a pacific crest trail coddiwomple documentary” and he explained that “coddiwomple” means “to travel in a purposeful manner towards a vague destination, ” to “keep moving forward even when you’re not quite sure where you’re going”.
blurry. life.
we could seriously relate. even without being on trail, we pay attention to just how blurry things really are. the rearview mirror can give you hints, but never quite enough information and, besides, it’s not the direction any of us are headed in our timelines. they keep going and going. focused, unfocused.
i have found myself peering at the future…as if through those tiny opera glass binoculars…trying to see what is out there in front of us. the aperture is narrow in diameter, the focus is not all-consuming. anything outside of the zone is out of focus. blurry from here.
i went through photographs the other day. i take hundreds each week. the unintentional rothko showed up in my camera feed. studying what came before and what came after gave me clues as to what it was a picture of. i now know what it is. but it doesn’t change the feeling the photograph evoked. the painting of color fields, blurry and without clear lines of distinction. a rothko created by accident.
life is kind of like that, i guess. you are out there, coddiwompling around, living life, breathing in and out, never really sure of the destination, always surprised along the way. you paint what you think will be the future. and then, in any given moment, it all gets blurry. blurry, but nevertheless – surprisingly – beautiful.
i take many photographs of us in shadow. it lowers the how-do-i-look bar to practically zero. though it does leave me a tad bit curious about why my head always looks bigger than his. i think it’s my hair poofing out; his is pulled back neatly, while mine is helter-skelter flying in the wind. nevertheless, whether we are smiling or not, whether our eyes are open or closed, whether we have a funny look on our faces – none of this matters.
some of my favorite shots of us are in shadow. we are on the dock at northport harbor. we are on trail in breckenridge. we are at the john denver sanctuary in aspen. we are on a frozen lake up-north. we are walking barefoot in florida, carrying our flipflops. we are in the sun on our back patio.
i know i might be accused of over-documenting. so many photos. “1.81 trillion photosare taken worldwide every year, which equals 57,246 per second, or 5.0 billion per day,” according to photutorial.com. at least they are not all mine.
yet i know that it takes many, many shots to get the right one. my dear friend scott is a world-class photographer with a compositional eye to die for. he shoots thousands of shots at a-list events. which makes me feel justified in my overshooting. i have loved being behind a camera since my parents gifted me my first 35mm when i graduated high school. crunch and i would go out and about for hours on end, on escapades, taking pictures and dreaming of what they would look like developed. the advent of cellphone cameras – as they are today – makes it infinitely easier to snap, snap and over-snap. and, though i can confess to that, i will not stop.
because every now and then, when i go through all the photographs i’ve taken on a hike or at home or traveling or with one of my children, i find a jewel. like the lyrics that are tucked into notebooks-upon-notebooks, scraps of paper of melodies, pa pads with ideas for smackdab cartoons and blogposts, sometimes something special turns up. “practice makes perfect,” my sweet poppo would always quip.
so, the other day, while we were hanging out with richard diebenkorn, i thought i would document our time together. not a gem of a shot, but – truly – they aren’t always gems. sometimes they are just reminders of time spent, thready mementos of moments, scraps of lyrics or color samples or heart rocks. they are a diary of time, back and forward, threaded clockwise and reverse.
despite the vast ponderings of art critics and pedantic curators, it would seem that richard might just be trying to create mood, evoke emotion. this ocean park painting – like the whole series – depicting shimmering light and air, his extended time in santa monica sun. he painted and re-painted 145 canvases in this series. a diary of time.
selfies and shadows, smiles and light. all stuff that counts on the way to 1.81 trillion.
“it’s full tonight. so we go and the moon rises, so beautiful it makes me shudder, makes me think about time and space, makes me take measure of myself: one iota pondering heaven. thus we sit, myself thinking how grateful i am for the moon’s perfect beauty and also, oh! how rich it is to love the world.” (mary oliver – the sweetness of dogs)
we are on the west side of lake michigan. it’s the cold side, the side with many rocks, big boulders. the sun rises over our lake. the moon rises over our lake. and there are days – magical ones – when the moon is in full phase – a giant ball, moonlining to anyone on shore. wishes that landed on stars seem destined to come true. loving to-the-moon-and-back is potent and visual. it would seem – on those nights that the moon takes over the night sky and all else shrinks – that – in the purest sense -peace really could guide our planet and that love really could steer the stars, constellations with invisible reins tethered to reaching hands and hearts on the shoreline.
we drove home from the snowy trail and the moon was just starting to rise over the trees in the distance as we drove east. across a snow-filled farmfield, beyond the stand of woods, there it was, more intense each minute, dynamic through dusty rose and salmon and blush, finally flushed more golden. i kept driving east, directly to our lake.
we weren’t alone. there were other peace-and-love-rising seekers there and we all photographed our individual moon photos – the same beauty-shudder-rich sky as it turned to night over the great lake, its surface slightly rippled by calmer winds.
it’s like a romper room book – from the back but not turned over. upside down.
or like i had stood on my head to click. which, of course, i didn’t.
a tree – full of leaves reaching, reaching. no shedding here. no drooping. no waning into the pull of autumn. instead, golden leaves – almost brilliant orange – standing on their stems, stretching, dancing.
perspective rearrange. it took me by surprise skimming through the photographs i had taken. a close-up of the leaves – just one other photo – was also flipped.
perhaps there were just a few minutes there – out in the forest – when the world turned upside down.
maybe we just don’t know. maybe that happens all the time…little smidges of time when all is flipped. maybe that’s good. especially when right side up is pokin’ at us a little. reminders to stand tall. reminders to stretch. reminders to dance.
i cannot get diana ross’ fabulous voice out of my head, “upside down, boy, you turn me inside out and ’round and ’round…”
it is most astounding to me. each and every time. it doesn’t matter the shining of the sun or the drizzle or the misty humid air or dusk falling around us. and though it is familiar – oh, so familiar – it is new when we visit, our footfalls on the path erased and lasting as we walk. i’m comforted by this trail. and it teases me – into truly wondering about thru-hikes and exquisitely ordinary days that explode into extraordinary just by entering them.
this is an easy trail. we have hiked many others. easy trails, moderate trails, difficult trails. elevation gains, a little scrambling here and there. but when – and it is often – we need an old quilt of a trail and time to be quiet, to think, to talk, to sort, to sink into astounding beauty, stillness and ever-percolating life, we hike here, close by.
my camera is ready. i try to capture it all to remember. the trail is full of linear lines now as the underbrush succumbs to the season. a bounty of astounding. even in transition.
i believe – as we enter the woods – that it greets us back.
and as we leave – filled up – it waves and whispers, “see ya.”
“have you ever tried to enter the long black branches of other lives — tried to imagine what the crisp fringes, full of honey, hanging from the branches of the young locust trees, in early morning, feel like?” (mary oliver)
out of the corner of my eye i caught a glimpse of him leading her over to the edge of the garden. something about his tenderness made me stop and linger. he had his hands on her shoulders and was looking right into her face. and suddenly, he got down on one knee.
they were strangers – and remain strangers – but i had goosebumps of excitement as i watched him on his knee. we couldn’t hear anything, really, but when she threw her arms around him and he was beaming, it was pretty obvious. family and friends spilled out of the places they had hidden in the botanic garden and surrounded them, celebrating.
it was a moment in time. and we were witnesses to it.
we walk along the shoreline and marvel at the expanse of lake michigan. often – after the work day is over – the sun is lower in the sky to our west, so the sky over the lake is starting to turn all crayola-like as we walk. our shadows get longer, longer. it would seem we are on stilts. we stop for a minute to appreciate it all, take a picture, hug. witnesses to the end of day, one that we cannot recreate no matter how hard we try.
we walk on, sometimes entirely quiet, sometimes reviewing our day. we marvel that it is mid-october. already. witnesses to time flying, warp-speed, flimsy tendrils floating you cannot harness.
our trail was mostly empty on saturday. hiking there – in the woods – is like wrapping in a comforter. the turns and twists, the meadows, the fallen logs…they are known to us, familiar. it had been a couple weeks. many leaves had fallen. the ones that remained were yellow, some red, some orange. some of the trees were hanging on – their leaves were still green, but i imagine the color changing tiny bit by tiny bit even as we passed by. witnesses to autumn.
we often photograph our shadows. there is no worry about smiling in a photograph of your shadow. funny thing, though…we almost always smile anyway. the capture in time we got to be in a place, together, passing through, witnesses to a moment.
reverse threading 