“Living in a holler, the sun gets around to you late in the day, and leaves you early.” 

― Barbara Kingsolver, Demon Copperhead

I am stuck at home, with a cold. The first one I have had in years. I read, the dog laying beside me fighting with this huge book for a spot on my lap. I am restless and bored, and my mind grows more and more impatient with my body. As the day wears on I watch the weather outside our family room doors change from rain, to cloud, to sun. As the sun comes out, filling the room with that kind of haze that you can see and feel, I turn, allowing the out flow of those rays to soothe me. After all it is just a common cold . . .

If you get the chance to read Demon Copperhead, do it!

“The dog is the perfect portrait subject. He doesn’t pose. He isn’t aware of the camera.” 

– Patrick Demarchelier

Baker and I participate in a fun group on Flickr called 52 weeks for dogs. The idea is to take a photo of your dog every week of the year and post it in the group. It is a fun group, no pressure other than meeting the Sunday evening deadline each week, and a love for dogs. Last year we did pretty good, only missing a few weeks here and there. He is a good subject, very corporative, especially if I have a treat in my hand, and has a face made for the camera. You can expect to see more of him this year.

Because of the dog's joyfulness, our own is increased. It is no small gift. It is not the least reason why we should honor as well as love the dog of our own life, and the dog down the street, and all the dogs not yet born. What would the world be like without music or rivers or the green and tender grass? What would this world be like without dogs?

- Mary Oliver

“I could feel the day offering itself to me,
and I wanted nothing more
than to be in the moment-but which moment?
Not that one, or that one, or that one,” 

― Billy Collins, The Trouble With Poetry - And Other Poems

On a whim, I stop by the tiny park not far from our house. The parking lot is empty but I see a dog walker following one the few paths that cut through the forest while parking the car. I take the short path towards the lake, which I can see is high and muddy so I turn back towards the little patch of woods towering overhead. I listen to the birds, taking note of the quiet. I take a few photos of moss, decayed leaves, and one of the little stream that flows towards the lake. I stop and pet the dog, giving him the treat I find in my pocket while exchanging a few words with his owner. It is not until I head back towards the car that I notice the tiny mushrooms growing out of the moss on a nearby tree. I step over broken limbs and branches, slipping on a pile of slippery leaves, and make it to where the tree stands. What makes this the one, I wonder. For isn’t all of the tiny forest worthy of my attention? How often do I skim over moments worth noting, in search of a more?

Something worth thinking about.

“When we were kids the coolest dinosaur in world was the brontosaurus, which means 'THUNDERLIZARD'. But it turns out brontosaurs isn't even a thing, it's just an apatosaurus which means 'deceptive lizard', which isn't nearly as cool. I don't want my gigantic lizards to bring the lies. I want them to bring the thunder.” 

― John Green

I sit on the floor and play with him as we set out to build Dinosaur Nation with his new magnet tiles. Mostly he plays with the dinosaurs and leaves the building to me, which is fine because these tiles are somewhat addicting. By the way, it is true about the brontosaurus, I am corrected each time I make the mistake. He cuts me some slack however, reminding me without judgement. I swear he knows every single name of every single dinosaur, and today I watched as he read a whole book to himself as he sat on the floor of his bedroom. I know he has the book memorized, but still, it was a long book. I don’t question how fast he grows and changes, or how he doesn’t miss a word we say. I do my best to answer every time he mutters “why” over and over again, until he is satisfied. I try not to get too emotional when he crawls in my lap out of the blue for a hug, and says, “Oh, Gramma, I love you.” All I can do is try to be present. To listen and watch, laugh and love him back.

For someday Dinosaur Nation will become a thing of the past, a memory of what was, when the two of us sat on the floor and played, while Mamma worked and Daddy baked bread in his bakery.

Yesterday I cleaned the closet in our office. It holds a bookcase, art and office supplies, wrapping paper, a couple of suitcases, and lots of photos. Photos I have printed off, from various places, over the past ten years or so. I poured them out of the manilla envelopes they were stored in, letting them drop between my legs as I sat on the floor. There was no rhyme nor reason as to how they were stuffed into the envelopes, and soon I found myself making piles. It did not take long before I became emotional, following memories that filled me with both delight and anguish. I got up and made myself a latte.

When I came back, I picked the photos up, and stuffed them back into the envelopes lining them up on the bottom shelf of the bookcase. I finished the chore at hand and walked away.

I have decided (along with a couple of like-minded women) to play a bit more with my camera this year. For me this means looking for ways I might capture my emotions and energy; be it in camera, or in post processing. It also means more self-refecting, along with a bit of exfoliating.

Today have a plan for tackling those envelopes in the office closet. A plan that does not sound too daunting. I also plan to keep the envelopes, filling them with this years prints, for there is something magical about holding a moment in time in your hands, be it happy or sad.

The first thing I will do however, is label them.

There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost.

— Martha Graham

“If you trust in Nature, in the small Things that hardly anyone sees and that can so suddenly become huge, immeasurable; if you have this love for what is humble and try very simply, as someone who serves, to win the confidence of what seems poor: then everything will become easier for you, more coherent and somehow more reconciling, not in your conscious mind perhaps, which stays behind, astonished, but in your innermost awareness, awakeness, and knowledge.

- Rilke

The sun comes out briefly, and the rain stops. I change lenses on my camera and call the dog. We walk the yard, each with our own agenda. I am taken in by the rain drops on the maple, while he lifts his nose to the smells in the yard.

I move into this new year with a bit more clarity and a will to live more fully. Maybe it is the class I am taking, or maybe I am finally ready to move beyond the last few years of lock down and crazy politics. Whatever the reason, I find myself allowing a little bit more of myself to emerge each day, trusting I will know what feels right.

***

How strange that the nature of life is change, yet the nature of human beings is to resist change.
And how ironic that the difficult times we fear might ruin us are the very ones that can break us open
and help us blossom into who we were meant to be.

— Elizabeth Lesser

happy New year

“It is a strange and wonderful fact to be here, walking around in a body, to have a whole world within you and a world at your fingertips outside you.
It is an immense privilege, and it is incredible that humans manage to forget the miracle of being here.
Rilke said, ‘Being here is so much,’ and it is uncanny how social reality can deaden and numb us so that the mystical wonder of our lives goes totally unnoticed.
We are here. We are wildly and dangerously free.” 

― John O'Donohue

Here I am, walking around in this body. I am going to give 2023 my best shot. I hope you do too!