“Look at everything always as though you were seeing it either for the first or last time: Thus is your time on earth filled with glory.”
― Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
I turn 69 and decide it is time to really start paying attention.
acknowledgment
I want to become acutely aware of all I’ve taken for granted.
~ Sylvia Plath
Lately I have let gratitude slip through my fingers, turning my focus instead on things I can’t control. During times like this, my camera becomes my saving grace.
Birds, flowers and the dog
Keep a little fire burning; however small, however hidden.
- "The Road" by Cormac McCarthy
Even when I don’t know what I am after I keep at it. I keep at it when I don’t feel like it, or realize that all I am doing is shooting the same things over and over. Truth is I can’t seem to get out of my backyard, or my house, or my garden right now. I get lost in the light as it hits my morning coffee, the dog, or the birds.
But mostly I keep at it because I am afraid. Afraid if I allow that tiny little fire to die out, a portion of myself will die along with it, and I might not find my way back.
the first week of August
"The first week of August hangs at the very top of the summer, the top of the live-long year, like the highest seat of a Ferris wheel when it pauses in its turning.”
— Natalie Babbitt (Tuck Everlasting)
the flowers of August
in a corner of the garden
leftovers
Bits and pieces of my week.
vine ripened
the goldfinch
three lines
“Never be so focused on what you are looking for that you overlook the thing you actually find.”
― Ann Patchett, State of Wonder
July slips away just as the first slicing tomatoes ripen.
August arrives and I swear I can smell, and feel, fall in the air.
I bail on the little writing class I started, and pick up my camera instead.