Since the busy Fall season kicked off last week and continues this week and the next and the next and basically until the rain sets in, I figured it was only time to share some scenes from back in June when I photographed the Shoestring Circus.
Feels on theme with my schedule, the mental flexibility and artistic integrity I’m trying to juggle (ahaha)
Not every moment must be shared or socially accounted for.
Not every thought voiced, nor every emotion acted upon.
Not every word must be written. Nor every idea realized.
-thoughts while trying to come up with a Friday post and newsletter
Autumn can feel like an ending for many people. A precursor to what PNWesterners call, “the big dark.” A warning to enjoy it while you can before the endless rain, the harsh wind, the utter lack of vitamin D. But the shedding of the dry, dusty, blaring months.. the clear, crisp air of harvest, that’s my true catharsis. Summer feels like freedom, but fall too is the antithesis of servitude.
The smell of nature bursting before the reset. The bold, bright foray into a season of togetherness, rest, warmth.. Man, it feels so good to exist in the fall.
Officially, Fall. It’s officially time to let go.
“the earth is where she has always been”
Looking up instead of straight ahead at a popular tourist attraction in Gulf Shores, AL
Perhaps one of the biggest surprises of the summer is looking back on some iPhone snaps and realizing they’re pretty wonderful. It doesn’t have to be a full format camera to illicit excitement. I know this. You know this. And yet somehow that little fact is forgotten.
Gulf Shores State Park, along hwy 182
Perspective is a funny little thing.
It’s the difference between an otherwise normal day being the best ever… or the worst. Obviously, outliers exist. Days where everything really does go our way and others where we can.not.win. It can be infuriating to acknowledge the truth: no matter the day, we can always control perspective.
But friends, the blank slate of in-between days, those are gifts.
Perspective is the difference between this image above coming to fruition or not. For the last several months I’ve looked at my garden as a todo list rather than a front row seat to the complexity of life, biological cycles, and gorgeously lit time. The summer days weren’t awful, just full. At times distracting, at times intentionally focused elsewhere.
I can’t dwell on what all might have been missed. All I can do is wake up. Notice. And sometimes more forcibly interrupt the routine. Pick up the camera. There isn’t a guaranteed reward for creative action. But the excitement when something lands, makes you feel, that is magical and worth the effort. This could have been just another day I noticed a spider web, thought, “I should photograph that” then went about my day. But man, I’m grateful it wasn’t.
You may not like September
I know there’s nothing to fear. -Wayward Jane
Over the weekend I stumbled across the most coolest project.
Emma Roos Frändås and Matt Buchlak teamed up to create a series of images that depict the same perspectives but from different hemispheres. Emma in the North, Matt in the South. It’s an ongoing work that is subtle but gorgeous. Creative, connected.. two of the best things about being human.
Each of these artists is fabulous in their own right as well. Please make sure to check them and the project out!
Lo! a ripe sheaf of many golden days
Gleaned by the year in autumn's harvest ways,
With here and there, blood-tinted as an ember,
Some crimson poppy [or in this case, Dahlia] of a late delight
Atoning in its splendor for the flight
Of summer blooms and joys
This is September.-Lucy Maud Montgomery
I’m sitting at Les Schwab. That’s French for “say your prayers, you could be here a while.”
The sky is overcast, but I’m at a bar height table connected to the window. The diffused light is bouncing back and forth between the parked cars outside and the white building. While the photon spread is probably perfect here for skin tones, my eyes are squinting to type this. I can smell the coffee I made at home, infused with rubber and oil. My legs are shifting every few seconds to avoid a blood clot.
I wrote yesterday about being present. So, here I am. It’s a fun exercise, to be honest. Considering the moment. Granted, I wrote that in the context of parenthood, and this current reality is a purely adult endeavor. Somewhere over the course of the past week, I ran over a screw and, I am here. Hoping for a speedy, inexpensive, and simple solution to the almost new rear passenger tire on my paid off vehicle. The title of this essay is misleading, so I apologize if you came for the negativity. Click bait, baby.
It usually takes me a while to write up a post when I want more than a line or two. But this morning the words are rolling off the brain. Funny how that works. I have time, and it’s feeling easy. When time is scarce, these creative endeavors feel impossible. Something to chew on here about perspective, I’m sure.
By the time you finish reading this I will have figured out which sort of photo goes (or does not go) with an essay on sitting at a tire shop…
Little subjects next to big ones, in Olympic National Park. ⬇️
Finding so many small lingering summer moments in our garden right now. Choosing to notice them before the season fully wraps. I won’t say I’m NOT burning a fall candle right now. Fall is my favorite. But there is a conscious effort to be present in these transitional weeks.
I think at times we can feel caught by our choices, but slowing down for even a minute is absolutely within our wheelhouse. When so much is important, don’t let the moments be robbed by a franticness. That’s another goal of mine as school starts up and we dive in to a full schedule.
I met my niece for the first time a couple weeks ago. She’s around 5 months old, and growing like a weed. She was a bundle of reminders about time, and parenthood, and the intangible feelings we have around love. I can’t hold my own kids like I held her anymore. While I loved that time, this now is a good thing.
They’ve grown and are growing, hopefully, with a presence of mind and expanding sense of self, security, and love. I was present for them in my arms, I want to continue this while they’re in my reach.
So, slowing down to look at the garden becomes a practice for other parts of my life. It becomes an exercise for understanding moments and how they are not permanent. It’s a practice for realizing that if nothing ever changed, we’d lose the freedom we love. We’d lose the capacity to understand how a point in time can be so precious. This slowing down is essential. There are no hard rules around it, and it looks different for every season, person, situation. The only nonnegotiable is it cannot be skipped.
This image leaves me strangely quiet and contemplative. I felt thoughtful and calm during the trip.. A beautiful bliss of nothing but ocean, sand, birds, sun.
It is September and I feel my color coming back..
a change of scenery,
a treadmill of chores,
a myriad of tasks that fill faster than can be accomplished.
I am tired, and at times I don’t know how to not be.
Magic is in the maintenance, but I’m in need of a major tune up.
I need the list to lessen a bit, and the space to expand.
There is a desire to avoid the superficiality of novelty. Still, I cannot deny the gravity of novelty. An attraction to it, where resisting feels like going against the laws of nature.
-thoughts on a long drive
Curiosity, wonder, play.
The example set from a child is a gift to us, and a reminder to cultivate these traits, rather than snuff them out with adult conformity. We can be responsible, kind, knowledgable, on time, and mature, while still maintaining participation in this life and its experiences. Basically, we don't have to numb our inner kiddo to be thriving adults. I think maybe it’s just the opposite.
the edges of it all at Kalaloch Beach
More isn’t always better.
Quality trumps quantity.
Before you pull at those threads in search of something bigger
make sure you aren’t disassembling a work of art.
This has been both the longest and shortest summer I’ve yet to experience. We packed our calendar with so much to do, made some good type 2 fun memories, accomplished quite a bit, but also, have had slow, frustrating moments. It’s been the most paradoxical time.
Yesterday we got a huge rain. A rain that doesn’t usually happen in August. The grass has been crunchy underfoot, the garden soaking up everything. The area around our house has been brown and to the eye, dead. But this morning, bursting from all corners of the yard is a rich green. An overnight transformation. Full disclosure, these poppies didn’t ‘pop’ that quickly. They’ve been there since early summer, but man were they thirsty.
From one state to the next, just like that. It’s how you define this summer. Moments that are forever, no sense of change, then one variable shifts and here we are, another place. Our kids have less than a month before embarking on new journeys at new schools. I hope the time has been well spent, while also recognizing we’ve still got it.
And the recognition starts with just noticing. Noticing the crunch, noticing the wet. Choosing to leave the headphones inside or at home. Listening. To the hwy, to the hawk that’s establishing territory on our land (we have too many rabbits so I’m all for this), to the wind. To at times, the sound of my kids fighting in the house when the windows are open, but also to the belly laugher that echos across the yard originating from the same place. Both/and.
It’s all woo woo. Or is it? Is it what life is about? I think yes.
I’m a water nerd. I drink it every morning, and I will never say no to a chance to go to the ocean. My kids are always being told to drink water, they’re both strong swimmers, and we have a huge, irrigated garden. We make whatever time we can to go to the lake or walk by the bay. The first image you see on my home page is a portrait of someone by the water. Heck, my star sign even has “aqua” in it.
Water is a literal big deal in our life.. in everyone’s life. Water is life, and duality, and a lesson in the power of adaptability. And humans have such a connectedness to it. How could we not, given it formed us?
Water has so many lessons: the idea of intentional use of oneself, one’s strength, patience, and power. The idea that we can be a force or even just a trickle, depending on what life calls us to be. Adaptability- truth in what you are, what you can be, how you can sustain life, and how you can flow.
See? I love it. I love that long ago two hydrogens and an oxygen became bffs. That this connection has sustained so much beauty and insane dynamism for millennia. Amazing.