the scent of water

There and back.

Good food.

Good shopping.

Good company.

Excellent weekend.

A hearty yes.

I took the title from a quote by Joseph Campbell, one I used in my latest MixTape article (go here right this minute and order a copy - Justine has grown this magazine to total awesomeness); the full version goes like this:

"the big question is whether you are going to be able to say a hearty yes to your adventure".

Whatever that adventure might be.  Climbing Everest, opening an art studio, learning to play chopsticks on the piano with the big toe of your right foot - if it makes you feel strong, you should do it. 

Now's good.

Still here

And no, I never do get sick of taking photos of flowers.  Ever.

I was standing at the bottom of my staircase a few weeks ago, almost certainly ruminating anxiously over one thing or another.  Do you know the George Eliot quote that goes something like it's never too late to be what you might have been? The thought occured to me in that moment that this just isn't true, at least not in the way I had been interpreting it.  The person I might have been had I been shown greater compassion, instilled with a better sense of self, learned more about the kind of discipline it takes to master a domain, who knows what she would have looked like?  Not like me, for sure.  We are different women.

Lord, was I relieved.  In that moment I came to understand that I had been carrying around a subconscious mantra that I had to somehow reclaim that person I could have been, lived up to the path I might have taken had all things been well in my world.  And the burden of carrying my failure to do so was getting heavier, year after year, until I started collapsing beneath it.  It was as if I had spent most of my adult life running furiously to catch up with no-one but myself.

In place of that burden comes a great freedom. The freedom to start over, not from the beginning, but from where I find myself now.  Too late to be what I might have been, yes.  But never too late to be what I am.

Sabbatical

Taking a little break for a couple of weeks, to get life sorted etc.  Nothing too ambitious, then.

Everybody loves pie.

And if they don't, they haven't tasted my pie.

God, protect your joyful ones.

 

I believe in life, and I believe in the joy of human existence, but these things cannot be experienced except as we also face the despair, also face the anxiety that every human being has to face if he lives with any creativity at all.  ~ Rollo May

I hate wires

 

I do. I hate wires. I hate them so much I sometimes dream of going technology free so that I won't have to look at them.  I put this rose on my kitchen bench beside the stereo in order to hide a few. Just a little.

I was reading The Science of Happiness and thinking about envy, and how easy it is to feel bad when you compare your life with someone else's, almost anyone else's, because they seem happier than we are, or at least have things a little bit easier, and it reminded me of my rose and my wires.  Because that's what we see, isn't it, when we look at other people?  Their roses.  But who knows how many tangled wires of disappointment and grief and fear and pain they're keeping out of view? Lots.  Always.

Not related, but I promised Amy I would mention it: we've re-launched equinox in a new format and you're most welcome to pop over and have a look.

I spent the whole night dreaming about taking photos.

And not with the two cameras I already own either.  They're good, but you know, they could do with some more lenses.  And then there's the whole world of vintage film, not to mention the fabulous lomography scene...

Obsessed, engrossed, preoccupied.  Haunted.

Bad hair day.

Some days it's easy to lose the faith, to get overwhelmed with the talent, skill, and success of people I admire, to feel like the frumpy chick on the edge of the group, my presence tolerated but never quite welcomed.  It's just a story I tell myself, I know.  But still.

Thank god for cake.

(Yep, I really am one of those people who take their cameras into cafes to photograph food.)

The Libby Sweater

So now that it's spring, we're living in a warmer climate, and she has no real need of it, I finally finished a sweater I have been knitting for Eilidh (pattern here). 

She grabbed it and put it on even before I had sewn in the ends.  Yay, she said, my first made-for-me thing.  (?!  Aside from all those other made-for-you things, possibly.)

(It's odd to me how much my kids love the stuff I make for them.  I don't ever remember feeling that way when I was their age.  I wanted shop bought, baby.)

Then she transformed into a robot and started shooting at me with her awesome high-powered gun hand. 

The translator is to help her speak to Earthlings.