broken room

She laid on the bed waiting patiently for them to arrive. If you look close enough, you can still see her there waiting, looking expectantly at the two chairs. She arranged them perfectly so they would be able to see her sleep. Time meant nothing to her. As long as she stayed there, always in one place, she knew they would come.

How to hold things together

There are many different ways in which we are connected to each other. Sometimes the bonds are strong, like superglue. Sometimes they are just being held on by a thread. Some bonds are stronger than others. Some are meant to survive. Others are made to be temporary. Your guess is as good as mine as to which ones will last.

I was thinking about how your first best friend can be a result of something as simple as a seating chart in Kindergarten based on alphabetical order. India's best friend is Isis. Part of me really hopes we stay in Sultan so I can watch this group of kids grow up and see who they all become. I may be the "weird" parent, but I am fascinated by the development of all these new personalities and how they are learning to form bonds.

Accept or Overcome?

I firmly believe each of us has a purpose for being here. We are all students and teachers. For the past few years I have believed my mission in life is to overcome fear. I mentioned this at my last meeting with the wise Scotsman. He brought up an important piece of information. Fear is not something to overcome. Fear in and of itself is not the problem. The problem lies in how it is dealt with.

Fear teaches us to keep safe and protect ourselves. It can also prevent us from stepping out of our boundaries endangering our security. That is what it comes down to in the end for me. I want to feel secure in a world which is by nature insecure.

I am open to suggestions.

ISO 100 Shutter 46 Seconds

There has always been something intriguing to me about night photography. Our eyes are amazing instruments which take bits of light, send electronic impulses to our brain and translate into something intelligible. For the most part a camera is blind without light. Most people have never experienced true dark. Most humans avoid the depths required to find pure lack of light.

Light and photography are inseparable.

The past becoming the present...

I take these photographs along US highway 2 of abandoned farmsteads; Some appear to have been lived in recently. This makes me think of the bursting of the housing bubble. What is going to happen to all of the foreclosed homes if there is not one to buy them. Will they become worse off than their predecessors? In ten to twenty years will the middle class suburbs of today become another example of societal decay.

What do you do when your dreams go bad?

You build a better dream.

This is the wisdom I learned today from The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl. Yes, a campy kid movie made me tear up. Our dreams don't always work out the way they are supposed to. There is a wonderful quote by Edgar Allen Poe, "Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night." I used to have a bookmark with this engraved on it. I think it is still in the pages of The Return of the King where it was left when I finished reading it.

R and I had a good talk today in the car after dinner with A and his wife. I mentioned how I wanted to travel and go have adventures and fill up my life with more stories and experience and how I felt I needed to do this on my own. R replied he would like to do this with me. Something clicked. It was like we were on the same page. At this point in our life R has to follow a certain set of rules to keep his job. Someday, we will reach a point where he can lead a life less guarded.

In the meantime, he has realized I am not about to go off the deep end and the friends I have made over the past year or two are trustworthy and will take care of me. They are really friends; the kind who will smack me over the head with a clue-by-four when I am going to do something stupid. The kind of friends who stick with you when your pie karma is running low.

The past year has been shaky between R and myself. It is funny how a fifteen minute conversation can put you back on level ground. I believe the ideas were always there, we just didn't have the right words to communicate them.