Growing Versions

What I'm really starting to like about photography is being surprised. I look through the lens seeing one thing and the picture itself shows me something more. The act of taking photos makes me notice in new ways. The act of seeing the photographs themselves helps me look again in yet another way. Even the most ordinary, muckiest thing reflects light.  Through the lens I understand that a little more each new day. Light on wall, line separating the sidewalk and the grass, the place where my hand has smudged the glass all absorb light and throw it back. I see that now.

If it takes 10, 000 hours to become an expert in something, he has logged at least 100 towards becoming an expert soft material slide maker.  Most of the time has been spent on the weekends.  Those hours have been poured into perfecting the angle, the materials, and the technique.  I say that the cat bed on top of the change table cover has put the design at a new higher plateau.  Just 9,900 more hours to go.

Ever since we've been sucked down into the rabbit hole of iphone usage in our home, my kids, especially my son, has come up with numerous (too numerous to count) suggestions of  fun iphone games they should make. The suggestions are so elaborate and specific, it is often difficult to find a satisfying match. His latest suggestion is this: He wants me to locate, among the millions of iphone games, a game that lets him go inside things, like a bird's mouth, a tail, or teeth or a clock or a power line or a sock and fingernails and blood. He wants to go inside a basketball.  Anything. He takes it further, then I want to be able to make a house inside a power line. Can you help me find that game? Another common request that has so far been elusive on our search. He wants to find Makers.  He wants to make some things like making orange pie or something that can make orange juice out of anything. He wants a slide maker that connects a slide to your house and makes loo...

Everyone knows the secret to making the right decision is making a long detailed list rationalizing why they should not do something, right?  This should be followed up by a lot of restless to-ing and fro-ing. That's what I thought.  I figured I needed to pour a lot of resistance into the mix and be convinced of something. But that is not what did it. I was asked by someone, "what if?" And my heart woke up and cleared its throat. Ready to answer that question.

The other night, when I could not sleep, I stumbled on a copy of Stuart Little. I picked it up and started to read.  I was instantly delighted by its sweetly spun absurdity.  Stuart Little is the story of a mature-for-his-age mouse in an otherwise human household and how he navigates the world with a jaunty self-possession, despite his small stature.  The story charmed me unrelentingly. On a quest to find his little bird friend who had flown north (because she had been warned in writing  by a pigeon that she might be in danger by nesting in a Boston Fern), he drove a mouse sized car (supplied by a dentist with a love of model boats and cars) and ends up becoming a substitute teacher on route.  I know, its ridiculous, but it all makes sense when E.B. White tells it. He asks one of his temporary students if he can " tell us(the class) what is important." Henry Rackmeyer responds that what is important is "A shaft of sunlight at the end of a dark afternoon,...

"You are usually not so close.  That tree is usually not so far away," he exclaimed all the way to preschool that day. Everything was examined from both ends of the binoculars.  Nothing escaped his notice through those lenses. I am taking some time to do a workshop at a retreat centre this week.  I held my breath a lot (and washed a lot of dishes) making the decision to go through with my plans to come here.  All the routines (however only half working as they are) have been the tracks I have been sliding along.  I didn't want to leave the tracks, the making of lunches and matching of mittens and the reading of bedtime stories, because sometimes it feels like those tasks are the only gluey bits holding us together. I have left the tracks. Usually things are not so close or so far away.