Sometimes it’s good to look back at where you were three years ago and recognize how far you’ve come.
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In chasing after long held dreams that were of the waking hour variety more than the sleeping kind. The dreams that you were scared to say out loud because they seemed too crazy to share with even your most intimate friends, for fear of being told how weird they were.
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And now those dreams are your reality and they’re just everyday facts that you share with strangers you meet at bars and in the checkout line at grocery stores.
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Time stamps of growth have always seemed important to me. To witness records of becoming. I look back often in this way. At old writing and photographs, to remind my current self of how good life really is. Of how much hard work really does pay off. (And dogged determination and sheer stupidity sometimes too...)
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But also I’ve realized the importance of recognizing how the same you are in various ways is worth noting too.
Read MoreIt’s been a little over six months since I hit the road in my Subaru, Blue Moon, and headed West.
I thought I would make more time for posts here on the journal, have a proper road log if you will, but clearly the last post having a time stamp of ‘March’ proves otherwise. I’m even silent on Instagram most days.
While I do make time to write at least a little almost every day, I am too engaged with the real world it seems to enter into the virtual one to share with you all as much as I would like.
The validation of life lived outside of screens and not shared with others, aside from whoever you’re presently with, is a thing I admit I wrestle with on occasion. Especially in my profession as a photographer. For what are images to be made for if not to share and tell stories with?
I have a pretty solid line when it comes to my personal life in this way, but I am finding the line moving closer and closer the longer I choose to travel and live in the way that I do. Whether that’s a specific feeling that comes with age or with a learned focus in the value of intimacy— I am still in the process of understanding. Perhaps it is a little of both.
It’s been a very busy year though, and I have been working on a myriad of projects that I hope to share more about soon. Most of what I’ve been working on is still in the process and creation and becoming stages, which is a space I’m not sure I’ve ever spent quite this much time in before.
My turnaround time for projects and ideas is usually a bit quicker, or there’s at least some measure of sharing about the journey of it all along the way, but I am finding that the richer and more rewarding projects deserve more space and time to become what they deserve to be. I am learning to sit with things longer than I am used to being comfortable with and not rushing creation for the sake of producing and proving productivity.
Read MoreOne of my pursuits in living here in New Mexico has entailed learning more about the Diné (Navajo) culture.
I came across this blessing today which from my understanding is often traditionally sung during the process of weaving, in reference to Spider Woman, who is said to have first woven the universe and taught the Diné to spread the “Beauty Way” by creating beauty in their own life and thus encompassing the balance of mind, body and soul.
It is also a part of the story that when Spider Woman discovered her abilities and after showing Spider Man, he created tools for her with which to weave out of the Juniper tree (read more here).
A fact that seems even more meaningful to me due to my own fascination and interest in Juniper trees that primarily began sometime last year.
(I don’t fully know why this feels meaningful exactly, other than the fact that I always take note when more than one interest seem to intersect with another…)
The more I learn about this beautiful culture, the more I feel it has to teach us in so many ways.
I thought I would share the blessing here with you today. I got chills reading it and cannot imagine how beautiful it must be in it’s original native tongue.
Read MoreI shared on Instagram last week that I was reading Women Who Run With The Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype by Clarissa Pinkola Estes. A book that I’d had in the trunk of my car for three months and was eagerly waiting for the right moment to start.
It generated so much interest and wonderful conversation that I decided to start a virtual bookclub!
The #RewildedBookclub can now be found on Facebook in a private group (join below!) or followed through that hashtag on instagram.
It is one of my inherent qualities that as long as I make time to at least both read and write in a day, I feel pretty good about the day as a whole. Although despite this belief, they are almost always the things I place on the back burner when I feel stressed or overwhelmed.
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However, these two habits are both such important parts of who I am and part of how I process and engage with the world in a way that feels meaningful to me.
Read Morei feel at home within the stillness of a house at night
i rarely waver in the dark or quiet spaces of a slightly unknown place
for there is a lightness there
it is inside these spaces that i find my place
amongst tired floors and resting furniture
it is me and the small-slow creeping things
(unsure as i am if the dark impressions of motion are on the floor or inside of my mind—there is even comfort to be found in that too)
the creaks and groans are the tones of hidden hellos specific to these walls
the things heard are of my own creation or that of the inherent nature of the frame i’m inside of
it is on and under these sloped sleeping lines that i am able to recenter and remember my sense of self that is now and at once a mirrored home: the inner home of me
Read MoreThe days begin with the slow saturation of the suns rays kissing and caressing the landscape gently awake, like you would your lover who’s still asleep next to you, deep under the warm darkness of sleep.
The sun always arises before the land.
Dutiful in its routine.
In the way that you too are always the first to awake before the form in bed next to you.
A morning person.
I wonder if the sun ever gets weary in its lonely trek across the sky, day after day, fated to a pre-planned path of journeying. Only able to have temporary, though distant relationship with the land and the things upon it.
Too far to ever have much of a chance to get to know the moving things down below, though it’s impression in turn upon them is lasting.
But, I suppose it does have the moon, if only for a brief moment, to play for a time with at dusk on some days. When both the moon and the sun are parallel in the sky from one another.
The moon is in fact the only one who knows a little of what it’s like to be the sun.
More so than any earthbound thing.
Two celestial friends.
Read MoreI am sitting cross legged on the earthen floor, thick patterned blankets between me and the dirt. It is dark inside the dome, which is made of 16 willow saplings tied together with cloth and string and covered in worn blankets and I am centered on the doorway, a square of piercing light that frames the fire a half dozen yards away where the fire keepers are excavating the lava stones, Grandfather, from the molten embers.
“Mitakuye Oyasin,”
I am inside of a sweat lodge, the ceremony, Inipi which means “To Live Again” is to purify and place ourselves in a position of openness to send prayers for ourselves and those we love who are suffering.
“Nothing will hurt you here”
Read MoreI’ve been getting a lot of messages lately asking how I lead such a ‘different’ life.
How did I take the leap of faith to do ______?
How did I overcome fear or indecision?
How did I come to lead a life doing what I want to do?
How did I figure it all out?
And while I feel pressed to say that I absolutely do not have it all figured out and that you cannot compare your beginning to someone else’s middle... truth be told: I’ve always been asked this question.
Because I have always lead a different life.
I think to some degree it does come more naturally to me than most to live counterculture.
I must admit that I strive to be different to an unhealthy degree at times. But there are a lot of circumstantial things that have contributed to my counter perspective of how to live.
Read MoreAnd I am watching now for the time of day when the shadows sleep.
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When there is still light in the sky but the sun has sunk low enough to put an end to the contrast of miraged skin.
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What is the exact moment in time that your body no longer casts a shadow onto the earth and if that moment had a name what would it be?
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The point of gradual desaturation before the gloaming sets in is an unnoticed thing to the naked eye. Perhaps permanently so, for how do you measure an intangible disappearance?
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Where does the secondary world of dark figures retire to?
Isn’t it a kind of faith to know they will come back?
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Perhaps it is as my Father said: “nothing good ever happens after dark”
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For bodies no longer have mirrored accountability of their actions.
The leaching of apparitions’ measured movements.
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It is a secret world that they go to-the shadows.
Frozen in an invisible realm until the sun rises just-so again.
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