the beauty of an ordinary life
When I was small and days were most often spent with just the two of us, my mother and me, filling time as we pleased, I spent countless hours in parks and museums, wandering aimlessly and looking at trees, art, and artifacts. Our most frequent haunt was the Brooks Museum, where my mother liked to…
There are few, if any, things as full of pure joy as the squeals of bubbly delight from a baby playing peek-a-boo. When my son was little, long before he could walk, this was an instant and endless source of entertainment, closing my hands over my face, opening them like doors, and saying, “peek-a-boo; I…
On Monday I had to put on my big girl pants, by which I mean quite literally the black stretchy pants with the wide and forgiving elastic waistband. I have done little but eat and drink with reckless abandon since November 10. On November 9 I was too depressed to eat. In the initial days…
So, a photograph is a picture made with light, a sliver of an instant, frozen in time. Nothing more; nothing less. It’s a split-second reaction between particles of light and some surface that catches them – film, coated paper, a digital board. Sometimes, the lucky times, the picture made with light captures something beyond a…
Here’s how I drilled a hole in my thumb: When Bernard walked into our bedroom, I was in the middle of saying: farewell, blue shirt; thank you for bringing out the blue in my eyes. And Bernard said: what the hell are you doing? And I said: I told you already; I’m going to spend…
Perhaps the real purpose of keeping a journal is for the assurance, at some later date, that one is still oneself – voice, hand, and eye as distinct as fingerprints. The years spanned are a blur, but each minute is frozen in crystalline precision. Only in time do the entries divulge what they always were:…
Among my greatest fears is this: one of my well-educated, high-brow friends asks me what I’m reading. So today you’ll be my confessor about my checkered life with junk books, and then we’ll talk about the wisdom of PB&J for dinner. Understand, at the beginning of this confession, a notion that has been drilled into…
We’re cullers and sorters, we people. We’re quick to classify, and once something’s known we’re equally quick to label it for future identification. Some classifications we choose; others are assigned to us. I’m not sure I know any parents who want their child to choose the label of artist, at least when it comes a…
