i know it's not 2011 and other thoughts.
we stop at the big cypress oasis visitor center and we step out into the sun, our skin still expectant of home, where the air chills you to your bones. soon we melt out of our layers. we make it about a hundred feet from the parking lot, our daughter holding my hand and smiling, tentatively, looking down at the green grass. it's like she can't believe it either. she spends the next twenty minutes laughing, running across the sidewalk and into the grass, saying 'mummy! grass! mummy! run!' i get this memory, more like old knowledge buried deep inside me, about what it felt like being a kid while watching her -- i remember that feeling when some place, some game you make up stretches out into forever and becomes your whole world for a little while. you think, this. this is my home now. this is who i am. she's so sad when we go back to the car and i get it.
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a few days later, dave and i are driving across the state, along the top of the everglades, and it's raining. we'd planned to stop off at a hiking trail somewhere, but not with this weather. our website boasts that we're road trip enthusiasts, and so we decide to just keep going to see how far we can make it. we're fueled by coffee, talking non-stop, talking over each other, ideas and theories spilling out as the road stretches on. in our element.a short list of things i love most of all: 1 - conversations in the car with dave, staring out at the road in front of us. it's where we do our best talking, always.we take the long blue bridge to the florida keys. the beach boys sang about key largo, but we can't seem to find the charm. we stop at a starbucks and the women inside look like the golden girls and that makes me smile. we push on towards islamorada, the name itself rolling off our tongues, and we stop at a trail. the park ranger gives dave a homemade laminated trail guide that's about four inches thick and i lag behind him, wearing very ill advised shoes for hiking. i finally start to use the new camera, start to see things through the camera again. i haven't felt inspired lately, back home in the depths of winter and dark. i haven't felt inspired by our surroundings for a long while and long for change.we don't make it to key west, so i suppose i'll always wonder about it. and it's only after arriving home that the internet tells me that the fictional place called kokomo might actually be a tiki bar in islamorada.
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the air conditioning stops working at our rental, and the indoor temperature climbs. we open the windows and listen to the wind blowing through the palms, and it's such a peaceful sound, that's all we hear. to think they had snow in florida before we arrived.a short list of things i love most of all, continued: 2 - silence but for the wind in leaves.lately i've felt stuck and i haven't liked the thought that this blog seems to exist solely to display some recent weddings we've photographed. i never wanted this blog to be that; i've always wanted it to feel more personal. i've always resonated with the idea that i'm a photographer who happens to take photos at weddings sometimes. i guess i want to go back to 2011 and earlier, when people used to write more than a few lines on an instagram photo; when you could find someone's writing that inspired you and just dive into the rabbit hole for a while. #sorrynotsorry i greatly dislike using the corporate powerhorse that is facebook for what i consider my humble quiet artistic expression, something that i dedicate a lot of my efforts towards.sidenote -- here's my soapbox for this post -- it irks me to no end that facebook considers all forms of communication on its platforms equal - whether you are pepsi, or a singular artist trying to earn your living, or a small non-profit trying to do some good - everyone competes on the same playing field, everyone is expected to shell out the same amount to ensure that the people who choose to care about them actually see what they have to say. i know social media is a part of life now; i'm still here sitting on the fence, sometimes in, sometimes out.
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a short list of things i love most of all, last one: translating it to words.sometimes my mind just starts composing sentences, ideas, and then i just tuck them away -- for what, for when? i don't know. sometimes these sentences don't even make it to page, but i want to try. so here i am back on this blog, trying to translate it, with a camera, with words. i know it's not 2011, but at least this space is mine, in a way that social media simply is not. people don't read blogs anymore, i know that.but i just finished reading late nights on air by elizabeth hay, among many other great qualities of this novel was the idea of the freedom of broadcasting in the middle of the night on a small town radio in the 1970s... maybe literally to an audience of one. that concept appealed to me a great deal; ironically, i can't think of much that's more anxiety-inducing that the idea of broadcasting my messy stumblings to a followers list a mile long. (also love dani shapiro's thoughts on the matter). i don't really think i'm that great of a writer but i've found over many years that i'm obsessed with trying, i keep coming back to it, and i'm in love with reading other people stumble through it, it gives me perspective and connection in a small beautiful way, and so i think i'll keep going for now.
