I was touring an art school with a group of prospective students. At first, we were in an auditorium. Then, a stone entryway/hallway. I noticed a woman—an established photographer—whose work I admire. I went over to talk to her, but she didn’t have time for me, quickly brushing me off. “Huh,” I thought. “Seems about right!”

As we were exploring, I saw that my work was on display at the school—a replica of my actual home gallery, where I showcase my photographs and drawings. Changes I made to my personal space were reflected in real time at the school. I was confused about how this worked and self-conscious, as the work wasn’t finished yet.

Before leaving, , who was like our chaperone, warmly reminded me not to forget my backpack. Another woman led me to a separate room, where all the prospective students' bags were stashed on the floor. There were so many scattered items, I was worried my backpack had been lost or stolen.

I rifled through the sea of bags until I found mine. My backpack looked different from how I remembered it—more like a knapsack. It reminded me of The Fool’s knapsack in the Rider-Waite-Smith Tarot. The bag was also somewhat transparent, and I could see the contents. Inside were two oversized tarot cards: The Magician and the Queen of Cups, though in the dream, I called it the Cup of Hearts.

With my knapsack in tow, I carried on my way, weaving through the school, which included a beautiful open-air library. On the way out, I rode/walked over a Ferris wheel of sorts. Upon disembarking, I exclaimed, “Wow, what a ride!” and continued like the Fool on my journey.

I had this dream a few months ago, around the time I was drafting a goodbye post for Reflecting Light. I didn’t publish it then, which I’m glad about. The iteration you are reading now is infinitely better, and the timing, as you’ll see, is right.

And boy, isn’t that everything? Timing. Certainly, it is with photography. What’s that phrase people say—“f/8 and be there?” Action over reflection, according to Wikipedia.

(Hm. I feel like I’m more attuned to one than the other...)

Anyway, here we are. Final post. Last frame. End of the roll. What a journey.

“What a ride!” as dream-me proclaimed.

Ok, yes, but. What does it mean?

There’s a lot to unpack in this dream. Probably more than I have space to parse or feel comfortable subjecting anyone to, unless they are a Jungian or my husband, who is going to be listening to me ramble about this until we’re in the grave, and even then, I’m going to bug him. Dude, remember when we were alive, and I had that dream about the tarot cards??

But let’s try. Let’s do a little dream analysis, for funsies, and because it’s my last Reflecting Light post ever. 😭

꩜

To start: We have an art school, full of enrolled and prospective students, including myself and other creatives like Susanne. Attached to the school, I discover, is a beautiful, open-air library...

Wow! Art school + a library: a communal learning environment where people are reading and mingling, practicing their art forms together, sharing their amazing talents and knowledge... I mean, c’mon. Is there a better metaphor for Substack than that?!

The creative collective.

I feel destined to be part of it, and yet in the dream, I’m rebuffed by a fellow photographer (an inner shadow figure, if I had to surmise). It’s cool. I get it. She's busy. And anyway, I’m still a budding artist, not quite on her level yet. If my unfinished home/public gallery space is anything to go by, I might never be.

Hmm.

I wonder if the home/public gallery space might signify this newsletter. This, err, blog. This—I still don’t know what to call it! Or myself, for that matter. In this space, am I an essayist? (Too academic.) Storyteller? (Too cringe.) Photographer? (Yes, but—.) Work-in-progress? (Too on-the-nose.) All four? (Probably!) Some other multi-hyphenate with a bunch of awkward slashes in between? (Almost definitely.) Even now, at the bittersweet end, I have never been able to quite figure it out.

“Creative spirit” still seems the most apt, the most all-encompassing descriptor of who I am and what I stand for, and it’s the one I’m sticking with. For now.

The Fool is a creative spirit.

The Fool, in the Rider-Waite-Smith Tarot, journeys through life by way of the Major Arcana cards—21 archetypal cards in total (not including the Fool, 0) that symbolize challenges and lessons that our whimsical hero must face and integrate. As the Fool frolics along, they add new experiences, insights, and wisdom to their rucksack, which I imagine expands inside but not outside, like a Bag of Infinite Holding.

I just counted.

21.

I’ve written 21 pieces for Reflecting Light. 21 emails, 21 missives. The one I’m writing now will be 22. And sent on April Fools’ Day. (No, it’s not a prank.) My fool’s journey—unintended yet oh-so synchronistic—is nearly complete.

In the dream, I finish my tour of the art school + library, hoist up my knapsack, and continue down the path of Life. While I’m sure there are many experiences tucked away, worthy of reflection, the main takeaways from my time spent with the collective appear in the form of the two cards I bring with me—The Magician and the Queen of Cups/Cup of Hearts.

Hoo, boy! We love to see it: Magic + Love. Honestly, does it get any better? Just looking at these two figures and the combined power they exude, I know in my heart that good things are possible.

When I began this project three years and three months ago, I wasn’t sure how it would go. Would anyone actually be interested in what I had to share? Would I? How long before I gave up and deleted everything? I had no idea. I just felt called to take one first step. Then another, and another. Along the way, I felt myself begin to harness a bit more personal power. The ability to bring my inner stories and visions to life, give them a proper audience, and on occasion, conjure a little stardust and pull a willing rabbit from a hat. I couldn’t do that so readily a few years ago. Now, I feel like I can. Somewhere along the line, I reestablished a direct link to the source of my creativity, which felt distant for a time. And while it will always be a challenge to effectively channel that energy, that vital spark, I trust it’s there, and what’s more, it wants me to use it. Put my hand up to the sky, with whatever tools I have at my disposal, fingers outstretched, and make magic.

So, there’s that.

Then there’s the Cups card—and, oh man, I can already feel the tears welling.

After I had the Art School Fool’s Knapsack dream, as I’ve been calling it, that same night I had another, shorter dream. This one seemed to clarify or expand on the Queen of Cups/Cup of Hearts in the first dream, which I will share now.

I was standing outside at the farm, i.e., my parents’ home in rural Wisconsin, where I grew up. It was raining, and the ground beneath me was flooding. I was attempting to take pictures using my Minolta. At one point, my camera fell into the water. When I picked it up, water gushed out of the lens. “Surely, it’s ruined,” I thought. “At the very least, the film is compromised.” Even after all the water seemed gone, it just kept coming—more and more water pouring out of my camera.

Upon waking up, I felt compelled to recreate the image of water inundating my Minolta. This required some strategic planning and effort on my part, without you know, completely ruining my camera. The photographs above are the result of that aim. They are the best I could do with the analog tools, skills, and energy I had. (See: The Magician.) When I look at them, I’m reminded of the dream and the strong emotions within it—overwhelming anxiety, yes, but also empathy for my camera and the outpouring of feeling it wordlessly observes and allows me to access. And with that, love. So much love.

No one better embodies love and compassion than the Queen of Cups. In tarot, Cups correspond to all things water, synonymous with feelings and intuition—the stuff of the heart. The phrase “filling one’s cup” comes to mind. Caring and being cared for. Gratitude. Replenishment.

At the same time, water can be devastating, capable of capsizing whole ships, not to mention a cherubic throne on the shoreline. But not this queen. This is a woman who knows herself well enough to trust she can handle anything the ocean or life throws at her. She accepts what comes her way because she accepts herself—every weird fish, every whirlpool, every deep, unruly wave. Nothing is rejected, only embraced.

Ahh, to be as steadfast and accepting as the Queen of Cups, able to weather the storms and tides, both inner and outer, that lap at my feet. Yet, the dream, torrential as it is, offers solace. Promise, even:

Here you are, it seems to say, feeling everything, wondering how you will ever find your way, and yet you pick up your camera, your waterlogged cup, and keep trying. And what happens? Even more water pours out, which makes you go AHHHHHH! But that’s okay. It’s good to let it out and fill back up. That’s what a cup does. What a heart does. Is made for.

The dream is right. Since starting this endeavor, I’ve become better equipped to handle the ebbs and flows of life and Art and, in the process, more receptive to the vast range of human emotions that plague and sustain both me and everyone around me. My capacity has expanded. It’s difficult to recognize that sometimes, but it’s true. I’m a stronger, more resilient container—a cup of hearts. Just when I think there’s nothing left in me, or for me, more keeps coming.

Fellow Substacker and Tarot aficionado, , whose visceral writing radiates pure Cups energy, shared her take on this queen. She sums it up perfectly [cue tears]:

The Queen of Cups represents more than love, of course; she is the vessel containing every emotion, the mystery of intuition and of creativity. Yet, in my experience, she is always, above all else, Love.

Her message, then, is that simplest and yet most challenging of truths: you are loved. It might not always seem plausible, living as we do in this achingly beautiful, yet excruciatingly troubled world, but I trust and feel in my bones that love is the animating, cosmic force, searing in its intensity, saturating in its ubiquitous presence. A huge mantle for one Queen to wear, yet she does so with tremendous grace, and an unswerving faith in your ability to feel that love and pass it on.

And so, I carry this queenly energy with me as I continue on my journey...

... to where, exactly?

Let’s go back to the dream.

꩜

The final image, or symbol, is a big one: the Ferris wheel. Like the Wheel of Fortune, or Fate. Or a giant hamster wheel.

What intrigues me most about the Ferris wheel is how dream-me “rides/walks” OVER it. I’m not sitting in one of the carriages, taking a leisurely spin. I’m leggily traipsing over the wheel, in classic physics-defying fashion, and coming down to earth. It’s there, on the ground, that I announce “Wow, what a ride!” before confidently looking out and striding towards the horizon. (Or a bus; I think I was hoping to catch a bus.)

Let’s look more closely at the wheel.

I can’t remember the last time I rode a Ferris wheel, but if my memory serves me correctly, they’re pretty nice. See: leisurely. You get on—slowly, there’s a surprising lack of urgency, the carriage sometimes takes several long seconds to arrive, I don’t even know if it stops, actually, I think it just keeps going and you have to kind of time it right, when to sit, but again, it’s super low-key, so you’re fine, you’re not going to get swept away or dragged, if that happens the operator will stop the ride, though to be honest that’s annoying for everyone on the wheel, it sucks when the ride stops, it delays the whole experience, which is already molasses-slow, unless at you’re the top and not afraid of heights, in which case, you get a nice view, especially if it’s a clear day, that’s probably the best case scenario—and then, you’re off, climbing into the sky.

Ferris wheels are comfortable. Cyclic. Novel, at first, but maybe after a while, the experience starts to feel a bit dull. Sluggish. No matter what you do or don’t do, or what you bring to it. (Snacks.) It’s not as thrilling as it once was. But it’s familiar. So you keep riding, round and round. Round and round. It feels nice; the Ferris wheel is a good ride, even when it’s windy. The ups and downs are built in. Sometimes, at the top, you squint into the distance. You can see super far. What’s that shiny thing on the horizon? You never find out because it’s too far away, and you don’t want to leave the wheel. If you leave the wheel, you might not get back on. Or it will be harder to. The line is long. The fair is crowded and getting more crowded every day. Everyone wants to ride the Ferris wheel. It’s fun! You feel like you’re really going somewhere without going anywhere at all. Sometimes there’s money, wedged in the seat. Sometimes there’s a kiss waiting for you at the top. A sunburst. A fucking cool bird flies past, and you add it to your list, and it adds you to its list. Cool Birds. You feel alive, even though you’re just going in the same damn circle, the same damn direction, the wheel doesn’t even reverse, well, maybe it does, but in all your wheel-riding years, you haven’t really seen that happen yet.

Dream-me is done going in circles. Done always wondering but never finding out. The cycle, the ride, the journey is decidedly complete. Time for the next adventure, the next calling. The moment is now. ACTION OVER REFLECTION.

As I go, dream-me insists upon air-walking, not just over the Ferris wheel, but in the opposite direction to which it turns.

What a rogue. What a badass.

What a complete and utter fool! ✶

Thank you so much for reading. Truly! ❤️🙏 In the time I’ve kept this blog (we’ll call it that), I’ve loved sending out missives, albeit sporadically, for you to peruse and expand upon. Some have likened getting an email from me to receiving a gift in their inbox. That’s been kind to hear, but the real gift was always you reading them.

I plan to keep the Reflecting Light archive unlocked for the foreseeable future. So, if you want to go back and read, you can. I’m also keeping my Substack account active. Who knows? Perhaps I’ll start a new project, or share the occasional photo on Notes. Feel free to connect with me on there or via email, if you would like.

Dream analysis and Tarot are complex arts! I do not claim to be proficient at either, and the dreams I’ve shared may indeed have valid interpretations that don’t culminate in me ending Reflecting Light. Please know that other factors also contributed to my decision, and it is one I’ve sat with for a long time. In truth, my energy continues to be pulled elsewhere—namely, toward fiction writing—and I feel obliged to honor that.

I never enabled paid subscriptions because I didn’t want to put pressure on my Art or be beholden to Substack. If you feel moved to toss a coin in my hat as I make my exit, that would overflow my cup. 🫶

(Ooof, it’s getting harder to wrap this up! A true Midwest goodbye.)

As a teenager and in college, I trained to be an actor and performed in copious plays and musicals. Whenever a show ended, I would cry and cry and cry. Cry and cry and cry. Then cry some more. (See: Queen of Cups.) In a way, Reflecting Light has felt like a long-running show. The house wasn’t always packed each night, and sometimes, I fucked up my lines. But it has been a beautiful, life-giving experience that I will be thinking about forever. As soon as I publish this piece, I’ll probably go and have a good cry.

Thank you, Cool Birds, for your time, your attention, and your generosity. I wish you infinite expansion, creatively and beyond.

From my dark heart to yours,
Al 🖤

We’ll end with a song—the inspiration for the title of this publication. ✨

Reflecting Light - Lyrics by Sam Phillips

Now that I’ve worn out
I’ve worn out the world
I’m on my knees in fascination
Looking through the night
And the moon’s never seen me before
But I’m reflecting light

I rode the pain down
Got off and looked up
Looked into your eyes
The lost open windows
All around
My dark heart lit up the skies

Now that I’ve worn out
I’ve worn out the world
I’m on my knees in fascination
Looking through the night
And the moon’s never seen me before
But I’m reflecting light

Give up the ground
Under your feet
Hold on to nothing for good
Turn and run at the mean dogs
Chasing you
Stand-alone and misunderstood

Now that I’ve worn out
I’ve worn out the world
I’m on my knees in fascination
Looking through the night
And the moon’s never seen me before
But I’m reflecting light

I lay in bed, eyes closed, and listened to the mouse. Somewhere, in the walls of the house, I heard it squeaking. At least, I assumed it was a mouse. What else makes bright, intermittent noises like Morse code in the depths of night?

My phone charger.

I got up and stumbled over to where it was plugged in. In the dark, I bent down and put my ear to the outlet, jiggling the cord the way one does when one knows absolute squat about electronic devices, and I waited for the sound it sometimes emits, reminiscent of a distressed rodent.

Nothing.

I stood up, banged my shin on the bedframe, and scurried back under the covers. Will, asleep, refused to answer my question. So I elbowed him.

“Do you hear that? That little [I made the noise]? I think it’s a mouse.”

“Whyyy are you awake?”

“I’m always awake.”

“You should really try to get some sleep.”

“I know, but dude—a mouse.” Then I added, “In the house!”

"It's probably nothing," Will said, rolling over and falling back asleep.

The mouse chattered. And chattered. And chattered. Something about a girl I used to know—or be? I dunno, I couldn’t make out the words.

I imagined telling my parents about the mouse and them advising me to set traps. But that is not something I am capable of doing…

Also, we have cats. Three (3). Highly territorial. Trained in mortal combat.

One time [trigger warning: GROSS], some poor unsuspecting creature crawled up through the basement floor drain, only to meet its gory end.

Imagine… You crawl thirty-something feet through a pipe just big enough to fit your scraggly body, reach the end, use your last vestiges of strength to push your way to freedom, and then are greeted by six gleaming eyes ready to devour you on the spot—leaving behind your entrails for two clueless humans to find and be horrified enough by to call the vet and say, we think one of our cats has parasites?! and they being a chill vet, say, ok, bring it in, and then the humans scoop your stringy remains into a Ziploc bag and take them to the professionals to look at and say, definitively, not parasites: guts, and then you get disposed of in a sterile windowless lab. Imagine.

Fuck, said the mouse. Not gonna happen to me!

Nor me, I said. Though I admit I could envision a scenario in which I struggle for so long, believing I’m almost at the end, almost free [of suffering], and then I get there, and nothing is as it seems.

.. / .-- .- -. - / - --- / -... . / ..-. .-. . .

Wind swept through the wildflowers along the side of the house, bashing their crisp heads against the windowpane, making it rattle. I thought about what I might attempt to write, to share with the World, and decided:

Nothing.

I would write about nothing.

O, Nothing. How I adore thee!

Doing nothing. Saying nothing. Basking in the warm dark of nothing; nothing the matter, no qualms or complaints.

No thing to distract or deter me, or ruminate on.

Pure, unabashed relife. I mean, relief. But also—relife! A return to the static swirl. Possibility. Seedhood.

Something comes from nothing.1

I often lie awake in bed and think of nothing. Which isn’t nothing, of course, but if I lie still enough, and bring enough awareness to what I’m doing, or not doing, I can almost believe that it’s possible. That anything is possible, if given enough time, depth, and sufficient darkness. And that Life, this improbable burgeoning, is more wondrous than anything I could dream.

Other times, nothing is an endless void—a growing glow on the horizon that threatens to consume me. I feel it flood the space between myself and my Self; myself and others; myself and the World.

This nothingness can become so intense, so charged, so paralyzing, that I find it hard to think or even breathe. Like walking through dense fog, I see shapes on the horizon that aren’t there, hear voices that seem like they want to help me but lead me further astray.

I feel nothing. Want nothing. Love nothing. Am loved by nothing.

In this way, nothing becomes of me. I struggle to move, to choose, to act.

Even a smile is too much to ask.

“SMILE.”

He says it sweetly, this young man I’m supporting for only one day. Alas, it’s a cover shift; I may not see him again—and so far, as is often the case, I have not.2

He wanted to go to the library. I drove him there, helped him look at kids’ books, this bright-faced twenty-something, who, though unable to engage in conversation, uses simple words sparingly.

“SMILE,” he repeats, and for his sake, I try. I try to smile.

To my amazement, whatever manifests on my face is more than the nothing smile I have been capable of offering for I-have-lost-track-of-the-days.

“SMILE.”

He turns away from me and toward his reflection in the darkened window of an unoccupied study room. The person he sees smiles back, making him smile even bigger.

“SMILE,” he tells him, and the young man in the window smiles back, even bigger.

“SMIIILE.”

The biggest smile yet.

It’s not nothing. No way. How could it be?

And yet, the divide it miraculously repairs later dissipates…

Will knows the drill. What to say, what not to say. He brings me two jars. One, in favor of Life. The other, its opposite. He instructs me to write notes to fold and put in each, and when I can’t summon the strength, he does so for me. His kindness, right there, is worthy of jotting down and tucking in the Trader Joe’s pepita salsa jar. (“Pairs well with just about anything, from tacos to grain bowls!”)

I’m a visual learner, which is the point: I can see the scraps of paper add up, more in one jar than the other. Does it instantly assuage me, unfurl me from the tight ball I’m wound up in? No. Not by a long shot. But it redirects the pain. Later transmutes it into gratitude—a word I bristle at, and yet, my god, it’s the most helpful thing.

Within a few days, it’s as though nothing has happened. (And nothing has.) I forget that anything was ever amiss in my brain. Nothing bothers me. Nothing chafes against the windowpane of my mind or heart.

I wouldn’t go so far as to say I feel weightless, nothing holding me back. Still, the nothingness is less oppressive than it was before. Softer. Forgiving.

The nothingness I see stretched before me no longer fills me with existential dread, but some version of hope, or rather, hope’s queer cousin: curiosity. I don’t know what will happen—to the World or me—but the only way to find out is to keep going. Keep waking up, trying, learning, going about my beautiful, terrifying, glorious days because more than anything, I’m curious to know how it all shakes out. It might be awful, it might be wonderful. Either way, if I want to know what happens, I need to stick around and see.

What’s behind the door? Around the corner? Inside the box? How does the book/movie/TV show end? How bad is it really going to get? How good? What’s the character (me) going to do next? What do I want to see her do? Nothing? Something she hasn’t thought of or dreamed of yet? Wouldn’t it be cool if [fill in the blank]?

She’ll never know unless she waits. She’ll never know how it goes, or what it means, unless she stays.

God, let’s hope I don’t have to push up a floor grate and find myself face-to-face with three bloodthirsty goons!

Same, said the mouse.

We transmit messages back and forth, feeble signals through the night. When the chattering stops, I lie still and listen to the silence. It sounds like nothing, by which I mean full and rich and alive.

I don’t rush to leave it; I take my time.

The world, in all its beauty and madness, waits for me. ✶

In writing this piece, a story returned to me, one I wrote a few years ago. The narrative in its entirety really only makes sense to me, which is fine. But one part, a mouse’s monologue, I will share here now.

THE MOUSE (ON THE FLOOR OF THE CINEMA IN MY HEART) [Excerpt]

I was born in a wall in winter. For a long time, I didn’t know I was inside a wall. The wall was very soft and warm, but narrow. I could only climb up or down. And it was dark, like constant night. Sometimes light would get in, thin streaks here and there. It took me a while, but once I really saw it, I became obsessed with the light and began to chase it. I was told that this was pointless. Light has no business being in a wall; why pretend otherwise? I was instructed to ignore the light. Except that the more I tried to ignore it, the brighter it grew in the corner of my eye.

What really plagued me was: where did the light come from? What made it so bright? For what reason was it there? Why did it only come sometimes and not always? And most curious, where did the light go when it went?

I needed to know more about the light. It ate at me, so I ate at it—literally! I began to chew at the spots in the wall where the light shone in. I had been told this was impossible and to never attempt it. But in fact, it was the opposite of impossible. Once you opened up the light, even more light came through. Exciting!

I kept chewing. Tiny holes at first. Then bigger ones. Holes big enough to fit whole mice.

I went through. I didn’t know that’s what I was doing, but as I was doing it, I realized I was: going through. Like becoming aware that you are dreaming, only I wasn’t dreaming. I was waking up.

On the other side, I didn’t recognize anything, but somehow, everything felt familiar, like a place I already knew. I was in a room, also dark, but not in the way the wall was dark. Dark like a solar eclipse is dark; halfway dark, and silvery.

Most of the silveryness came from a box in the back, just shot right out of it, like webbing from a spider, and hit another box, flashing with colors.

So this is where the light comes from. It’s here, in this dark in-between place.

And so I began to exist in the room full of colors and light. I explored every surface and grew accustomed to all the unique textures and sounds. I never knew a world so full of wonders! Sticky-sweet things on the floor for me to nibble. Tall, plush, billowy things, pleasurable to nest in and to climb. Red squarish things with short, prickly hairs that opened when you jumped on them, then snapped shut and sent you flying! The whispers of approaching feet.

A word about feet: they belong to socks and shoes and legs. In my world, I sit among them, crawl over them, and attempt to rest on them, which often results in being shooed away, though occasionally not.

Feet are young, feet are old. They go bare. They emit fascinating odors. Some are ghostly; others are solid as pain.

Feet are usually attached to bodies larger than I with faces, or impressions of faces, similar to the ones on the colored box. They come in pairs or sets. They come alone. Some I have grown to anticipate, and they are as familiar to me as the sweetness their upper bodies drop on the floor—hence, I’m fond of them.

I do not know where the feet come from, where they go, or where they sleep. I only know their tappy-tapping, their unsure shuffling, their sometimes stillness.

Even now, there is much I don’t know, but especially in the beginning. Looking back, I knew hardly anything then. Yet it didn’t matter what I knew or how much, only that I was there, doing my best with whatever little I had.

And it was so little. It was the perfect amount for me. 🐁

Boy, the ice is bad this year. At least, it is where I live, in Minnesota. We got ice everywhere, all over the streets and houses, schools, churches. Ice, damming up gas stations and Targets and little mom-and-pop restaurants, like it owns the place. Goddamn ice!

Despite the bitterness, I still love Winter, mother of ice. I go out into the street and stand in awe and admiration at her stark beauty, capable of amassing thousands who love and want to preserve it, like me. Mittens thrust up in the chilled air. I am not alone, but shuffle shoulder-to-shoulder alongside my fellow humans, upholding Winter’s goodness while demanding Spring come.

… spring.

Ever-returning spring, trinity sure to me you bring,
Lilac blooming perennial and drooping star in the west,
And thought of [her] I love.

One of Walt’s poems. Walt Whitman, of course, whom I’ve been fantasizing about. Not in that way. Ew, no, that would be weird. And wrong. After all, he is a child. My child. My imaginary one.

Walt often rides in the car with me. He sits in the back, looking out the window at the barricades of snow and ice, and we chat, as fictitious mother and son are wont to do. Like many children, Walt is wise beyond his years and, frequently, out of nowhere, will say things like, “Mama, the body of the ice is the same as the body of the earth, the same as my body, and all bodies, everywhere, softening under the yellow-hot sun.” And I’m like, Wow, my son is so poetic and mature. Where did he get that from? Not me, evidently. When Walt and I unexpectedly found ourselves within earshot of some particularly nasty ice, the first words out of my mouth were, “FUCK YOU, GREG BOVINO!” Which I admit felt nice. Really nice. Cathartic. Almost transcendent. But perhaps it wasn’t the most eloquent or considered reaction in the presence of a small child, even a made-up one. I retroactively instructed Walt to cover his ears.

Ugh, it’s just like, as a parent, what do you do? How do you hold the tension between the violent rage you feel inside and the striving to exemplify peace and goodwill?

“Mama, behold the snowflake! Tender-reaching speck of lace! Slow-fallen star! Behold the beyond from whence it came… from whence all things came: every man and every woman and every child… as mysterious as a distant ringing bell.”

I’ve taken to walking in the woods again, for my health, for respite. The trails, which were dangerously slippery for a while, even with YakTrax, now have a neat layer of snow packed upon them. Moving among the tall, silent trees, I am like another tree, uprooted, unbound. I move with a purpose: no purpose. Only to swish-swish and chomp-chomp until, lo, I’m rounding the corner to my house again, light shining, key twisting in the lock. Cold barrels in with me.

Sometimes, by then, my feet are firmly reattached to the ground. But other times they are not. Sometimes, my feet keep going, traveling over the vast fields of my mind, stopping to poke at something they shouldn’t, often something dead.

“O Death, great equalizer! Friend and foe to all men… all creatures and citizens of the earth… all seasons!”

Down by the lake, LOST CAT signs still rustle like ragged flags in the wind. I don’t think they ever found that cat, which makes me sad. Omen. Her name was Omen. A cursed name, I maintain, but what do you do? What do you do with things that disappear, other than keep looking for them? Desperately. Determinedly. Demanding justice.

The man who lived in the cave is gone now, too. No more fires or woodsmoke, no more trash. The whole place is empty, cleared out. Like nothing ever was. If I hadn’t been there and witnessed it with my own two eyes, I never would have known.

On a recent walk—it’s more of a daily pilgrimage at this point—I stepped inside the cave, turned around, and looked out. Robins—so totally twitterpated right now omg!—darted among the sparse trees lining the water, their trilling muted by low, overhanging rock. “Haaah,” I sang—the obligatory sound test one does in roomy spaces. (A clap will also do.) My voice reverberated over the crevices and hollows, the etched initials and primitive hieroglyphics: MIKAYLA. ☮. CL + JA. ☠️. An eye with a ★-shaped iris. A handprint.

As the sun sank beyond the western wall, I imagined tending a pot with a wild flame beneath it and watching for snakes and cats and other omens. Wondering who I was, what I was doing, how I got there.

“Walt?” I asked. “Do you think the ice ever questions itself?”

My boy grabbed a stick, wagging it of sand and a stubborn leaf. With the pointier end, he began drawing shapes on the ground.

“Ever-changing water… washing over my soul, smoothing the rough edges of my soul, filling the gaps between my soul and the souls of every living being… Eternal water: source of all life, and home to infinite life… A world in a drop.”

“That’s beautiful, Walt,” I said—had he been corporeal, I might have reached out and stroked his long, soft hair, a show of motherly pride and affection—“but I wonder what you really think, beneath the poetry? Do you imagine the ice knows what it’s doing? Like what it’s actually doing?”

A swirl became a sun, became a moon, became a face, became a dog. Became a rain cloud. Walt looked at his drawing and frowned.

“I don’t know, Mama.”

The sun continued to sink until it was almost gone, its rapid descent leaving the sky bruised.

“Walt,” I said again, clearing my throat.

“Yes, Mama?”

I wasn’t sure how to say it without sounding like a terrible person, a terrible mother. So I just spat it out. Because, wtf, I’m already ruining this kid, and he’s not even real.

“I think I have some ice in me.”

There, I had done it. I had broken him. My only child. The young great American poet. Silence filled the already silent room—except for the dry scrape of a stick against sand.

“That’s okay, Mama,” Walt replied, pausing to look up at me. “I have ice in me, too.”

He carried on drawing what became a boat, became a shield, became a portal to another realm. Walt started to step inside, leaving me forever, but I pleaded, “No, please—wait a little longer.”

We exited the cave and went home, the heavens dim, street lamps flickering on. I tried to make sense of the ice inside me—what exactly it was, where it came from. It is not the same as the ice I have observed, but it’s related: a kind of despair, a destructiveness. An intolerance, more often than not directed inward, but sometimes spiraling outward. A fury. A hatred. An irrational fear, a frigidity, gone awry. Gone south. Gone too far one way with no path back. An impossible ache. A frenetic, frozen longing. A sadness so frustrated it breaks. Cracks. Splinters into white oblivion. Bursts into stars that rain and do not stop raining. Not until they have fallen through the sky like knives and pierced anything still moving. Like a heart. Or hope. Or a dream. Anything tender and loving. I could kill those things if I wanted to. Lock them away, or snuff out their life, just because I can. Because somewhere, sometime, at some point in my history, a thing happened that made no sense, that felt unjust to me, and instead of facing it head-on, I backed away and got small and cold, so cold, it was like no heat could ever exist inside me again. And even when it did, when warmth returned and lit my spirit from the inside out, like a flame, I still felt a cold strain running throughout me. Sometimes, it reawakens. Floods and freezes the ground I tread, making it slick as hell. I fall on my ass and my eyes water, and I wonder, What do you do? What do we do? What are we supposed to do? Other than wipe away the tears, the lost years, and get back up?

I used to hate Winter. Or I constantly bitched about her, anyway. I wanted to be anywhere other than in the grip of her icy fists. Then I went away—far, far away—where Winter is but a distant land, spoken of with combined judgment and acclaim. And I discovered that I missed her. I missed her… I missed her? It boggled my mind, but the pangs in my heart declared it their quiet mission to pursue her again. Via a strange, meandering route that took many years, I found my way back. Winter was just as cold and fucked up as I remembered, yet once again, beyond all reason, I grew even more endeared to her. Only here, I thought, can you walk into a store in broad daylight and buy a thing that is a toy and also a murder weapon, and it is your right to do so. How reckless, how free! Only here can you step out your front door in the morning and feasibly walk and keep walking for what feels like forever through alternating swathes of towering steel and ancient, ancestral land. How oppressive, how pure! Only here can you hear a million voices and see a million faces so very different from your own and yet belong together. How impossible, how intrinsically right.

Only here do exquisite pain and beauty collide and coexist, almost seamlessly.

It has been so cold, so bleak in Minnesota this season that in the morning, natural ice patterns crystallize and curtain the windows. Sometimes, they last all day and into the next day, and the day after that. Each morning, a fresh mosaic, building on the last.

Sometimes, the sun emerges and melts the ice a little, making it run. Water pools along the sill to be mopped up with an old towel. The moisture wrecks the paint, which galls me. Last summer, when I applied a new protective coat, I thought it would last forever—ha, ha—or if not, then at least a few years. But alas, Nothing lasts forever, I keep reminding myself, along with the other tenets of wabi-sabi: nothing is perfect, and nothing is finished. Everything is subject to change, the cycle of decay and, on occasion, renewal. Spring becomes summer, becomes fall, becomes winter, becomes spring again—on and on, and on.

I don’t hate Winter anymore, like I used to. Volatile as she may be, I still love her, as Walt Whitman did. I want to see her rise and sparkle in all her tormented glory before transitioning to the next season, the next chapter, the next iteration of her existence.

I want to see Spring come, whatever cloak she may arrive in. Whatever twigs and leaves she has stuck in her hair.

Whatever corpses, hidden beneath the snow.

“Mama?”

We were hanging out in the kitchen. It was morning, my half-finished coffee on the table still steaming, Walt’s orange juice dregs streaking down the inside of his cup. I turned away from the window, the damp towel in my hand flecked with tiny white stars, and plopped down on the bench—a converted church pew. Somewhere in the distance, a bell began to toll.

“Yes, my sworn poet?”

Walt came over and lay his weightless head on my lap. He smelled like the worn pages of a good book. Letting out a sigh, he asked, “When will it end?”

I didn’t know, of course. I had no idea whatsoever. But I was adept at pretending.

I brought the coffee to my lips and savored its rich, bitter trickle down my throat. My eyes settled once more on the window—crumbling around the edges with lead paint that would surely damage the boy. Through the ice, warm light flickered.

“Soon,” I promised. And we both believed it. ✶

Every fall, I buy a squash, and every fall, without fail, it sits on the kitchen counter and taunts me. Butternut. Acorn. Spaghetti. All excellent varieties, capable of making me think, Wtf am I going to do with this thing? Because, as I philosophized to Will the other day when we were at the grocery store and I was holding up a super cute tiny crimson kabocha, as if to say, How sweet and seasonal is this and I’m getting it, when you buy a squash, you don’t just buy a squash. You buy a task. A responsibility. A ticking time bomb, and, along with that, a persistent, low-level dread. If you don’t know what I mean, you’ve never left a squash to sit on the counter for two to four months, only to realize that it had rotted and leaked putrid liquid everywhere. Procrastination in the name of uncertainty has its cost—and with squash, that cost involves gloves and disinfectant and a total recalibration of who you think you are, clearly not someone who can waltz into a store and buy one with the intention of cooking it. Ha-ha-ha! No. That is not you; that is a fantasy, and now you know it, and the squash knows it, and your mother, who generously gives you squash from her garden that you then squander, knows it, too. Everyone knows it. The grocery clerk knew it when they scanned the squash for you and asked, “Ooh, what are you making?” and you responded, “Hmm, I haven’t decided yet.” They knew. And deep down, you knew, too. You just couldn’t admit it yet.

I feel twitchy because something similar seems to be happening with the darkroom equipment that’s squatting in the open corner of the basement. Every time I go down to do laundry or cat stuff and stroll past it, I’m like, Oh god, there it is again. Boxes heaped with beakers and stacks of plastic trays line the concrete floor, alongside the giant (and fucking heavy) enlarger, able to make prints from 35mm negatives all the way up to 4x5 and shrouded with a black garbage bag to protect it from accumulating dust and dirt. Oh, and the 9-foot fiberglass sink, idling nearby like a dry canoe. All taunt me, beckon me, berate me for not tending to them, i.e., enclosing them in a lightless room.

What the darkroom equipment doesn’t understand is that building a space, which includes proper framing and electrical, not to mention adequate ventilation, requires time and careful planning. It’s not as easy as picking up a squash and hacking it open with a knife—also not easy, but significantly easier than drilling into concrete, in my view.

What the darkroom equipment needs to understand, needs to trust me on, is that it will happen. We will make things. Tangible things that people can hold. Not today and probably not tomorrow, either. But soon. Soon, there will be walls and darkness and flashes of light; the tang of chemicals and the click of tongs, as visions magically manifest and drip-dry in the air.

Then again, maybe I’m wrong. Maybe the darkroom equipment knows something I don’t, something I don’t want to admit to myself. Perhaps I’m not the darkroom rat I thought I was or could be. After all, it’s been years since I stepped foot in one. Maybe I’ve forgotten everything, all my skills and knowledge, whatever meager ones I’d accrued, swirled down the drain. Maybe the dream—of having my own darkroom and making beautiful prints—is merely a figment of an overactive imagination, the remnant of a potential I once hoped to reach.

Maybe soon I’ll walk downstairs and find a puddle of decayed darkroom equipment. Maybe I will cry a little, like I did on the day in early August, just before my 36th birthday, when I went to pick up the enlarger and other supplies. Except then it was tears of joy, along with the strange sensation that all was right in the world for a change. I was right in the world, right on course, and where I needed to be.

If only it were possible to maintain that feeling without also harboring dread.

Oh god, there it is again.

And yet, light shines, as light does. New work is being made. Lately, it comes to me in a rush, and then goes, sometimes for weeks. Then it returns. Nothing new there. But energy-wise, it feels different. Like I’ve been permitted access to a room I’d previously been denied. What that means beyond just that, I don’t have words for yet. So instead, I will borrow some from Diane Arbus, who said, “The thing that’s important to know is that you never know. You’re always sort of feeling your way.”

And now with that, I will slowly feel my way towards the kitchen, to where the tiny kabocha squash is nestled, not far from the jar of sourdough starter, an equally daunting and demanding task. Both require my attention, and at this moment, I feel capable of offering it, to the extent that I can try, anyway. I can crack things open, mix, shape, dust, slice, and place everything into a warm, darkened space, where alchemy occurs, surrendering whatever outcome to fate. ✶

Dear friends. I like how that sounds. My last post opened that way, too—more like a letter, less like an essay. I never set out to write essays, but looking back, that’s pretty much what I’ve done. Makes sense: In the years predating Reflecting Light, I worked as an essay scorer for standardized testing, grades 7-12. It was one of two remote jobs I picked up during the pandemic. Over many months, I read thousands of essays, some incomprehensible and concerning, others like a shot in the arm. Some were hilarious. I would share an especially memorable quote, but I signed something that swore on my life I wouldn’t. It’s just as well. The words exist solely between the student and me, like a look between strangers, or an anonymous note found on the ground. The words feel precious and alive. Essays penned by pimply teenagers revived my love of language at a time when that love was dim and flickering, like a Pokémon before it passes out. They showed me how to write with intent again. How to structure and expand upon my thoughts. It’s no wonder I gravitated to essay writing. (This, by the way, is not an essay. This is a letter.) The other job I took involved cold calling adults with disabilities and asking them to participate in a survey. Besides wanting to be of service and earn money, I thought the job would rid me of my fear of talking on the phone. It did not. Despite numerous calls I made, day in and day out, my hands continued to drip, my heart raced, and my voice shook, even with a script (that I wrote) in front of me. The work was exhausting. I eventually quit and returned to scoring essays before leaving to provide direct support to adults with disabilities—work I have continued to pursue. Every day, I’m grateful for my job. Not only does it benefit others whilst helping to sustain my creative life, but it gets me out and into the world. If left to my own devices, I might not see or speak to another person besides Will (and Greg) for days, possibly weeks, or months at a time. People assume I’m antisocial. And I am. Yet I love humans. They are perfect and flawed. I get a kick out of just being in someone else’s world for a while. Sitting with them in their living room. Seeing inside their fridge. Learning what they value. There are infinite ways to live and experience life, all of them valid, all of them true. As I go between worlds, one thing is apparent: Everyone wants to feel that their life matters. No one, not even the most antisocial among us, wants to feel left out or ignored. Or forgotten. (This, by the way, is a sign that you should reach out to someone in your life and remind them in a subtle or not-so-subtle way that they matter.) Greg lives in the cave on the northwest side of the lake. Or he did; I haven’t checked in on him in a while. The path, which was accessible and lined with wildflowers in spring, is now, at the peak of summer, infested with weeds, ticks, and snakes. Imagine the path as the outline of a giant eye, and the lake is the iris/pupil, gazing up at a steep bank of trees, which are eyelashes. Within the eyelashes, on the lash line, there is a speck, a stye. That’s Greg’s cave. I didn’t know the man’s name until the couple who lost their cat told me. “That’s Greg—he’s awesome.” The cat’s name was Omen. You can’t name a cat that and expect nothing to happen. In early spring, the cat got away and ran into the park—a sprawling woods—and down through the eyelashes to the path, where for months I walked daily and Greg lived (or lives). LOST CAT signs were posted everywhere. Live traps laid. But no Omen. Only a confused raccoon, which is a kind of omen. “Greg has seen her around. He feeds the rats.” The rats feed the snakes. Who is feeding Greg? Is Greg okay? The cave is a considerable distance from any of the park’s entrances, and the last time I saw the man, he was on crutches. The path often gets washed out by rain. One time, I offered to help Greg traverse a particularly treacherous section, and he declined. But not without a smile and a joke about not having health insurance. “I’m joking—I have health insurance. I just don’t use it.” What’s going on, Greg? By late spring, I was seeing Greg almost every day. He was usually walking, or hobbling, along the path like me, or tending a fire down by the lake or up on the ridge, the eyelid crease. I wasn’t especially fond of the fires Greg built. For one, they displaced animals and left circles of black soot in their wake. Second, the flames threatened to jump and spread like, well, you know. Despite the oft-waterlogged path, the overhanging foliage was crisp. Stare hard enough, and it might have combusted. “Hey, how ya doing?” “Good,” I always responded, “you?” “Can’t complain. Well, I can, but I won’t.” And so on, and so on, our lives overlapping, criss-crossing like vines clambering up the crabapple trees. During this time, I also frequently saw the couple who lost their cat. They came down in the evenings after work, same as me. “Any sign of her?” “Nooo,” they always said, voices tinged with sadness and increasing defeat. Me? I got addicted to watching the wildflowers bloom—a symphony of staggered beauty. This is how I am. I get really into one thing and obsess over it to the exclusion of everything else. It’s why I’m not allowed to watch many TV shows, even though I love TV shows. I could watch back-to-back series from now until forever, and be perfectly at ease. I mean, in every other respect, my life would be rotted, a pit of bad pulp. But otherwise, I would be grand. Self-actualized, even. Instead, I got obsessed with going to see if the Dutchman’s breeches had emerged from the earth and dangled their tiny white pantaloons out for all to see and swoon over. Then the columbine and wild geraniums. Then the viburnum. Then whatever was over there. And there. And there. Every day, some new delight sprang up and wooed me into returning the next day, hungry, expectant. My legs got strong from walking so much. I felt strong. “Be careful,” said Greg’s friend, as I strode by in mid-June. He was sitting outside the cave. Greg wasn’t at home. “I just saw the biggest snake I’ve ever seen. It had diamonds on its back.” My run-ins with the cat couple dwindled until one day they stopped. The traps disappeared, yet the signs remained, soggy, torn. When Omen first ran away, the leaves were lime green and budding, and it was easier to spot her black tail, swishing among the eyelashes. Now, it was impossible. Can a snake eat a cat? If a snake is large enough, like a python, then yes, it can. How long can a person go without eating? Generally speaking, one to two months. Greg ate food, or at least, he gathered things to eat. The remnants of foodstuff often spilled out of the cave—a cascade of empty bottles, foil, cardboard, cans—like a fridge turned on its side. “Greg has a job,” the cat couple told me, before our lives, our vines, got severed. Before the snakes came. Where does Greg work? At the time of writing, I work in human services, assisting people with disabilities. My role entails helping people help themselves in myriad everyday ways. This includes housing support. Greg is reminiscent of someone who might receive (or benefit from) the type of service I provide. I intended to inquire, to ask without prying, Greg, do you need, or would you like, assistance finding stable housing? What else do you need? But then the head-height weeds and bloodthirsty ticks and diamond-back snakes invaded, and I found myself taking a different, less perilous path, one where I didn’t have to hold my breath as I blindly forged ahead and prayed no wingless, armless creature wriggled underfoot. The upper eyelid closed. For me. I don’t know about Greg. I haven’t been brave enough to go back and see if he’s still there. I would like to. I would like to know how he’s doing. What he’s doing. If he’s okay. How is he handling the mosquitoes? Has he seen the cat, or any other omens? It’s Greg, right? Nice to meet you, Greg. I’m Al—short for Allison. I see you all the time. (This, by the way, was an essay. Or essay-esque.) What else is there to say? Thank you for enduring the length of this letter and its never-endingness. If I stop, even to take a paragraph break, I risk the words slipping through my fingers or ceasing to exist at all. You understand, I hope. To keep going is the only way forward. There is no turning back, only bravely, foolishly stumbling ahead, towards the cliff’s sheer edge. On that note, I leave you with a photograph, a self-portrait, perhaps a portent of what is to come. ✶

I emerge from hibernation to share with you: a song. Not a song by me, but one written, performed, and recorded by my dear husband, Will, aka The Cottonwood Shivers. Think of this song, “Supermoon,” and all of Will's music, as the accompaniment to my photography. In so many ways, they are bound, born of light and shadow and our fragile, shared existence.

In Sarah Ruhl’s play Eurydice, the title character says about her husband, “Orpheus never liked words. He had his music. He would get a funny look on his face and I would say what are you thinking about and he would always be thinking about music.” Girl, same. Always. Eurydice further elucidates, “This is what it is to love an artist: The moon is always rising above your house. The houses of your neighbors look dull and lacking in moonlight. But he is always going away from you. Inside his head there is always something more beautiful.”

I don’t know if that last part is true. “Supermoon” doesn't seem to think so. But I do believe that music, and Art in general, transcends our usual perceptions of time and space in the most beautiful way. It lifts to lofty heights and then turns and shines a spotlight deep into the core of our being. When I think about Art and the brave, ordinary souls who choose to accept its invitation, I can’t help but picture a wormhole. Or what I imagine a wormhole might look like: a collapsible bridge between seemingly disparate points in the universe. To love an artist, to be an artist, is to see the moon rising and view it not as a distant glowing orb, but as a portal to consciousness-expanding awe, curiosity, inspiration, and the earth beneath.

“Supermoon” is not about any of that. Not on the surface, anyway. But it has the same effect: it transports me to a rare, deep, near, and far place, all at once. That is the power of Art and reason enough to pursue art, listen to art, read art, gaze upon art, and BE art, by which I mean live Artfully, any chance you get.

So, go on, babe. Waste my time. I don’t mind, not one bit. ❤️

Listen to “Supermoon” on Spotify, Bandcamp, and other streaming platforms.

Lyrics to “Supermoon” courtesy of The Cottonwood Shivers:

I missed the show, and the party
And the supermoon
I don’t remember what I was doing
But I know it was with you

I stayed inside while the sun was rising
Dreaming up a song
I share it with you, so I can reach you
In the place nobody else knows but you

Baby can I waste your time
If’n you don’t mind
Cause I’d give a moonbeam for the light of your eyes

I’d turn down any invitation
So I could meet you and go estate saling
I’d drop what I’m clutching to touch your skin
Oh my love I am lost in the

Way that you see rainbows in the bathroom
Life in the mud
Love in the ladybug
Love in the ladybug

It’s a silent kind of heart
It’s a harmony that kills
The part of you that dies
To bring you back to life
To bring you back to life
To bring you back to life

Honey can I waste your time
If my lady don’t mind
Cause I’d trade a moonbeam for the light of your eyes

Baby can I waste your time
If’n you don’t mind
Cause if I have you let life pass on by
If I have you let life pass on by

🌕 Bonus: A few years ago, Will released an EP, Moonlight, under his name. The title track features the two of us singing together. It remains a favorite of mine.

The woman behind the counter at Petco has the most beautiful blue eyes I have ever seen. When I tell her this, somehow they become even more dazzling, like precious jewels in a video game. I want to ask her questions—despite eyes shining above a face mask, she looks lonely—things like, Have you always worked at Petco? Or is this a post-retirement job? Do you have any pets? What kind? But I refrain from inquiring because it is late, almost nine p.m. on a weekday, and I have a hungry kitten waiting for me at home. A few hours earlier, I did not have a kitten, but things have changed, and now I am partly responsible for a lifeform so small and soft she nestles in the space between my neck and shoulder like a warm cinnamon bun.

I pick up the bag of kibble—at this point, it is unknown whether Baby Girl can eat raw food like Big Man and Old Girl, who I pray forgive us, Will and I, for this egregious trespass, i.e., Will for bringing and me for allowing another cat into our already cramped house—and head outside.

The parking lot is cold and dark. It is so cold my nostrils Velcro in and out when I breathe, billowing clouds into the lightless sky. Before I reach the car, the tips of my eyelashes have crystallized, and I’m terrified. Not of the black ice hiding on the snowy roads or the subzero temps or the night, but of loving something so much so soon.

And so frail. Cradling the kitten in my cupped hands is like holding a bag of air with bones suspended inside. How can this be? More concerning, who (what poor soul) would leave such a thing in a box on the side of the road in winter?

Overnight, my creative space is converted into a kitten haven. Beneath old drawings and darkroom prints sprawls a landmine of jangly toys, cardboard boxes, scratchers, wooly balls, litter, dishes for food and water, and endless places to climb and hide. I don’t mind sharing my space if it means Baby Girl, aka Little Miss Crazy Town, is alive and well, lounging upon her carpeted throne like a tiny queen, her face open and mewing. Which, depending on her mood, either means feed me! feed me! or else love me! love me! And I do, oh, I do more than anything.

Once the kitten has settled in and the Establishment has grown to tolerate her existence, I sit down and write out some resolutions. It is almost spring; the crocuses will be here soon. But better late than never.

• I resolve to be a good cat mom to Big Man, Old Girl, and Little Miss Crazy Town. (Names have been changed to protect their identities.)

• I resolve to install software updates on my devices as soon as they are available and not wait until things glitch and I’m forced to.

• I resolve to wash the dishes promptly and not let them languish in the sink for eight-plus hours on the premise that they are “soaking.”

• I resolve to stop messing with my tooth, the one sticking out. Anytime I’m tempted to press on it with my tongue or bemoan its ever-increasing protrusion, I will say to myself the same thing I say to Big Man and Little Miss Crazy Town whenever they pester Old Girl: She wants to be left alone.

• I resolve to be more feral, less kempt, and stranger.

• I resolve to write more freely.

• I resolve to actually write and not just imagine writing, even though what I imagine writing is so good, it’s the best stuff I’ve written.

• I resolve to avenge the field, the one that was destroyed and replaced with that hideous Grinch-green astroturf, not with equal violence, necessarily, but some other expression of outrage and mourning, perhaps a shrine or commemorative plaque to honor the slain and displaced: the butter-soft flowers and the rabbits who ate them; the wind-whipped butterflies; the milkweed.

• I resolve to bake a bundt cake. Nothing fancy, just a bundt cake. It can be dry.

• I resolve to let my apparent aimlessness animate me like wind whisking up a kite.

Crazy Town, for her part, has resolved to be a living stuffed toy and also a reprieve from the ceaseless horrors happening each day, everywhere, all the time. In the a.m., before I can even look to see what fresh atrocity has transpired, she darts up onto the bed and worms her way under the duvet into my arms, where I hold her rumbling body against mine, careful not to squeeze too tight for fear I will love the living daylight out of this thing who just wants to cuddle and play and be alive. It is a worthy pursuit, one that perhaps doesn't sound like much (see also: my resolutions), but it is everything. Everything. Throughout the day, her joyous playing elicits equally joyous sounds that take a beat to register as coming from me. Unbridled giggling? Strange!

Compared to what is happening all over, my resolutions admittedly feel small. I worry I’m not being brave or if I should be bolder, really put myself out there and fight more fervently for what I believe in, what is invariably at stake. I look at the kitten, adhered to a sheer vertical plane, and think, my god, she is so tiny… and so brave. Despite the adversity and obstacles placed along her path, she continues to propel herself into each moment like it’s an empty shoebox. Every day, she brings delight to our faces. Delight that is readily available and yet often hard to come by and, as such, must be acknowledged and celebrated; like a fake mouse, tossed about.

That’s another resolution I’m committed to: naming joy. I text Will things like, “Remind me to tell you why I’m feeling good,” or declaring in the middle of cooking dinner or watching the cats chase each other around the house, “I feel hopeful right now. I feel happy.” I practice saying what is true yet feels almost embarrassing but must be said, or else it will go unnoticed and fade with the day, the month, the year, never to return in the same way twice.

I have to tell you: You have the most beautiful blue eyes I have ever seen.

And it’s true. I do. It would be cowardly not to. 💎

The photographs featured in this piece were made using a Minolta Autocord TLR 120 film camera with Kodak Tri-X film. They were developed at home with Kodak and FPP chemicals and scanned with an Epson V800 scanner and SilverFast software.

1. Buy a New Old Camera off Craigslist and confine it to your desk. Spend sporadic chunks of time researching your latest acquisition, i.e., watching dudes on YouTube talk ad nauseam, until you are sufficiently overwhelmed. Let this influx of information prevent you from picking up your New Old Camera for one to three weeks.

2. Resolve to stop paying the lab to develop and scan your film. It’s getting expensive, and you can do it yourself at home. Commence frugal girl summer.

3. Commence sophisticated procrastination to delay ordering chemicals and supplies online. Strategically drop Amazon Prime to further hinder your plan. When finally committing to order from B&H, do so on the Sabbath, rendering the contents of your cart unavailable for purchase until later when you inevitably forget. Repeat for exactly one month.

4. Learn to operate your New Old Camera by shooting several rolls of film, but do not physically behold any photos because SEE ABOVE. Keep images—and the inner workings of your heart—latent. 

5. Run into your middle school crush at a coffee shop and instantly become twelve again, zit-riddled, sweaty-palmed. Afterward, conjure an elaborate fantasy of your crush and all crushes (past, present, future) collectively critiquing your creative work (public, private), and fall ill. Let the illness spiral into a weeks-long madness, during which you question the purpose of art-making, your intentions as an Artist, and what that word even means. Does it mean anything to you anymore? Or have you lost all sense of yourself?

6. Lose all sense of yourself. Like an empty raft, float delicately, deliberately, demurely downstream.

7. Delve into a fresh obsession: rock hunting, pagoda building, barefoot running. Get adept at baking buckwheat bread and soaking brown rice.

8. Establish a bedtime. It’s all well and good you ordered the developing chemicals and supplies and re-learned how to use them. But scanning (aka blue light 😵‍💫) in the evening isn’t feasible when you’ve got to be in bed and asleep by 11 PM. Your mental health will improve as your art declines.

9. Devise a timekeeping system that invites more routine and structure into your days. Arbitrarily divide the workable hours (8:30 AM - 8:30 PM) into four sections, as distinct as each season. Call it “Quadrant Time.” Let this novel way of being liberate you as you cultivate some much-needed balance.

10. Get overly invested in watching the Democratic National Convention, the U.S. Open, and late-night talk shows like The Daily Show the morning after. Do this while snuggling with your lover for added benefit.

11. Commit to completing all New York Times Games, including the Saturday crossword, before even considering doing anything else. Fail, and do nothing. 

12. Foster a superstition wherein the last shot of a roll of film has to “feel right” otherwise, the roll invariably won’t turn out. Wait as long as possible to shoot the final frame to defer potential despair.

13. Let finished rolls cool for one to three days before removing them from your New Old Camera.

14. Let removed rolls languish in a drawer for approximately one week to four months before developing.

15. Let the developed film air-dry in a closet for four to five days before cutting into strips and scanning.

16. Let scans sit, unedited, in an Untitled folder on your desktop for upwards of forever.

17. Repeat 13 - 16. 

18. Die a little.

19. After dying, come back to the earthly plane. Die again. Let all your old selves die. And the things they made. Just let everything go and come back and then go again. It’s okay. These things happen.

20. Start drawing again, like you did when you were a kid. No pressure. Just lines on a blank page. If you look closely, you can see the fibers of the paper, all knit together. Let whatever you draw emerge from the space where the fibers meet. See if you can sit back and not try to control the outcome.

21. Give up! Not in a woeful way but in a way that pats you on the shoulder and says, “Look at all the fragile beauty within and around you. This will all be over someday—and sooner than you think. So it doesn’t matter what you do. Not really.”

22. Put your hands in the dirt in front of where you live. Remove the weeds. Call it a garden. Attempt to revive what looks dead but is not. Inside, your New Old Camera sits on your desk, which belonged to your grandmother. Her fingers, like your fingers, traced the woodgrain. One day, it will be someone else’s—the same as your camera.

23. Get swept up in the knowing that nothing is separate, everything is a continuation, a never-ending ongoing. Sit in that tightly-knit space until the impulse to make a photograph arises, seemingly out of nowhere and for no reason.

24. Resist, at first. Then, like a raft reaching the open ocean, give in to the pull.

The photographs featured in this piece were made using a Minolta Autocord TLR 120 film camera with Ilford HP5 Plus and Kodak Tri-X film. They were developed at home with Kodak and FPP chemicals and scanned with an Epson V800 scanner and SilverFast software.

Cherry red updates pinged across the bottom of the screen, urging me to refresh, and I did so hungrily, each blip of journalistic insight providing brief satiation. Despite every effort to resist, like being sucked toward a black hole, my eyes locked with those of the defendant sitting in the courtroom: small hands folded, straw hair a nest in which no sane bird would dwell. With my thumb and forefinger, I zoomed in. No matter how intensely I studied them, recessed inside his pumpkin face, I failed to witness anything remotely transcendent, a quality most eyes contain. Rolling mine back so far they throbbed, I questioned the choice to bring my phone and, thereby, the wider world with me to the woods in the first place. Yet, of course, I must.

Exhibit A. I was making self-portraits along the river’s edge once, and a man approached holding a dead snake. 

“ARE YOU OKAY?”

I looked around. Minus the stranger invading my personal space, his gait staggered, volume a little loud, I felt fine. Who is this guy? Why is he bothering me?

The man continued to attempt to initiate conversation, but I, part woman, part porcupine, was not having it. Or the critter limp in his fist. 

I didn’t know the snake was dead actually until he offered it to me, a proposition that, while tempting, I ultimately declined. (Him: Do you want to see a dead snake? Me: Nope! - I believe this was the extent of our exchange.) At my dismissal, the man appeared crestfallen and stormed away, hitting his head on a branch. “THAT’S KARMA!” he said, a hint of menace in his voice, and I instinctively feared the worst: that he might return in retaliation. Ensuring his exit through the pines, I packed up my camera and tripod and booked it down the path in the opposite direction, phoning Will as I went.

“Come meet me,” I said, glancing over my shoulder like a doe short of breath.

For days, I regretted “being mean” to the man with the dead snake. He just asked me if I was okay… reasoned the girl, the woman, intent on being good and kind to everyone and everything. I shouldn’t have been so prickly.

Sssshhhhhhhhhhhhh, went the tree, its lime limbs swaying.

✶

What dark part of me is eclipsing the light, bewildering the birds and insects, sending me insane?

I type this note into my phone on the solar eclipse. We're staying with family in Illinois, markedly flatter, blander, and greener than a few hours north, and I am here for it.

“Give me your wind farms, Illinois!” I proclaim, metaphorically thrusting my torso through the moonroof of my parents’ gray Subaru. “Your barren fields! Your broken roads! I gladly welcome all in exchange for a thimble of warmth.”

I haven't slept in days. Illinois isn’t to blame; this is solely a me issue. Approximately once a month, I eschew all regulatory functions such as sleep in favor of, I don't even know what. Writing? Fretting? Magnifying matters of utter inconsequence until they ignite and engulf me in flames? Hard to say. All I know is that Illinois is not responsible for my persistent insomnia. If anything, riding in the back of the Sube, Will beside me, I’m like an invalid being whisked to the country where the clean air and sun might “do me some good.”

And what good they do me! Upon arriving at our eclipse-viewing location, my lungs swell, my heart palpitates, and the trenches under my eyes lift and smooth to their full, fresh-faced capacity. (Just kidding. The trenches remain.) While not rested, exactly, I'm awake. Inspired. More than I've been in weeks.

Case in point: the honeybees.

A plum tree stands on the edge of my aunt’s brother’s property, bustling with honeybees. Bloom to bloom, they flit and fizz, their fuzzy heads frothed with pollen. Even from ten steps back, the sound is a buzzy amp. I kick off my slides and embed my toes in the grass, tugging on the strands. O em GEE!!! my feet sing, blissfully absorbing the earth’s current they’ve gone seven (seven!) months without. Any doubts I kindle about my aliveness (last I checked, there were at least four) are doused by the emerald tufts jutting beneath my knees as I crouch to behold the soft pink petals being bombarded by bees. When I die, I pray I’m reincarnated as a flowering fruit tree and experience the unfathomable pleasure of a thousand insects kissing me at once.

While waiting for totality, I feel like a tiny bee in my own right, buzzing here and there, snapping pictures, lapping nectar. Let the record show: I’m not interested in photographing the eclipse. For starters, I want to fully immerse myself in the event when it happens, not be fussing with my cameras. Even if it is photoworthy, I refuse—refuse!—to get caught up in the hype.

Furthermore, I don't have the right lens or filter and didn’t think to gather those items ahead of time in the off chance I might change my mind, which I’m starting to do, given the whole thing is indeed remarkable and it would be cool to make a picture and also everyone keeps asking me about it.

Ah well!

I maintain my stance: I won’t photograph the eclipse. Rather I will use the lead-up to reconnect with my cameras, having left them idle all winter, and get the blood flowing back into my creative extremities. It helps that I am in a new place with fresh objects to admire (blossoms) and people I adore seated next to me. While waiting for the sun, moon, and Earth to align in perfect astronomical syzygy, my love pokes a hole in a paper bowl, casting fingernail clippings of light for my niece to swoon over. And boy, does she ever, her mouth and eyes like: o o O!

The bees’ hum reduces to a hush as the sky gradually drains of color and the air, like a shawl slipping to the floor, strips of warmth. “Oooooh,” everyone goes. The birds, too, stop singing—a clear indicator that the threads knitting normality together are coming undone. SOMETHING IS THE MATTER IS THE MATTER IS MATTER their absence screams. My hands tremble as I wind another roll of film in my camera. Click—pull. Click—pull. Everyone is hanging out, chatting, occasionally looking up. Dogs mill between the driveway and the shade. Besides the sun being incrementally eaten by the moon, confounding nature, it's an idyllic spring day.

“TWO MINUTES!”

I grab a pair of flimsy glasses to protect my retinas from irreparable damage and settle onto a blanket on the ground. My niece wants to see my camera, and I let her peer down the viewfinder at our bizarre and beautiful planet. If you squint, you can make out a war or two flourishing in the distance and faint pockets of atrocity budding, threatening to explode. Naturally, I abstain from pointing these out to my niece, even though I could, I could obliterate a perfectly nice time like I almost did in the car when she was watching videos of pearls being extracted from oysters.

“You know,” I wanted to say, lowering my voice, “the suffering that humans inflict upon animals, the way we value certain lives over others, is really…”

But I refrained from going full vegan activist on her because 1) she’s four, and 2) I can't claim that status, as evidenced by my continued use of film—it contains gelatin derived from the bones of horses, pigs, and cows—and, more flagrantly, my recent impulse to buy and eat a fish.

“Something is up with me,” I said to Will the first time it happened. “I don't know if I have a vitamin deficiency or what. But right now, my body is telling me: I NEED THIS.”

“Listen to that,” my love advised as I lamented my irrepressible desire to eat an animal’s flesh when I don’t eat animals (land or sea) or substances produced from their bodies and, minus minor infractions, haven’t in years.

✶

Two days before the eclipse, we stopped to pee and stretch our legs at Cabela’s, an outdoor retail store and one of the few attractions (generous) en route to Illinois. In addition to camping gear, live bait, and guns, Cabela’s is perhaps best known for its wide array of taxidermy animals. Moose, musk oxen, ptarmigan—all congregate in majestic and often combative poses on a man-made mountain set against a backdrop of heavenly clouds and aquamarine sky. Mounts, too, line the walls, common ones like deer and elk, but also more exotic wildlife like a zebra.

“Are they real, do you think, or reproductions?” my sister-in-law and I contemplated. Beside us, a pair of Arctic wolves bared their fangs, circling an ox.

“Sorry, Al!!” she said, sympathetically. 

It’s OK, part of me wanted to confess. I, too, consume animals. Or I’m starting to again. I don't know…

Conflicted feelings drifted in me like the fish in the freshwater aquarium, their mouths silently opening and closing like O — O —. Bluegill and perch paraded past as a large-mouth bass rose from the depths and turned to me, my face superimposed over its face behind the glass. The longer I stared at its marbled eyes the more I recognized a spark of something undeniably sublime, soulful even, glimpsing back. I stood, rapt, head gently bowed. Funny how a fish can infuse me with reverence but a certain ex-president leaves me utterly empty; he is so devoid of light.

✶

“IT’S STARTING!!”

I lift my face to watch the moon devour the sun, but it’s too dark to see anything.

“I can’t see any—”

“TAKE OFF YOUR GLASSES!!!”

o o O!

It’s not that the scene before me doesn’t make sense. It does. It’s just that everything—trees, flowers, grass, skin, sky—is operating under dream logic, like how in a dream a cat paw can emerge from a flap in your side and it’s not disconcerting at all, or your bedroom closet suddenly morphs into a tunnel leading to your high school gymnasium where that influencer you semi-followed for a couple of years (what was her name?) is performing in Pickleball! The Musical and you, part porcupine, are responsible for keeping the raccoons (mostly tame) at bay, lest they scurry onstage, and you're like:

Yes. This adds up.

The eclipse is just like that. The way the sun becomes a hollow plate makes perfect sense in the context of the dreamland, a watery realm where dogs howl in silhouette on the horizon and breathing is a function of the past. In the dreamland, lungs do not expand or contract but HOLD HOLD HOLD as if to let go would send the O sliding straight down the sky. . .

The O is a hole
punched in a sheet of black
craft paper. A dance
without movement. A bony
fish eye. It is an illogical poem
penned by the universe.

A wedding band.

Marry me? the stars seem to propose.

O, I reply, how we are already wed…

⋆ ゜⋆₊ ⊹ ゜⋆ ゜⋆ ₊ ⊹ ゜

Upon witnessing this spectacular celestial occurrence, my ruling not to make a picture is instantly overturned. O em GEE, I gush, struggling to remember how a camera works, my brain is so dazzled!

Before I can fully absorb what’s happening, the moon has passed, the sun is revived, and the earth’s generator is back up and whirring. My heart, like a heart, sags. SOMETHING IS THE MATTER IS THE MATTER IS MATTER the birds reprise as normality seamlessly re-knits.

Sadness—she is elegant, clad in Gunne Sax, a former dancer—extends an elbow in invitation.

“Walk with me.”

We stroll over to where the hickory trees abruptly end and give way to flatness stretching for miles. Nuts pepper the moss at our feet.

“I can’t believe it’s over,” I say, shaking my head. Even though I saw firsthand what the wider world had been hyping for weeks—the ring of light, the ruby-red flare, a once, maybe twice-in-a-lifetime experience—I feel like I missed it, everything happened so fast. “I wish I'd been more present.”

Sadness sighs, stooping to procure a nut and twiddle it with her long, delicate fingers.

“Just like your—”

“I know, I know—”

We say it together: “Wedding day.”

She can't let it go. Even after all this time, it haunts her the same way she haunts me: how completely out of it I was, a ghost hovering high above the courthouse where my love and I exchanged vows, choice words which minutes later I could not recall even if you paid me in infinite do-overs; how it ate at me throughout dinner and pictures and all the way to our bed and breakfast in the woods where, alone together, I tearfully admitted that I didn’t remember a thing.

You, you were so present… but me… I missed our wedding!

Upon hearing this revelation, Will’s eyes widened in disbelief. “ME TOO!! I was thinking the same thing about you: Man, she’s so present right now… But I wasn’t at all!”

How we laughed and kissed, pupils aligned in syzygy, as Sadness disappeared into the pines, a river of moonlight trailing behind her…

I want to remind Sadness of this event as proof everything will be okay. But I know any solace I offer won’t last long. Her memory is profound and exacting, able to dredge up new and ancient ruins at the drop of a hat. (She keeps a collection at the ready for this very purpose.) Instead, I turn to ask, again, for her forgiveness but Will is beside me and we are walking walking walking toward the car, stopping to collect blankets and stray objects we have strewn upon the earth.

The plum tree waves in ecstatic pink goodbye.

Back on the road, we zigzag through tiny towns quilted on either side with fields and farmhouses. My little brother—I concede he is not so little anymore but in his Charizard era, i.e. his final evolutionary stage—drives as we play I Spy with my niece.

“I spy with my little eye… something blue.”

“THE SKY!?”

“…Yes.”

Her eyelids flutter to a close and, like that, she is out. Must be nice, I imagine, to be so carefree. As my niece traverses dreamland, my sister-in-law keeps a hand on her forehead to prevent it from snapping forward and back. Amid talk of politics, house prices, and Marjorie Taylor Green (she’s a hoot), we make a pact to view the next big solar eclipse together—in 2044. I am thirty-four. At that point, I will be fifty-four and better at photography and life, maybe.

Maybe.

I look out the window and lo, there is Sadness: floating like an angel in the clouds above the wind turbines, gossamer dress and face freely flowing. She holds the hickory nut aloft in her palm—a small dark o. At the tilt of her wrist, it rolls. Then tear-like

f
a
l
l
s


&

f
a
l
l
s


&

f
a
l
l
s


o


o


o


O, who cares, who cares! Let it be Enough. Let the forgotten moment be perfect in its brokenness. It is over, done. The day is dead; the moon moved on.

(And yourself! Allow this for yourself!)

— Phone note, evening of the solar eclipse, April 8th, 2024

✶

The cold river rippled past, its migraine-like shimmer snapping me away from the trial and the endless scrolling and refreshing I’m susceptible to. I blinked twice, ten, fifteen times, wondering if my contacts had fallen out of my skull, my vision was so mottled. Alas, I’d merely stared at a bright rectangle for a sizable portion of the morning, like a weird animal.

The tree, ever kind and doting, dimpled my flesh, signaling, It’s time for you to go. I pressed a palm to its bark before scuttling back to my life in the city, where everything was exploding and every hour turning a new shade of green.

Later that day, I lay across the bed with the windows open. A snake, reincarnated as a squiggle of wind, slithered through. “Don't you know?” it whispered, tickling my inner eardrum. “Sssspring is here. The birds are all abuzz about it.”

Eyelids closed, luring sleep, I saw infinite circles expanding and coalescing like petals, moons, suns, eyes, rings, kisses, karma, clouds.

Like life.

Maybe one day, after I die, my bones will be gelatinized and made into a roll of film to be shot in springtime, if I’m lucky, blossoms puffed and spilling on the ground.

May the remnants of my body preserve a moment of awe. ✶

Even though I know it’s just a bear coat—the coat is furry and brown with ears sticking off the hood—the sight of it trundling down the sidewalk in the dark, just past 10 p.m., causes my breath to catch. I clutch Will’s arm for safety and to avoid slipping on the ice. The bear draws closer... and closer... until the tuft-lined opening reveals a man of indeterminate age, his breath a puff of smoke against the stark night air. “Hullo,” he says, bumbling past. “Hello,” we say to the bear, glancing at each other before turning our attention to the main attraction, the fire truck.

Minutes earlier: a flash as bright as day, accompanied by a rapid succession of gunshots. I’d just lit a candle and when the room went black, I stood holding it, stunned. As it happens, no gunshots were fired, but a transformer on the street corner had blown, taking all the lights on the block with it. “I was in the kitchen and did a duck and roll,” our neighbor texts from the refuge of their house approximately ten steps away. We (me, Will, and the couple next door) make a point to text each other whenever something strange happens, a power outage or no water, and we need to know we’re not alone but don’t want to walk over and talk face-to-face or call. I respond with an emoji I always interpret as "laughing until tears form” but it is actually “face with tears of joy.”

We fumble for our coats and boots, the compulsion to witness, within us, strong. Outside is brighter than in, the new snow like a reflective blanket keeping the earth warm. The night before, I’d whisked from room to room, turning off lights and tucking the house and cats in, and as I passed through the kitchen, I was met by an eerie brightness seeping in and went to the window to look. Breath forming a peach of fog on the glass, I watched the snow fall from the ether in slow, straight lines. Then I went to bed, said a rare prayer, and held Will, already sleeping, tight tight tight.

The next day we got up as usual despite neither of us working—we’d taken the whole day off. Snow had accumulated overnight and throughout the morning, and we joked that it was nature’s way of saying, “Really? Are you sure you want to live here?” Before heading outside to shovel, I made Will, ever an exemplar of preparedness, change out of his suit. “You can’t wear that,” I informed him, incredulous he’d even entertained the idea. “It’ll get wrinkled and wet!”

We shoveled the walk and driveway, our bundled bodies swishing to and fro. The whole time, I didn’t think about the interview but what I always think about when I shovel: this would be a fun video game. I imagined myself as a tireless avatar whilst trying hard to ignore my real and aching muscles (I’m weak) and focus on the tasks at hand—namely, moving all of the white crap from one area to another, collecting various items revealed when paths are cleared, e.g. insulated gloves, a blowtorch, and avoiding the angry snowman who occasionally attacks and blows snow everywhere.

Back inside, we still had time before needing to leave for the appointment. Toeing around melted coins of snow on the floor, I whipped up a pot of miso soup with leftover rice, tofu, a sprinkle of wakame, and finely sliced green onions. Easy food, as my IBS had been flaring up all week, and we both had butterflies. Whenever I eat miso soup it reminds me of Japan and the weeks we spent there in 2016, during which we got engaged in a tiny Airbnb in Tokyo, on Valentine’s Day, and wandered around Kichijōji holding hands and sipping coffee and ambling down blossom-strewn streets with weathered signs swaying overhead.

“It’s good to eat a little something,” I said. “Like before an exam.” Which it was. It was exactly that—an exam.

We arrived early as planned. It’s something I love about the two of us, Will and I. We are good at getting places and being where we need to be. It’s the whole reason we met. Both of us arrived early to the concert hall, unplanned, we weren’t aware of each other’s existence before then, but standing in the lobby with our silhouettes reflected in the polished floor, we started talking. First about Bob Dylan, then Shakespeare, then I forget what else because I was busy trying to figure out how, logistically, I was going to spend the rest of my life with this person from England I’d only just met but knew I needed to be with. Oh, I needed him so badly.

The hotel foyer where the coffee shop is located and where we waited until it was time for Will’s interview reminded me of the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall in Portland, Oregon. (Arlene: who died in 2020 and with whom I exchanged pleasantries while working as a tea server at the Japanese Garden, her tuft of white-blond hair like a cattail trembling in the breeze as she sat on the terrace with a friend overlooking the greenery, how I longed to confess to her, quietly, the theater named after you, because of you, is where I met my person, the one I adore more than any other on this planet in this unfathomable universe, you, Arlene, are part of my love story.) Situated in downtown Minneapolis, the Hotel Emery is lush and I mean lush with plants and people with laptops and fluted marble columns like trunks of great oaks and brass accents and a glass fireplace with plush crimson seating, where we sipped oat milk cappuccinos and admired the natural light flooding down from the ceiling and, beyond that, the sky. For a moment, I lamented not bringing a camera despite having purposefully chosen not to. I’m a bad photographer. Really, I am. Bad in the sense that I don’t capitalize on notable moments, forgoing material preservation in favor of connecting more deeply with presence, a feat I am forever attempting and failing at.

So, no. Minus the obligatory phone shot of Will in his suit to share with family, I did not visually record or document the occasion. Rather, I held Will’s hand and quizzed him. How many representatives are there in the House? Easy. 435. Name two states that border Canada. Washington and Minnesota, naturally. Having studied the U.S. citizenship test questions for months and been a permanent resident for years, Will had the answers down pat. “You’re gonna do great,” I said, squeezing his fingers between mine. I meant it. I wasn’t nervous for him at all.

Snow erased the tops of the buildings as we wound through the skyway linking the Hotel Emery to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Field Office. I couldn’t help but hum “Skyway” by The Replacements, a perfect song, in my opinion, and one that makes me cry, as all perfect songs do. I shook my head at the improbability of us being in that place let alone finding each other at the tender ages of twenty-one and twenty-two; how all of us move through the world, every day, finding and losing each other and discovering portals in ourselves along the way. The impossibility of it all, manifesting as a lump in my throat that would not leave and I did not ask it.

The combined test and interview took less than twenty minutes. While waiting for my husband to emerge from a room I was not permitted, I looked out the window at the city dissolving and the other people waiting and the signs. PHOTOGRAPHY PROHIBITED BEYOND THIS POINT - I felt justified in my choice to leave the kids, I mean, cameras at home. NO CELL PHONE USE IN THIS AREA - a bold-faced directive next to which everyone scrolled. Didn’t they know how to break the rules discreetly? It's simple. You put your phone slightly inside your purse or pocket, just enough to conceal it, but you can still look down and see it if you need to and you will because, be real, any length of time is too long to go without checking your device if you’re addicted or have OCD tendencies, as I do.

I turned off my phone and sat.

In an alternate reality, I would be the one applying for citizenship in a foreign land where I was not born and do not have family or anyone, really, other than the person I fell in love with. Except I don’t have the same affinity for the U.K. that Will does for the U.S. Even before he had a green card and regularly came to America as a visitor, Will belonged. At first, it irked me, how well he fit in, whereas I struggled no matter where I went. Now it fills me with deep peace to know he’s part of this place that, in spite of its glaring problems, has nurtured him and us so much.

Every Monday night, Will and I tune in to “The Rachel Maddow Show” - a solemn TV dinner date - for a sobering look at the current state of American politics. (Rachel: who I have an unabashed crush on, she is so smart and sexy, on my list if you know what I mean, how I long to curl up in front of her when everything comes crashing down, tell me, Rachel, tell me how it all ends.) Lately, the show’s focus has been the imminent demise of democracy, which hinges almost exclusively on the outcome of the upcoming election. In preparation for his citizenship interview, Will pondered the question: Why do you want to become a U.S. citizen? His answer: so he can VOTE! An obvious response and yet, if you are a natural born citizen, like I am, the privilege is perhaps less stunning because it is so inherent. To acquire the right through naturalization, though, is nothing short of extraordinary, given such man-made freedoms are not ubiquitous, people are vying for similar liberties across the globe each day, risking so much in pursuit of a better life and—

Will emerged slightly sweaty but smiling, and I immediately stood up and threw my arms around him. Softly, I said, “Okay, but just to confirm, you passed, right?”

Yes, yes, a resounding “YES!”

Cue: face with tears of joy.

*

When the transformer blows, before I know that’s what it is, and I hear BANG BANG BANG, my initial reaction is no no no, this can't be happening, we’re not having a shooting on our block the same day Will learns he’s going to become a U.S. citizen. There’s no way we’re going to be able to explain that to his family in England, or justify our decision to remain here. That is not happening. Rewind the clock.

Maybe it did; maybe the wheel of fate got rewound because the second we step outside and shuffle past the bear, it’s obvious everything is fine. The fire truck idles as people in uniform descend and reassure folks that the energy company is aware of the issue and will be out to fix it soon. No flames or cause for alarm.

We go to bed. Some hours later, the lights come flooding back on, a great awakening, and I leap up and scurry from room to room, turning things off again. The cats, confused, rouse in hopes of breakfast, and I have to inform them, no, it’s not even close to that time. Go back to bed!

I peek outside. The sky is white even though it’s dark. A plane, invisible, whooshes overhead. I shiver before returning to the warmth of our nest. Will is sleeping soundly, and when I wrap my arms around him, it’s with such depth and force, I think he might become a diamond. ✶

I wasn’t a geology buff like many of my fellow guides. Instead, I was drawn to the cave by the sheer novelty factor. Also, the dim, strangely intimate, and hushed setting appealed to the then-thespian and later darkroom enthusiast in me.1 Though I had no prescience of it at the time, the making was apparent: my favorite part of the tour was when I got to turn off all the lights. For a solid minute, I would expose visitors to the wonder of Total Darkness. I’d explain how, in true pitch black, a person’s eyesight will never adjust, no matter how long they wait. Like a proper guide, I'd let this moment sink in and linger, sometimes too long, before joking that I'd see everyone later. (“You guys remember the way out, right?”) This was often the point in the tour where someone needed to leave, understandably, and I had an intercom stationed nearby for that very purpose.

I was a good guide. I never left anyone behind, even when they asked dumb questions or tried to touch the stalactites or disturb the bats. I held kids’ hands if they were scared. If someone, god forbid, opened a granola bar and loudly rustled the wrapper before tossing it on the ground, I kept my cool and calmly retrieved it. I waited for the slowpokes and stragglers. Answered every question with as much scientific knowledge as I’d retained.

The only thing I ever wittingly lied about was when someone would point and ask, “Where’s that hole go?” and I would respond, “Nowhere,” when, in fact, it led somewhere—I just didn’t know where.

Until I went spelunking.

The thing about claustrophobia, and most phobias, is that you don’t develop it until the situation arises. It’s an incredible disadvantage! Never before, in any circumstance, had I considered myself claustrophobic until I felt rock pressed against both my chest and back as I army-crawled like an ant through the earth—100 feet underground. (In retrospect, I might have anticipated this better.) As my headlamp illuminated the disappearing soles of the shoes of the intrepid explorer in front of me, I became wildly claustrophobic.

Oh, this is bad, I thought. This is very bad. I need to get out of here. NOW.

Within a few minutes of semi-conscious writhing through a terrain I swear no human being should set foot in, even briefly, we arrived at a domed cavity. All six or seven of us crowded into a room roughly the size of a small tent—a holding space before continuing our journey. I was not, as expected, dead, though the possibility remained. I hunched over, shaking and breathless. My colleagues appeared unfazed.

“If anyone needs to leave,” our lead guide informed us, “now is the time.”

I remembered how the expedition was set to spit us out somewhere in the woods behind the gift shop. It would be another forty-five minutes or so before we surfaced.

“I-I will leave,” I stammered, barely lucid. I hoped I could make it out and didn't faint and need to be rescued.

“Me too.”

A guy I’d always pegged as being cool and collected, tough even, had also opted out. I felt marginal relief; I wasn’t the only one who couldn’t hack it.

“Alright, then. You two—follow me.”

Our exit is muzzy. It plays in my memory like I’m a mole with limited eyesight, wriggling through the dirt toward a distant light. In my vague recollection, we took a different route from the way we came, ending up in The Ballroom. This spacious chamber, named after parties that early explorers used to throw in the cave and served as a tornado and bomb shelter, was part of the regular tour. I swear, I’d never been so happy to have entered that room. Maybe any room. Ever. To this day.

Our guide crawled back into the crevice from whence we came, while my brave co-worker and I left the cave our usual way—by walking. Jelly-legged, we trailed the long incline and wooden steps until we reached glorious daylight. Then we sat outside on the picnic tables next to the parking lot, nursed our frayed nerves, and waited for the others to emerge from the woods, which darkened like a witch's lair.

I haven’t visited the cave in many years, though I think about it often. In particular, I think about that day I went spelunking and how ridiculous and frightened I felt to find myself in a situation where I had such limited control over my surroundings and faculties. In a way, it was good: I challenged myself to go out of my comfort zone and, subsequently, permitted myself to abandon that endeavor when it became too much for me. My choice to leave, I like to think, also enabled someone else to do the same. At the time, it gave me increased respect for the folks who left the regular tour. I understood all of us better after that day.

So, why the cave story? Where are we going here, Al?

Well, as your guide, if you follow me this way…

Sometimes, being online feels like exploring a vast, intricate cave. In certain pockets, there is breathing room and spaciousness; in others, the walls feel increasingly narrow, and the air is stagnant and thin. Not to mention feeling like you’re being watched by hundreds, perhaps thousands, of pairs of red beady eyes.

Lately, I’ve been feeling somewhat confined by select online spaces and the pressures they create to engage. Even Substack, the platform I use to write Reflecting Light, isn't faultless. Take a gander at this nudge I got from them the other day:

THE GALL!!

First of all, Substack—relax. The draft will be finished when it’s finished. Right now, I’m merely enjoying stringing words together into something I hope (🤞) is coherent. Let me revel in this frustrating process I love so dearly.

Second, maybe fast growth is overrated. I had an amaryllis once that grew shockingly fast and beautiful, only to become too heavy and snap off its head. Maybe, at this stage in my life, I’m more focused on slow growth. Like a tree. Perhaps a cedar or Japanese maple.

In this way, I’m not cut out for digital life with its ceaseless churning and expectation to keep up. I mean, there’s a reason I gravitated to analog photography. Like me, it’s decidedly anti-hustle. Meditative. A little finicky! Yet, somehow, I’m still here.

Sometimes I question the purpose and necessity of writing this newsletter (blog?) and sharing my “ideas with the world.” I fear it is yet another obligation for you, the reader, more filler and noise to contend with. Why add to the din?

It seems I can't help it. For inexplicable reasons, I keep putting my fingers to the keyboard and sending stray missives across the void. Even when it’s dim and far away, there’s a twinkle within this space I’m drawn toward. All I can do is follow that tiny, flickering light for as long as it exists before waning and dissolving into black.

That being said, you always have the choice to opt out. I mean it. If anything about Reflecting Light becomes too much (or little) or a drain, even subtly, on your life or inbox, please don’t feel you have to keep up with it. It’s okay to take a break or let it fade.

Over the years, I've needed to disengage from various online platforms and discourse for the sake of my mental health. I'm going through something similar now. Stuff has, in short, become too much for me. I'm struggling to maintain composure and make space for all the things that give my life meaning or help to regulate it, like exercise and sleep. (Oh, sleep.) As a result, I find myself returning to the splendor of missing out, free from pressure and constraint. Like a sapling, I emerge from the dark earth. It’s bright; I blink. Fresh air fills my lungs. ✶

1

I made this silver gelatin print a few years ago in a community darkroom. Recently, I was pleased to discover it found a home in the Winter 2024 issue of SHOTS Magazine. The theme: Moving Pictures.

“The film will still turn out weird,” I plead. “Like, foggy and stuff.”

The man with the lanyard and badge doesn’t budge.

“Sorry, ma’am.”

A warm, exasperated breath floods against my mask. “You’re the only place that does this,” I inform him, a blunt attempt at reasoning that I know, as soon as I say it, isn’t going to help. He shoves my bin further down the line.

“Why don’t you get a lead bag?”

A lead bag? A lead bag? Sure, let me travel back to a fabled time when I was somehow wiser and more prepared and buy a protective film bag I didn’t know existed until two seconds ago, but trust me, I will research later when I’m home and less agitated. Thank you for the tip, sir!

I lift my foot so he can examine my boots.

“Do I have to take these off?”

His eyes dart down and up.

“Ehh, try your luck.”

Despite hoards of travelers thronging on either side of the barrier, the queue is short; I’m waved forward without a word.

Fucking Americans, the phrase I’ve heard quietly in passing over the years, on the Underground, in one regaling or another, echoes in my skull.

“Fucking England,” I mutter as soon as I’m through security and go to collect my compromised film.

*

10 days earlier.

The flight from Minneapolis to London is overnight, and every seat and overhead compartment is crammed with people, presents, suitcases, and coats. (Edit: there are no people in the overhead compartments.) I settle in, resting my cheek on Will’s shoulder as the plane cruises east to his homeland.

I have been to the UK before, even lived there, yet I still feel nervous about going. London, in particular, is like my twin flame, if a twin flame can be a city. At times, my relationship with it has been intense. A catalyst for breakthroughs and breakdowns. (Think: the Tower, in tarot.) It’s pushed me to evolve in ways both welcomed and painful. Shoved my insecurities into the spotlight and forced me to reckon with them. Every time I visit, I’m grateful for what the city has shown me and sweaty-palmed about what I might still need to face. (Something I never really know until I arrive.)

Forget Covid. Anyone have a fear of getting lice on a plane? I do. All modes of transportation, really. Busses. Ubers. Booths (not transportation, I know, but equally squirm-inducing.) Anywhere I can lean back my head. Nowhere is my fear of lice greater, though, than on an airplane, where escape and fresh air are significantly reduced and small children (potential carriers) teem. Due to the hot (why so hot?) temperature inside the cabin, I feel incapable of wearing a hat or wrapping a scarf around my crown as a protective shield against the dubious headrest/brick behind me. So I just have to deal, which I do by watching movies that make me weep, listening to music that makes me weep, chatting with Will about the weeping, and when all of that is over and Will is feigning sleep, becoming invested in the passenger to my right.

The young woman seated next to me spends the 8-hour flight quietly resting, snacking on crisps (we’re going with British vernacular from here on), and looking at pictures of herself on her phone. Due to extreme proximity and my inability to sleep, I also spend a portion of the journey eaves-looking at her selfies. Together, we scroll through endless shots of her posing with and without makeup, in the company of others and alone, through mirrors and beyond them. I’m struck by how conventionally beautiful her face is and how few pictures there are of anything else. Were someone to assess this person’s camera roll with the task of determining, from a cursory glance, what’s important to her… well, I know one answer!

I can’t talk. It would bring me acute embarrassment for anyone to glimpse the phone selfies I have taken, equal parts flattering and frightful, intended to immortalize my physical form or assess it for supposed weakness. I understand too well the compulsion to scrutinize and obsess to the point where a thing no longer exists, like repeatedly speaking a word until it loses all meaning. I have hyper-focused until I’ve disappeared, blurred into a pixelated blob—a result that is both disorientating and freeing, depending on perspective.

Another wave of weepiness rises in my chest for the young woman seated next to me and for all of us and the ways we are consumed. Outside, the sky is like the bottom of the ocean. I slip my headphones on and immerse myself in a world of sad, soft sounds, eyes closed, heart and mind still very much awake.

In London, we walk the dogs along the Thames and pop over to Richmond for Ted Lasso-related wandering. We play Scrabble with the family, build a 3D Harry Potter puzzle, and clink glasses in a pub owned by James Blunt. A few days before Christmas, we peruse the stalls at Borough Market with Will’s mum before heading to our old haunt in Brick Lane. We eat Thai food at Rosa’s and browse the stacks at Rough Trade—a stone’s throw from our former flat, which I’m pleased to discover has a thriving plant in the window.

On a relatively bright, windless day, we trek from the British Library to the edge of Green Park. I’m tempted to revisit the Art School I attended near King’s Cross, but it feels physically, and spiritually, out of the way. We stop for coffee and a treat, duck into Hatchard’s to look at postcards and books, and weave through hoards of people along Picadilly before catching the bus back to SW6.

The entire time, I keep seeing the number 33. On street signs. Door plaques. Adverts. Everywhere I look: 33. 33. 33.

Christmas Day is spent at my brother-in-law’s in Essex—what feels like a world away from the hustle and bustle of London. Nature is infinitely more prevalent in this part of the country and feels ancient and storybook. Something about the little town we’re in reminds me of where Will and I live in Minnesota, except everything is closer together and medieval. Mossier. More quaint.

Sometime after the presents have been opened, pudding eaten, and the festivities dwindled, I get antsy. Typically, by this point in any trip to England, I’m a tad on edge. I’m feeling socially drained, all my little pressure points and anxieties are mild to severely inflamed, and I’ve ugly-cried at least once.

But this time is different. I’m not upset or fussed about anything. So far, everything has been, well, lovely. My otherness—the thing that usually trips me up—no longer feels like a barrier but a portal to deeper connection and self-discovery. Even when my mind threatens to self-sabotage and dwell on various what-ifs and complaints, I notice that I’m calmer and less prone to letting it.

Back in London, I’m suspicious of this newfound peace. It feels almost flukey, and I keep waiting for something to shift and to burst into tears. While waiting at a crossing in central London, I suddenly feel as though someone is staring at me. When I look up, I see the number 33 for, like, the hundredth time.

Ok, fine, I think. Let’s figure this out. What lesson am I supposed to be learning? What do I still need to face?

I research everything 33 can possibly mean. There are so many interpretations: creative expression, spiritual growth, a call to create more balance and harmony in your romantic life/your work life/your cat’s life. Twin flames. I mean, pick a word or phrase, and 33 will likely indicate it!

My mind chews over this information until it is shredded and arranged into bedding for nesting in. Then it chew-chew-chews until another bed is formed and a whole cushy castle lifts into space.

Eventually, I give up, deciding to let the unknown stay unknown… when it dawns on me. Maybe there’s nothing I need to face. Maybe 33 is just a nod from the city that everything is okay, and I can take a moment to appreciate where I'm at.

I carry this centered feeling with me throughout the rest of our trip and at the airport as we say goodbye and file into the security line. By the time I’m through, I think, “Welp, that was fun while it lasted!” I curse England and vow never to fly out of Heathrow again (unless I get one of those lead bags, in which case, we will see). Tears form at the corners of my eyes, and I take a few deep breaths to ground myself again, which doesn’t work. Breathing never works.1

I’m going to get lice on the plane, I conclude. My pictures are ruined, and I’m going to get lice.

Eight hours later, I return to Earth and Midwestern soil. I’m no longer miffed at England, or lice-ridden. Just jet-lagged. It's afternoon, and the film lab is open, so once we're home and fed, I drive over and drop off my rolls of Kodak Ultramax, fully accepting whatever the outcome is.

A few days later, I get the pictures back. Drumroll: they're fine. No fogginess or visible indicators of damage. Maybe lacking some definition in the shadows (quite possibly a photographer error). But otherwise, A-OK.

It’s a clear reminder that my fears are often unfounded, and my sensitivities, while all-consuming at times, are not a sign of weakness. Like a roll of ISO 400 film, I’m more resilient than I think. ✶

But I haven’t made a single picture in over three weeks.

I’ll tell you what I have made—trips to Menards. For anyone outside of the American Midwest, Menards is a home improvement store. It is gargantuan and contains any tiny tool or supply you could ever need. In the land of DIY, Menards (whose color palette is green) stands apart from its competitors, Lowe’s (blue) and Home Depot (orange). I have frequented these stores countless times and attest that Menards is the best. In particular, the Midway location in Saint Paul, Minnesota.

The Midway store has two levels with a long, moving walkway between them. You can push your cart on (come with me on this journey) and slowly ascend in the quest for lighting, doors, cleaning products, what-have-you. As you climb at a speed on par with an airport security line on Thanksgiving Eve, you may glance down at the Christmas decorations on display since August. Inflatable snowmen and festooned trees twinkle at you as you ride higher and higher toward the cavernous warehouse beams.

At the top of the moving walkway, to the left, waits a baby grand piano. Disembarking onto the upper level, you’d be forgiven for assuming it is for sale, given Menards is a big store that sells big things. But, au contraire! Menards has placed this piano here to serenade you while you shop, whether you wish it or not.

The first time I ever heard the piano, I was on the lower level, inspecting planks of pine so twisted, if you put your ear to them, you could almost hear maniacal laughter coming out of the grain. At this point in my creative life, I was still making pictures, unlike now, where nearly a month has passed since I’ve made anything.

“They’re playing piano music,” I mused aloud to Will, who confirmed my ears did not deceive me.

A typical trip to Menards is usually soundtracked by generic pop songs interspersed with the store’s signature jingle encouraging you to Save Big Money! The gentle piano arrangement I was hearing didn’t quite align with what I’d come to expect from a store that, in addition to lumber and drywall, sells giant tubs of cheese balls.

We picked up a straight-as-we-could-find 2x4 and loaded it onto the flat metal cart.

“It's probably a self-playing piano,” Will said.

Having seen the empty-seated piano on more than one occasion, combined with the precision with which the notes effortlessly flowed through the speakers, his theory added up. This made it all the more surprising and delightful when, on yet another Menards excursion, this time for trim, we witnessed a gray-haired man bent over the piano, his nimble fingers expertly darting to and fro.

“Whaaaat?” I sang with glee—a response I believe adequately sums up my feelings about this musical happening.

This is why the Menards on Midway is a step above the other home improvement stores: on weekends, they get a pianist to come in and serenade shoppers. Depending on the day and the pianist, you’ll hear music ranging from Chopin’s nocturnes to Neil Young’s “Harvest Moon.” One time, I heard “Bring Me To Life” by Evanescence.

At a time when there is so much to grieve and grip my fists and gaze in disbelief at, both in America and beyond, I’m grateful for the musicians whose weekend gig is playing the piano at Menards. It doesn’t change anything or ease the anguish or outrage. (How could it?) But it’s a glimmer on an otherwise dark, almost black pool.

Our little house is slowly metamorphosing. In the three years since we bought and started renovating it, we have scrubbed and sanded, painted and re-painted, torn out, chiseled, installed, and embarked on copious endeavors to bring new life to an old, neglected space. Aurora House, the name we gave it, refers to Sleeping Beauty.

The Upstairs, as it’s deemed, soon to be Will’s music studio, has been the most time-consuming project to date, on par only with the summer we spent scraping lead paint off the exterior—an event I have more or less blocked out. Despite the challenges and the incredible amount of patience required at each stage, we’re close to completing the brunt of the work, after which we’ll have time to tinker and fine-tune until we either move or die, whichever comes first.

To say I feel fortunate to live in a relatively safe part of the world in a home that, though modest by American standards, is solid and has everything I need is a vast understatement. It is a privilege I’m constantly aware of, one that often chafes while at the same time compels me to be more conscious.

Owning a home is not something I ever thought I’d be in a position to do, and even now, I have a hard time claiming I own or have ownership over anything other than my being. I feel more like the house’s caretaker, someone responsible for ensuring it stays upright and clean and feeling loved until one day it carries on without me, as either a place for new memories or a heap of debris in a landfill.

All structures are unstable is a phrase that Will and I have taken to saying to each other, whether it’s about a particular identity or outlook or—the bane of my existence—chipping paint. All structures are unstable. Meaning: all of this could go away or change at any time. The molecular makeup of the world in which we live is inherently volatile. So don’t grip too tightly. Stay pliant. And know that when things break and fade, as they’re going to, that’s okay. That’s standard for this world.

And yet… and yet… everywhere I look, creativity abounds. Buildings rise. Murals, like plants, bloom. Babies burst out of birth canals, screaming with life. Gardens grow and tattoos teem. Breads swell. Even amid disaster and uncertainty, it seems humans can't help but make things. Our universal nature demands that we do.

Whenever I'm feeling pessimistic about my ability to create, I try to remember that I am part of the universe, and if the universe is creative, which it is, then by extension, I must be, too. Even if everything I create or build dissolves to dust one day, the act of making is essential to who I am as a human being. Regardless of outlet or outcome, there is a sense of aliveness which only making provides. Wonder. That which was once only a wisp of imagination now has form.

Making things—yet another glimmer, keeping me sane.

This brings me to picture-making and my recent lack thereof. Sometimes, that’s just how it is. I go through phases, often days or weeks, where the well runs dry. I don’t feel like picking up my camera or writing or doing hardly anything other than Being. During these periods, all I want to do is rest and cook and go for coffee with Will and walk in the woods and run errands and stand in the lumber section at Menards, contemplating life, and watch 90s sitcoms and scroll through Pinterest and read and try to weatherize our house and assess my clothing situation before winter comes.

In the past, this used to bring me incredible distress, and I would get all in my head about it and feel like I was wasting away. (Not creating = worthlessness = malaise.) Now, I accept that’s just part of my process. I need time to live and not make pictures, even though making pictures brings me joy and seems to fulfill some universal purpose.

Sometimes, I need to lay low and trust that the desire to create with my cameras will return eventually. When it does, I’ll hopefully have more to offer.

*

Time has passed, and again, I’m taking making pictures. In an effort to document more of our work on The Upstairs, I decided to photograph some details from Will’s soon-to-be studio and other spots around our home. Regretfully, I’ve not made nearly enough photographs of our progress on film over the years, though I have plenty of pictures on my phone. It’s one of those things I always think to do but then feel too tired, dirty, hungry, or absorbed in a project to follow through on. “Next time” is a phrase I utter far too often. With attention and a little self-forgiveness, I aim to remedy that. ✶

It’s that time of year when snakes emerge from their hiding spots to bask in the sun on the road. Inevitably, every walk I take elicits a gasp from the primal depths of my body, evolved to recoil at anything that slithers. To be clear, I like snakes; it’s just their movement that catches me off guard. Their ropey undulating like a dull cord infused with life gets me EVERY TIME.

Despite my inbuilt fear, whenever I spy a garter snake in the weeds or smack in the middle of a path, it feels like a token of change and good things to come. What other creature outgrows itself so entirely time and again? It’s something I admire about snakes and often try to emulate: how readily they let go of that which no longer serves them. How willingly they dispense with their old stale form, leaving it behind for insects to devour or birds to lace into nests.

Behind my knee sits a varicose vein loosely squiggled like a river or snake in motion. Most of the time, I forget it’s there; I’ve had it forever, and it doesn’t really bother me. But occasionally, I’ll catch a glimpse of it or run my fingers over where the vein bulges out and experience a surge of panic. Here is this thing that many people consider unsightly, contorting itself inside my leg. It is a tiny thing in a world of things, but one I’ve been conditioned to squirm from.

This response admittedly feels silly until I factor in all the relentless, insidious ways women have been instructed and pressured for centuries and from youth to obsess over their appearance and adjust, tame, and shame it accordingly. Like my fear of snakes, my fear of being ugly or perceived as ugly is deep-rooted. If I could wave a magic wand, I would not, surprisingly, alter the way I look but rather erase this programmed thinking from my brain.

Alas, I have no magic wand, so instead, I must actively challenge this conditioning by looking all my real or imagined uglinesses directly in the eye and allowing them space to be. I must appreciate them not for any beauty they contain (although I would argue that they do) but for the wonders they innately are. My uglinesses are tangible proof I am alive and not a cyborg, doll, or immaculate being whose existence depends upon perfection or the guise of it. My uglinesses signify truth, and the truth is that I am exceedingly human, fragile, and doing my best to survive with the limited knowledge and resources I have.

Often, I’m struck by how cumbersome it feels to be alive. Even with the privileges my body affords me, it’s still so damn hard and painful. So often, I long to shed my physical form like a snake sheds its skin and experience life as a bubble or cloud of light particles. If only for a little while, I’d like to hover above the earth, immune to “the heartache and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to.”

Then again, my body is the vessel through which it’s possible to experience all sights, sounds, and other earthly marvels. I get to put my hands in the dirt, be thrilled by snakes, sing, kiss, and cut an apple in perfect quarters, two for you, two for me. Here, I get to sit in a canoe at sunset and sense the lake supporting us and all the life within it, moving slowly through space. I get to see your face, and yours, and yours, without an ounce of ugliness I can detect, though I’m sure it’s there or will be one day, and that’s okay. That’s good! In an age when so much is increasingly artificial, it’s a balm to behold something real.

Before I get to the angels, I want to reflect on beauty, or what I consider true beauty. The topic feels weirdly ticklish, if only because we live in a hyper-visual world. Every day, we’re bombarded with images quietly (or not so quietly) telling us what is and isn’t beautiful, what things should and shouldn’t look like, whether it’s our bodies, homes, or even our art.

In truth, beauty is inherent. It’s like air. Everywhere you go, beauty rushes to greet you. It’s not something obtainable via a product or procedure but a quality akin to spirit. You know when beauty is present because you can feel it. You feel lighter and inspired by proximity. Awe-stricken. Whether it’s an honest performance or a patch of grass rippling in the wind. A spark of recognition ignites within you because you know, you know, beauty exists there, too.

True beauty is spacious enough to contain ugliness (by popular standards), whereas true ugliness lacks kindness, grace, and soul. I sense this whenever someone displays intolerance or is intentionally cruel or dismissive to something seemingly lower than them, like an animal or child. Exploiting something for profit is truly ugly, too.

True beauty is the only beauty I'm interested in. Not the kind that promises salvation, or promotes salivation, but the one that falls trying to fly, chips a tooth, and still comes up smiling. The kind of beauty that weathers and ages because it’s allowed to. Because it must to survive.

That’s my two cents on beauty.

Now, on to the angels.

Last month, while walking through the woods, I stumbled upon an Angel Tree. This is the same woods where, in the past, I’ve found a dinosaur friend, a quilted heart, pencils with GOD emblazoned on them, copious woodland creatures, and now an Angel Tree.

The tree, which is partially hollowed out, was adorned with angel figurines and had this message attached to it:

ANGEL TREE

Angels are always among us.

There are earth angels, deceased loved ones that are now angels, and angels that have never been in a human body.

Angels will help with any problem IF ASKED, but you must leave the problem with them. They don’t help with any problems that aren’t released to them as they will always honor your free will. If you are hanging onto a problem, they will let you hang onto it. Release it to them and watch for magical solutions.

This angel tree has been dedicated to you, the angels, and miracle solutions.

I stood in the stillness of the tree, mulling over which problem to release. Physical, emotional, spiritual—I had so many to pick from. Eventually, I decided on one, knowing I could always liberate the others at a later time.

I closed my eyes. Breathed. When I opened them, I felt the same. But also grateful for the invisible forces behind the Angel Tree, whoever they may be.

Cautiously, I stepped inside the tree’s opening and stooped to inspect the ground. Layers of bark debris, dirt, and spider webs coalesced like the entrance to a haunted maze. I let my eyes drift and then gasped, pulse surging. Before me was a snakeskin, only a few inches long, wilted as ash. Spirit returning to my body, I picked up the snakeskin and laid it across my palm. It weighed next to nothing, and even though I knew it’d been discarded for a reason, I feared ruining it by touching it too much.

For a moment, I considered rehoming it like many of my found objects, arranging it in a still life or display. Then, the thought occurred to me: maybe the snake, too, had conversed with the angels and left its skin behind in exchange for their help. Or perhaps its problem had been needing to shed its skin, and within the base of the Angel Tree, it could finally let go.

Like so many things, I can never know. But I do know once I set the snakeskin down and left the tree and the angels behind me, I felt lighter, more buoyant in step. ✶

When, after wriggling and extending its petals toward the sun for almost a week, the anemone’s stem was severed by a mischievous critter, I carried its slain body inside and put it in a vase. I fed it water. Gave it a spot on the sill above the kitchen sink. It seemed as good a place as any to live out one’s life.

While the anemone stayed cool indoors (praise to the almighty god that is central AC), its outside companions drooped in the late summer heat. Despite its edge, I knew the anemone’s days were numbered. One by one, its petals started to drop and rest like wrinkled eyelids on the weathered sill. Intermittently, for no apparent reason, it folded in on itself as if harboring an ache. Each time, I assumed it was The End. Thank you, small bloom, for providing me with a bit of relief in your final days. Later, I would re-enter the kitchen, and lo, the anemone was open again! I did not possess the instinct to question the inner workings of a flower propped in an inch of water. I was simply happy to witness it a smidge longer, brightening the room with its cuplike face, which occasionally turned away from the window and shone directly toward me like the Pixar lamp.

To practice photography is to be tasked with constantly paying attention to the world around you. I suppose you could say the same thing about being human—it is our unspoken obligation to be here and witness life’s both miraculous and, at times, confounding unfolding.

Every time I reach for my camera, whether I’m entirely aware of it or not, I’m committing to being a witness to the present moment. Sometimes, the moment consists of nothing more than a strange beam of light due to a smoky morning sky coming to rest on a bloom. Other times, it’s a cat sprawled flat on a tabletop or asleep on my true love’s lap. Or it is my love’s shoulder at daybreak, half-covered with linen like a mountain slope misty with fog. Whatever the moment reveals, I stop. Listen. Not to any sound, because in that fragment of time, all sounds retreat, but to the beckoning of the moment. Witness me, it begs. Witness my fleetingness and simplicity before the day crashes forward, and I disappear without a thought from your head.

This appeal is my impetus for making pictures right now. It informs my approach, which is: Be there. Don’t think too hard. If I have an impulse, listen to it. The moment will be gone soon, so don’t hesitate. Jump in. It’s all temporary, including any mistakes. Invite everything to the table. Feast on every small moment as if it were a last meal. It very well could be.

It’s getting darker earlier, and leaves are eddying down streets lined with tattered trees swaying overhead. The first whisper of cool air on a sunlit afternoon filled me with nostalgia for long-lost times and places. I’ve been weepy—not because I want to return to anywhere or anyone I’ve been, but because everything ends and rearranges so quickly. I know it’s futile to try to hold on. At the same time, I can’t help but laugh-cry at a world so paper-thin and ever-changing.

“How strange it is to be anything at all,” sings Jeff Mangum of Neutral Milk Hotel, a band I haven’t listened to since college when I had long blonde hair and monitored every morsel of food I ate.

How strange, indeed.

*

Recently, I said goodbye to someone who, in all likelihood, I will never see again. Standing in the doorway, fumbling for the right words, I was overcome with emotion, which I held in lest I fall to pieces. I’ve not known this person for long, but in our short time together, I spent many hours with them, ones I admittedly was not always present for. Why is it that as soon as something ends, you suddenly realize all the ways you could have done it differently? I’m sure I could have been kinder. Listened better. Made them laugh more often. Yes, I was struggling on certain days with my own issues. But still. How hard is it to be kind to someone who needs it?

(Note: We all need it.)

Hand on the doorknob, I looked back at their face, open and shining like a flower. Witness me, it seemed to beg. Witness my fleetingness and simplicity before the day crashes forward, and I disappear without a thought from your head.

*

I don’t believe that making pictures is a replacement for truly Being Here, but rather, it is a portal to seeing and feeling more deeply. Photography is an opportunity, a permission slip in many ways, to fall eye-first in love with life. You need not be good, cool, or especially interesting to practice photography (or any art, for that matter). You need only be committed to opening your eyes, mind, and heart.

My success in photography and life does not depend upon receiving accolades or recognition; though it might happen, it’s not something I can control. What I can control is my ability to be present and kinder to myself and the people, plants, and animals around me. I can hold all things tenderly, like a blossom. Bring them inside and prop them in a vase. If that’s all that results from my journey with photography—a collection of moments otherwise ignored—it will have been worth every shot. ✶

On the eve of my 34th birthday, I found a quilted heart. I was walking along a path through the woods, on the verge of a mental breakdown, when I spotted something fluttering at the edge of my vision. At first, I thought it was a leaf, one of thousands softly shimmering in the warm breeze. I strode past it like it was nothing and then instinctively turned back, Will strolling ahead of me, to get a closer look.

The heart was palm-sized, pale green on one side, and quilted with dark green and burgundy, almost Christmassy fabric on the reverse. It dangled from a nub on a tree by a loop of bright red ribbon sewn into where the heart’s two humps meet. Stitched along the border, a tag read: I Need A Home.

I glanced around to see if anyone else was coming. Almost certainly, the quilted heart was not meant for me but for some other wanderer, one more suited to the task. I, after all, was barely capable of tending my own heart: moments earlier, I’d been engaged in a barrage of negative self-talk, the kind of rambling vitriol that prompted Will to say, with care, “Do you hear what you’re saying to yourself? Do you hear it?”

I had heard it and felt like even more of a failure for being unable to stop the disparaging thoughts and words spouting from my mouth. Given the strides I’ve made in recent times toward self-love and acceptance, I especially felt ashamed. I knew better, yet I'd brushed Will off cooly and continued moving one mindless step after another, committed to being mean.

Until the quilted heart interrupted me.

I Need A Home, it silently petitioned.

“What kind of home?” my heart piped up. “We can be a home.”

Again I looked to see if anyone else was coming. Not a soul was in sight, save for a toad the size of a thumbnail, its skin as thin as the barrier between this world and the next. My mind must have still been preoccupied with analyzing my shortcomings; before it could protest, I reached out and plucked the quilted heart away from the tree at my heart’s persistent urging.

“There’s room,” it assured me.

I had no choice but to believe it.

I carried the quilted heart along the path until I found a clearing filled with light. Minuscule bugs clouded the air as I strung the heart from a branch and made several pictures, my negativity lessening with the advent of a task to focus on that wasn’t me.

In the distance, I heard the fizz of instruments being plugged into a PA system. The drone of an accordion struck me as atypical for the area, and I drifted toward the sound (quilted heart in tow) until I reached the riverbank. Behind a cluster of trees, I watched a troupe of circus performers and musicians rehearsing for a show. Their stage—a makeshift wooden raft—gently bobbed along the shoreline.

If I were a braver, hungrier photographer, I would have marched down to the water’s edge, introduced myself, and made pictures of the troupe with all their wild costumes and props. But alas, I am no such photographer or person, preferring instead to flex my courage in other, more subtle ways, such as taking responsibility for an inanimate object when I felt incapable of almost anything; permitting myself to soften, as I did into Will’s arms upon reuniting with him on the path; and putting another roll of film into my camera after I realized I’d made an error and all the frames I’d shot that day, every single one, was blank.

“Pockets of light,” I told Will as we circled back to where we started, my heart aching. “I’m looking for pockets of light.”

The morning of my birthday, I nearly choked to death on a sip of water. My chest heaved as I sputtered and spat, continuing to hack for several minutes after the initial event. By mid-afternoon, my chest muscles twinged with every movement—a combined strain from the coughing spree and the hours I’d spent crying earlier. So often, occasions such as birthdays and holidays deplete me before they’ve even commenced. The negativity I felt the day prior was, in my mind, connected to that anticipation. I woke up and quickly started to fret, tears pooling and spilling down my face. Even though I stayed home for the most part and didn’t have to socialize beyond my limits, the internalized pressure of the day left me feeling fragile and, thereby, more susceptible to self-generated pain.

“Today is a wet day for you,” Will said gently after I’d recovered from choking, eyes swollen and damp.

Being alive is a tenuous enterprise. In terms of physical form, as humans, it’s a wonder we’re even here. Because of the chest spasms, I was acutely aware of my heart (the organ) and kept placing my hand over it throughout the day. So little exists between my heart and the outside world. A bit of meat and bone is my only protection from possible death (impalement), yet I navigate the world and its dangers every second I’m alive. It’s insane! A drip of water goes down the wrong pipe, and suddenly, mortality feels closer than ever.

In much the same way, I’m not impenetrable to tenderness, which, if I’m feeling blue or standoffish, can be just as sharp and uncomfortable as a sword tip pointed against my breast. Excluding healthy boundaries, sometimes it feels bonkers to walk around without armor shielding my heart (the dream space), yet I know it’s the only way I’ll continue to survive.

In the evening, I took the quilted heart back to the woods and made a few pictures near the river—a do-over of my previous outing. By then, I was in a better mood, though my chest still ached. The river circus performers were gone, all evidence of their activity blown away downstream. I found a pocket of light enclosed in green and let my hearts (all three of them) soak it up. Despite the feelings I’d been having, the magic of the quilted heart was not lost on me. It felt like a birthday present from the universe—an unseen force gently guiding me toward love and acceptance at a time when I needed them most. That another person made the heart and left it for someone (me) to find is yet another light source that continues to move me. Tenderness is everywhere, lest I ever forget. ✶

Thank you for reading. If you would like more information about quilted hearts, go here. For more on the floating river circus, go here. 🎪

Green has infiltrated almost every picture I’ve made in recent memory. Sometimes it dominates the frame, while other times, it’s merely a dash, a soft wash, or a backdrop. Regardless of how it appears, I find green’s presence soothing and animating, like a deep inhale. I imagine what it would be like to live on a planet devoid of green, and it fills my chest with lead.

I feel fortunate to live in a place with so many green spaces. Such areas are not always readily available or accessible to everyone, especially in urban settings. Years ago, when I lived in London, I distinctly remember being unable to see a single tree from our flat, no matter how far I craned my neck out the window. Occasionally, a lone leaf or few would float past, and I would think, “Where are you coming from?” The nearest tree was down and around the block in a churchyard; I assumed this was their origin. The building opposite our flat had a rooftop terrace with what appeared to be some foliage, but I always suspected it was fake because it never changed. Still, it was a dab of green in an otherwise drab but cool part of the city where any semblance of wilderness was a short bus or Tube ride away.

Now green is rampant everywhere I turn. Here are a few pictures, taken over the last couple of weeks, that speak to its unyielding and quiet presence. Together they compose a little ode to green and its midsummer tones, as depicted on Kodak film, before August sets in and everything lush starts to fade. 🍃

On a cold, drizzly day in April, I stood in front of the electronics shelf at my local Goodwill and, from a jumble of used cords, stereos, and other gadgets, pulled forth a Polaroid Automatic 100 Land camera. I had recognized the hard gray case instantly: though a slightly later model, mine is identical. I slipped off the case, resting it atop a beige landline phone, lifted the tiny metal lever, and unfolded the bellows. From a cursory inspection, I knew the camera had seen better days. It was, after all, close to 60 years old and, like many instant cameras, tarnished with blemishes and scars from a life well lived. That did not deter me from raising it to my eye and taking an obligatory look around the store. More than evaluating it for function, I held it for the pure, almost nostalgic joy of remembering what it felt like to experience such a camera, fully aware I’d rarely, if ever, have that experience again.

By the time I got into film photography in 2017, I thought for sure I’d missed my chance at using a Polaroid Automatic 100-400 series Land camera. Polaroid discontinued the pack film almost a decade prior. Then, in 2016, Fujifilm announced it would no longer produce its pack film, rendering these cameras, famously donned by the likes of Andy Warhol and Patti Smith, relics of the past.

But really, it was the film I mourned more than anything. It seems strange to mourn something you’re only peripherally familiar with. Before 2019, I had never made a picture with FP-100C or FP-3000B, Fujifilm’s color and black & white pack films, respectively. Nonetheless, I had long coveted their use by photographers I admired and nurtured the hope that one day I, too, would marvel at their vivid tonal range upon carefully peeling the glossy prints away from the negatives…

Naturally, once Fujifilm announced the demise of pack film, also known as peel-apart film, people scooped it up and started storing it in their fridges in stacks. I heard about people shelling out thousands of dollars and buying extra fridges just to house FP-100C. In the years that followed, the price skyrocketed—going from $10 per pack (1 pack = 10 shots) to $30 and eventually $60. At the time of writing, a single expired pack of FP-100C runs for upwards of $100 on eBay and other secondhand marketplaces. It is out of stock everywhere else.

So, as people snatched up these dwindling film stocks by the armfuls, I wistfully looked on before turning my attention to developing negatives and making prints in the darkroom—a declining practice, but one I knew likely wasn’t going anywhere.

Then in 2019, I got my Mamiya RB67, or Arby. One of the accessories it came with—the RB67 has several attachments that allow for different methods of working—was a Polaroid back. This removable feature enables one to shoot pack film with a medium format camera, which has a much higher quality lens than any instant camera. When I discovered this, I was floored! What’s more, the Polaroid back that came with my Arby already had Fuji peel-apart film inside.

I died. I actually perished. Then came back to life so I could shoot that pack of film.

To my dismay, the film was so old and dried up, the developer inside so crummy, none of the pictures even thought about turning out, and I threw the pack away. But it lit a fire in me! One way or another, I vowed to buy some peel-apart film [at a reasonable price] and make beautiful pictures with it if it was the last thing I did.

It wasn’t that hard to get my hands on some FP-100C. Turns out, people like to make a buck. As luck would have it, the Craigslist guy who sold me multiple packs was super enthusiastic and went out of his way to help me out. After meeting up, we emailed back and forth about photography, and he gave me tips and steered me toward resources I still use today.

“Glad these are going into good hands. I really miss Polaroid. I love the smell. I love the tonality. Their black and white was just incredible.

BTW, did you know that with FP-100C you have a negative and a print? You can clean and scan the negative and then either make prints via darkroom or once scanned, print as you would any scanned or digital photo. [You] will need [to make] some color adjustments, as any scanned film will.

Rather than bleach, as shown in this link, I use a Magic Eraser. Either way, it is messy. Wear gloves. But, super cool and the negative has [a] very different color palette than the print.

BTW Part 2, if you have not heard of or listened to…”

I cherished his help, and it wasn’t long before I picked up a Polaroid Automatic 250 Land camera (same as Patti) to round out my peel-apart experience.

The only thing I wasn’t prepared to embrace was the messy negative situation. Why, I thought, if I already have a print, would I bother with the negative? Still, I saved most of the good ones, drying and storing them in a vintage toy suitcase, where they slept like dormant butterflies for years.

I drew the Polaroid Automatic 100 camera away from my eye, draped the weathered strap around my neck, and smiled at the familiar weight of its metal body resting against my chest. I’d missed the feeling more than I’d realized. After I’d made my last shot of FP-100C almost a year before—it took me months to work up the nerve to shoot it; the moment felt so final—I stashed my 250 model away and hadn’t touched it since. There was no more reason to.

I tinkered with the camera’s settings, comparing it to my own. I pondered its condition, who had used it last, and when. Where was it carried, and what did it carry? What kind of film? Was it FP-100C or something older? Maybe it was Polaroid. Or maybe…

I noticed the paper tabs sticking out from one end of the camera, indicating several pristine shots of FP-100C waiting to be used.

“Oh my god,” I said, out loud, for all to hear. “There’s film in here.”

I then did something I never imagined I’d do in my life: I freaked the fuck out in Goodwill.

“Are you joking?” I gasped, jaw slack. “Are you for real kidding me?!”

I laughed and then turned, paranoid, to see if anyone had heard or seen me, as if someone would come and yank the camera and its film away from my grasp. As if anyone in their right mind would possibly do that.

I had to test it out immediately and see if the film was any good, so I made a picture. Only, in my haste, I neglected to adjust the exposure setting. Aargh! I waited a few minutes while the print developed, then gently peeled it apart, the bittersweet smell of chemistry flooding my nostrils and filling my heart to its brim. The print was dark, as expected. I made another, this time with the proper exposure setting, but then I accidentally pulled out two shots instead of one (smh), which also turned out dark with zero evidence of even the faintest image.

Hm. Something’s up.

Realizing Goodwill probably wasn’t the best place to troubleshoot this issue, I folded up the goopy negatives, tucked them in my raincoat pocket, bought the camera for $14.99, and I went home.

I feel it’s important to acknowledge that I do not consider myself a technically adept photographer or troubleshooter. While I’ve gotten to grips with stuff like exposure and focus, for the most part, anything to do with the mechanical side of things, such as camera malfunctioning, is a distant speck on the horizon from my feelings-focused wheelhouse. With time, I am s l o w l y wrapping my head around photo editing and film scanning—two software-based skills I have more than once stood and left the room in vicious frustration over. And while not exactly a technical error, one time in a lightless film-changing room, as I was prying open a roll of film with a bottle opener in preparation for development, I gouged my thumb so impressively that blood spurted everywhere, Tarantino-style, all over my film and clothes and the wall—an anecdote I share to underscore just the unique type of photo-related blunder I’m capable of.

That said, I will forever be impressed by my ability to discern “something was up” with the Polaroid Automatic 100’s exposure system. After testing out another dud shot, I deduced that either 1) there was a light leak, 2) a component impacting the exposure was faulty, or 3) the film was compromised in some unknown way, rendering it unable to produce an image. Not wanting to give up hope, I opted to try the next best thing: take out the film pack and transfer it in the dark to my fully functional Polaroid Automatic 250 model. That way, I would know, for sure, whether the problem was the film or the camera.

Clever, eh?

The fact that I managed to successfully pull off this endeavor in a tiny closet without drawing blood is a win I’m hanging onto. The fact that not one, but two shots of FP-100C, albeit a bit hazy, subsequently turned out? Icing on the Polaroid-shaped cake.

Upon re-discovering the magic of shooting with peel-apart film—it’s such a sensuous experience, the satisfying pull of the print, the reveal, the smell—I began to question why I’d never attempted to clean the negatives before. It rapidly dawned on me how much untapped potential was sequestered away in that little suitcase with the plastic handle. How much buried enchantment, waiting to be exhumed.

In the days and weeks that followed, I set out to learn how to wash my negatives in preparation for scanning them, a process that involves Clorox bleach gel, latex gloves, and a whole lot of care. Few things in recent memory have made me happier than standing over the kitchen sink at golden hour, the minty tang of bleach gel mixing with the heady scent of cut lilacs, watching strands of black gunk and goo swirl down the drain. Scanning, too, has felt revelatory. Prints I initially disregarded because they appeared too underexposed I’ve discovered come to life as scanned negatives. And witnessing their vibrant colors and imperfections emerge is just as pleasurable as holding a cleaned and dripping negative up to the light.

As with much of my photography practice, my only gripe is that I wish I’d started sooner! Then again, maybe I wouldn't have the same appreciation for it now if I had. Like a stash of unbleached negatives, the wonder in me has had longer to collect. Now it floats and bobs on colorful wings through the warm, fragrant air. ✶

As far back as I can recall, I’ve been inclined to stay up late. Even with the best intentions of getting to bed at a decent hour, once 9:30 PM rolls around, it’s like a switch gets flipped inside me, and I become animated, capable of things daylight-me only dreamed of. Projects I’ve procrastinated on are motorized. Chores get checked off their list. Creative ambitions, at last, are heard and attended to. Away from the concerns and pressures of the strait-laced day, the strangely-lit night wraps me in its shadowy embrace, permitting me to be as quiet, creative, and off-kilter as I please. Shower in the dark at midnight? Done. Time to revamp my website or start an exercise routine? Why not! It’s only 11:30 PM.

(For all my love of the sun and its warmth, the moon and I might be closer kin. After all, I titled this collection of writing Reflecting Light not Emitting Light!)

Given my penchant for staying up past my bedtime, it’s baffling, bordering on chaotic then, why I recently volunteered to be the morning cat feeder. When presented with this offering, this unexpected changing of the guard, Will asked me, skeptically, “Are you sure?” before clasping his hands to his face, feigning joyful tears, as I nodded yes. Yes, I would like to stumble out of bed at dawn and give our yowling cats two scoops of dry food before crawling back under the covers. Yes, I would like to be chronically underslept and a little moody all of the time.

What would compel me to do such a thing—change my night owl tendencies in favor of becoming the early bird, the one who gets the worm? When the worm is the palest champagne light streaking in through our kitchen window first thing in the morning, I’ll gladly get up any day. Even when there’s a strong likelihood it won’t be there, cloaked in blue or gray, the knowledge that it might be fills my heart with glee. On days when the light appears, I linger. I stand or sit at the table with a glass of cool water and listen to the birds trilling outside and the stillness. My hair’s disheveled, and I can’t see well because I’ve neglected to put on my glasses. But that’s okay. I’m cradled in the hands of early morning, which is not dissimilar to the arms of night. I’m in a safe and sacred space. The cats crunch through their kibble as the tulips on the table softly unfold to greet the day. Everything is awakening and becoming, and I, too, feel a burgeoning sense of purpose and wonder at the world brightening around me.

Maybe I’m turning over a new leaf, I muse, moving from room to room, opening up the curtains and letting even more light in. Maybe, with the onset of spring, I’m unwittingly changing and sprouting into a different thing, one with its face turned to the morning sun.

In honor of this changing of the seasons, both within and without me, I’ve felt compelled to arrange and photograph still lifes. As an ardent collector of objects, natural and otherwise, it brings me great pleasure to gather things from the outside world and my home and place them next to each other in an intricate display reminiscent of the backdrop to a mouse’s tea party. Things that may seem dead or dull on the surface—crisp strawflowers, papery butterfly wings from summers past, hollow wasps’ nests—hum with feeling when held or looked upon. Though they are still in the sense that they do not move, they carry the essence of life, just in a quieter form.

I try to remember this sentiment in times when I’m feeling low. Like the brown grass weighted beneath blankets of snow, I wonder when (sometimes if) the thoughts pressing down on me will clear, and Mr. Blue Sky will show his face. Or will another onslaught of sleet accumulate and needle me to the point of wilted exhaustion? Willingly, I surrender to what feels like death, though I am not dead; I am only waiting to emerge and feel the tender rays of hope and joy again.

Sure enough, I wait a while, sometimes only a few hours or minutes, and it happens. Thoughts melt. The sky clears. Sun beats warm on my face. There is salvation in knowing that everything changes, including my capacity to weather—and direct—the natural phenomena that occur inside my body and brain.

Thank you, is the mantra, more like prayer, I’ve started repeating under my breath.

Thank you, anxious rain, for revealing the parts of me that need love and attention.

Thank you, fallen branch, for making me imperfect and showing me how to live with pain and grace.

Thank you, snow and ice, for teaching me how to soften.

Thank you, bitter winds, for helping me to let go.

While I don’t think it’s possible to be grateful for everything—there’s too much inexplicable suffering in the world for me to subscribe to that notion—I feel like most situations and experiences, in the words of Brother David Steindl-Rast, offer the “opportunity to learn something.”1 It might not be pretty! Or particularly comforting! Nonetheless, the opportunity is there. I’ve found that sometimes my challenge is simply to learn how to persist despite the forces or unfavorable circumstances that would convince me such an endeavor is useless. It is not. After all, spring always follows winter. The swollen earth revives. And the shape-shifting moon is proof that change and fluctuation, while uncomfortable at times, are intrinsic to being whole.

Another thing that’s a bit uncomfortable yet makes me feel whole? Following my weird. Not to be confused with Joseph Campbell’s following your bliss, albeit connected, following my weird looks like playing with the ceramic cat collection I’ve had since I was a kid (it’s not just cats; there’s a goat and a mushroom, too, among other things) before arranging them in a still life. Following my weird looks like scouring the house for bird bones I thought I’d saved but it turns out I hadn’t, and being a tad cross. It means making pictures that, even if not explicitly weird, feel warm and whimsical, which in my book is akin to weird!

Following my weird looks a lot like staying up extra late to finish a somewhat meandering photo essay (ahem) while also waking up extremely early to feed a pair of furry roommates and watch some flowers get doused in light.

It feels like coming to life.

On a recent photo walk, I came across something equally life-giving. It was early evening, and I was headed down a trail, still slushy with snowmelt, when I abruptly stopped to make a picture. While it’s not uncommon for me to suddenly become transfixed by a particular subject and stop to photograph it, in this instance, I felt moved, practically steered, by an unknown force to stop and stare.

In front of me lay a large, fallen tree and, beyond that, a semi-frozen marsh with stiff reeds jutting into the air. With my camera suspended from my neck, I instinctively unfolded the viewfinder and peered down into it. I examined the scene from multiple angles, unsure whether or not to make a picture. (With the high and rising cost of film these days, I’ve become a bit choosier about how I expend each roll.) After a minute of humming and hawing, I decided against it and went to close the viewfinder. Right before I did, though, something caught my eye.

What the…

I glanced up from my camera to see, in the flesh, a small blue and green dinosaur. It was climbing up the fallen tree like a mountainside, its sights set on reaching some distant peak. Upon witnessing this spectacular display of not just whimsy but determination, I smiled so hard, for a brief moment, I forgot myself.

YES, LITTLE DINOSAUR, I thought. YOU CAN DO THIS!

His name, I found out, is Jeremy. Naturally, I was a bit reticent at first because I don’t spend a lot of time around dinosaurs; even for his stature, Jeremy makes a towering impression. But after sitting with him for a while, I went out on a limb and asked if I could photograph the remainder of his journey. To my delight, he happily obliged.

There I was then! A newly enlisted documentary photographer! In the back of my head, a (truly miserable) voice scoffed and said, “Really? You’re gonna use up your last roll of film photographing a dinosaur? Ok then… Go for it. Just know that while you’re doing that, other people are making meaningful portraits and landscapes… You know—work that actually matters.”

I ignored the voice and went on photographing Jeremy’s slow and steady ascent. I learned that folks in his past had warned him such an undertaking was foolish and not to attempt it. They advised him to get a “real” dinosaur job—whatever that means. Jeremy didn’t listen. Inside, he knew who he was and what he needed to do, even if it meant facing the sharp March winds head-on.

After several falls and stumbles, including one critical fail that left him severely bruised and questioning his entire life’s purpose, Jeremy made it to the summit. Although it only took him five minutes, in pocket-sized dinosaur time, that’s like months.

Inspired by his tenacity and not wanting to say goodbye just yet, I asked Jeremy if he’d like to come home with me and go on more adventures together. He could climb stuff, I could keep making pictures of him… It’d be fun! While he was flattered at the offer, he and I both knew it couldn’t happen. A dinosaur like him needed to stay on that path and inspire whimsy in the hearts of whoever chanced to walk down it. That was Jeremy’s purpose. It only took hiking up the side of a felled tree to figure it out.

Feeling sentimental, I closed up my camera and started for home, my pockets empty where, in an alternate reality, there might have been a small blue and green dinosaur. Although his lopsided shape had made a lasting imprint on the soft cushion of my heart, I felt its absence reverberate with each step I took.

I turned one last time to get a look at my dinosaur friend. From a distance, he glistened in the setting sun, and at that moment, I knew leaving Jeremy behind was the right thing to do. He wasn’t my dinosaur. He was the world’s dinosaur. Just as the world had guided me to him that day, it would guide someone else, who would feel all the same delight I felt upon seeing a dinosaur casually perched atop an otherwise ordinary tree, so wonderfully weird and out of place.

And what a gift that would be. ✶

Update: Three days later, I went back to check on Jeremy. He was happy to see me. Turns out, living on that tree was less whimsical than he thought! Since the last time I’d seen him, he’d fallen into a ridge, and his face was pressed against the rough bark. I helped him get back on his feet, and by then it was clear: he wanted to go home with me. I didn’t argue, of course, just slipped him in my coat pocket, and off we went, two travelers. Now he lives on a shelf in my home, where the evening light shines in and illuminates his gorgeous dinosaur face.

I heard them before I saw them.

“Hey guys, you wanna go this way?”

“Whoa! Cool!”

I glanced up from adjusting the settings on my camera and watched a gaggle of children accompanied by adults emerge single-file from the woods and march onto the frozen lake. I sighed, miffed at the interruption. This is not your private photo-making studio, I had to remind myself. This is a regional park. Other people get to be here, too!

The group didn’t see me, their sights set on the expanse of ice glistening before them. Shouts and squeals reverberated through the crystalline air as I switched off my camera and folded up my tripod, my bitterness swiftly dissipating upon seeing a little one gloriously wipe out. (“Ouch, bud! You okay?”) Feeling a touch bad, I turned, slinging my tote bag over my shoulder, tripod in hand, and headed back to the snow-packed shore.

I didn’t get far. Wanting to enjoy the nice weather a little longer, I plopped down on the gnarled trunk of a fallen tree. Using my arm as a shield against the blazing sun, I gazed across the horizon. I thought of how, in a few months, all the ice will be melted and the dead reeds reborn and new shoots sprouted. Beavers and muskrats will no longer hunker like boulders on the hardened surface of the lake but effortlessly sail through it. Above, eagles will swoop from their nests, eyeing the water for flashes of movement, while below, herons wade through the shallows where small-boned fish and insects gang.

It’s hard not to dream of summer while encased in the seemingly impenetrable cocoon of winter, but there is something to be said for the slow-as-molasses months where a single tepid day feels like someone placing a lemon drop in the palm of your hand.

Resting on the tree, sunshine on my face, I closed my eyes and soaked in the warmth. When I opened them again, the band of children and their wranglers had fanned across the lake. Like a party of minnows, they seemed to change direction constantly, light bouncing off their collective and, at times, chaotic movement. Despite their caretakers’ warnings, kids willingly slipped and slid all over the place, sending joyful shrieks into the wind.

I reached into my bag and pulled out my Olympus XA. Before the troop’s arrival, I’d been busy making self-portraits with my Instax camera—a practice I’ve been doing on and off since 2021—and hadn’t yet employed my 35mm. I knew I had a few shots left and wanted to shoot them before the end of the day.

Without thinking about it too much, I started snapping. While I rarely make pictures with people in them, save for myself or Will, watching the kiddos with their entourage felt like the perfect opportunity to (pick your pun) A) test those waters, B) give it a shot.

I sped through several pictures, and in the end, the best shot was the last one I made. It reminds me of a Grandma Moses painting, where each person is tiny yet vibrant, engaged in some unique activity.

A few days after my encounter with the ice brigade, I packed my suitcase and went on vacation to Florida. There, the ocean scintillated as it lapped in a ceaseless rhythm against the foamy beach. Sunlight gleamed. Like the lizards basking on the white shells outside our rented cottage, I relished the near-constant heat and humidity. For the first time in months, my muscles relaxed, my spine straightened, and all the rigid parts of my psyche softened.

I felt at ease.

“Maybe we should move here!” I half-joked to Will, flip-flopping down the street, towel wrapped around my damp, swimsuit-clad waist.

We could live in a cottage, one of the historic-looking ones on the north end of the island. I could get a job working in a cafe and write and make pictures. I could run on the beach! Or maybe we could start our own cafe—a vegan one. Or an art gallery. Or an antique store. Maybe all three! Or maybe…

My imagination was off and running. The warmth had powered me like a solar panel. I felt almost feverish with the reverie of what my life could be like. No more -10°F mornings! No more inane shoveling! No more numb fingers while adjusting the settings on my camera! No more ice—except in drinks!

A quick Zillow search dashed my dreams of living anywhere near Anna Maria Island. $3200/month? For a teeny 2-bedroom apartment?! Unless the psychic who told my mother I’d make a fortune writing is, in fact, psychic, the chances of me living out my coastal fantasies are slim. Not impossible. After all, it’s good to keep a strand of hope alive. But not firmly rooted in the realm of possibility either.

This sudden unraveling of a dream I hadn’t even remotely considered before our trip had me questioning everything. Do I really want to live in freezing-ass Minnesota for the rest of my life? Is this really the best place for us? Three years ago, Will and I hashed out why moving from Oregon to Minnesota felt like a good idea, and so far, our instincts have proven to be sound. But what if we were wrong? What if something better is out there waiting for us?

Leaving Florida, I felt bereft of a life I never knew I wanted: one of salty air, free trolley rides, and almost oppressive humidity; coffee on the beach in the morning; and annoying amounts of sunscreen. Every aspect of it sang to me like a siren lounging on a big rock.

Just go, a voice inside me urged as we taxied across the tarmac, about to return to the tundra. Convince Will to sell all of your combined possessions. Leave your coats, boots, and shovels behind. Take only what you need. Make it work! LIFE IS TOO SHORT TO BE COLD SIX MONTHS OUT OF THE YEAR!

But you LIKE the cold, another voice chimed in. You LIKE watching the seasons change and everything die and get reborn. It reminds you of the ephemeral beauty of existence and the cyclical nature of all things. You LIKE staying indoors AND shoveling snow AND being a little uncomfortable at times! It makes you feel like LAURA INGALLS WILDER.

You could be the Florida version of Laura Ingalls Wilder, the first voice suggested, and live in a historic cottage near the seaside. Write books. Bake pies. You know the ocean is cyclical, too, right?

Or maybe, I said to both voices, I should calm down for a second and BREATHE.

It’s funny to think about moving to a new locale when I finally feel grounded for the first time in my adult life. Where I once felt unmoored, I feel settled in where I am and who I am. The water below my feet has crystallized into something firm I can stand on. Maybe it won’t always be this way (such is the underlying nature of the universe), or I’ll lose my balance and slip and fall. But for now, I’m in a solid state, one I feel I can grow and create from. Why change that?

The truth is, I don’t want to change anything. I’m content with where I’m at. It’s one thing to daydream about moving to a new place, especially when chronic wanderlust is involved, and the weather feels as if a child (a mean one) has gotten hold of a snow globe and won’t stop shaking it. And having had the privilege of living in many different places over the years, as well as seeing how other people live, I know that even having the choice of where and how to live, or travel, is a blessing in itself.

For now, my life is here in the Midwest. It took me over a decade to circle back to the place I came from, but I have done just that. My roots are here. My home. My people. Sure, the winters are long, and spring is a downright tease. But summer and fall? Better than Florida in late February. ✶