day 52

not a very good photo -- dew on the grass, this morning. i was walking at eye-level with some sod and struck by the individual blades of grass each topped by a glittering. miniature globe of water. Unfortunately the iphone not as struck, since it demurred to capture the image my eyes were seeing.

day 51

I know that for the past few days I've been mainly posting photos of my kids. When I used to teach photojournalism I forbade my students to hand in cute kiddie shots -- they're too easy. I think though that I've been in a slow recovery from a really long, tough time, where I was focused on disaster control much of the time and not as present with my children as I aspire to be. So I'm crazy tired these days, and lost a bunch of weight I could ill afford to lose during all those long days of anxiety and figurative -- albeit a lot closer to actual than I'm gracefully able to deal with -- homelessness.

I'm home now, in my wonderful new house, and having a roof over me and a floor under me gives me the strength and stability to push back against all the other problems weighing down our life, the three of us, mama and Jack and Cole. And as a result I feel like I'm able to just be with them again, simply be in their presence and appreciate all the moments of innocent fun instead of trying to act like everything's ok while inside I'm secretly and completely decompensating due to fear that I won't be able to make a good life for us.

So the small moments, recently, have been huge. Like Groucho fake-nose-and-glasses on Jack, smiling in all his goofy innocence. I strove my utmost to shield my boys from the worst of the recent turbulence, and we got through. Now I can rejoin them. No photo, but I wore the Groucho glasses too, yesterday, for a good long while, and felt how laughter washes clean the weary soul.

day 50

We are at grandma's house, where there is electricity, since after the storm we had none. Picked up all the fallen branches and sticks from her yard and made ourselves a backyard fire for toasting marshmallows on a cool evening owned more by autumn than August.

day 49

The morning after the hurricane, power still out, early sunlight on the breakfast table as I ponder how on earth one makes coffee minus the aid of coffee grinder, electric coffee pot and water, since with no electricity there's no well pump...

day 48

A walk in the rain-soaked woods of the Shenandoah mountains.

day 47

In the very last of the light, a birdbath in a neighbor's garden reflects the marvelous sunset sky the day before Hurricane Irene arrives.

day 46 - Twin Probe

I bought a freezer for the new house, and it came in a giant box. Jack immediately appropriated the giant box and asked for help cutting two sets of eye holes and two gun ports in the side, then informed me that this was a robot named "The Twin Probe." He and Coley immediately climbed inside and began attacking all nearby alien invaders (i.e., me) with nerf dart guns. I fought back as best I could -- the Nerf rocket launcher is a formidable weapon -- but ultimately I could not prevail over the power of The Twin Probe.

day 45

A day at the zoo. Jack determined to use what he calls 'the quarter machine' to look at the penguins.

day 44

Spending a lot of time exploring our new back yard. Yesterday's image and today's both about finding great climbing trees. Lots of candidates to choose from. We are happy here.

day 43

day 42

Nothing I can do to help this image be any better than it is. A pause in a very long day of unpacking and running around buying things. In the past five days I have gone to Home Depot an average of once every 20 hours, by my calculation. But in the middle of all that, a stop at a small roadside farm stand for peaches. Sweet.

day 41

Exploring my new neighborhood -- I saw this fascinating-looking place yesterday, driving on the way to pick up the Uhaul truck. Some kind of work and storage yard for heavy equipment, and they've made their own homemade pavement of wooden pallets sunk into the ground. I mean literally hundreds of these pallets forming a sort of DIY highway leading off further than I could see from where the wooden road commenced. I pulled off a busy road to shoot this and was nervous about straying too far from the car, plus I was in a hurry to get somewhere, so I walked around marveling and taking a few shots but not getting anything that captured the fascination I felt with this place. Turning around to go was when I saw this zigzagging fault line between phalanxes of pallets. I am looking forward to going back to this place, with my plastic cameras and some time to wander.

day 40

Been a long time since Bible school, but I recall the significance of 40 days as being the period of time God would take to work major transformations. Yesterday was a day of major transformation, not to mention transportation, in these parts -- one 17-foot U-haul truck, filled and emptied twice. A long day indeed, and I crawled into bed at the end of it thoroughly exhausted yet thoroughly happy to be sleeping in my new, wonderful house. It was just shy of 11 pm and I was drifting off to sleep when I realized, holy cow, I never took a photo today! So I got up and took one picture -- the mountain of unpacked boxes in in my living room a simple, graphic explanation of the reason why photography was rather distant from my mind today. Then back in bed with me, and asleep less than 60 seconds later.

day 39

Packing to move to my new house. My. House. Along the road an explosion of Black-eyed Susans. It's like suddenly I can see color again, after living without even realizing it, and for much too long, in a dimmed-down world.

day 38

Early yesterday morning, it's still dark in the lowest portion of my mom's back yard, sun coming over the horizon and limning everything from behind, glorious pale gold edging darkest green. A set of rough timber stairs leading to an opening in overgrown yew hedges, opening to the already brightly sunlit field beyond. Words from Anne Tyler's "The Accidental Tourist" run through my mind:

"She took one of his wrists very gently and she drew him into the house, still not fully opening the door, so that he had a sense of slipping through something, of narrowly evading something."

Walked through my new house yesterday afternoon, showing the boys where they will come home to on Sunday when I pick them up from their dad. A long way to go betwixt now and then, much packing and organizing and carrying and loading and unloading and unpacking and reorganizing. It will be hard work, and long, and I relish the prospect.

day 37

After at last getting word that I had successfully rented us a new home -- a five-days-long nailbiter of a wait, because the real estate agency just couldn't find a way to grapple with the fact that I am self-employed and several times nearly backed out of the lease because my life didn't fit their standard forms and application processes -- we went to our favorite Westminster restaurant, Baugher's, to celebrate. Burgers and fries for everybody! And then a good long romp on the Baugher's playground, eating nectarines we bought from the farm stand. Fruit so ripe you couldn't help but drip juice all over yourself, so you'd then get dive-bombed by bees intoxicated by the lush perfume. Jack inventing an obstacle course around the playground, me following, from gazebo to tractor tires to swing set, the idea being never touch the ground. Nil desperandum, dear mama -- across the obstacle course lies the promised set of monkey bars.

Not a great photo maybe, compositionally speaking, but a joyous one. The one below is the one Jack prefers, because it shows him successfully executing the swing-to-swing step and split maneuver of his own invention. Master of the obstacle course.

day 36

This photo was taken on the evening of a long, hard day, and I very nearly just didn't. I was so tired and photography seemed to matter so little in the face of all that was happening -- I felt so powerless to change or help my own situation, and so depressed. So at the time I made myself drive the long way to my mom's house, where we are staying, along a rural road I love, looking for photos. But my thoughts kept cycling back to what seemed like my unsolve-able problems, and the landscape passed by in an undifferentiated blur. At the traffic light leading into my mom's community, the curve of the road in the side view mirror caught my eye and I made two exposures before the light turned green.

Many of my recent pictures have been of paths, roads. Partly because I am always on the move these days, I think -- spending much of my time literally on the road. But also informed by an interior sense of path, of traversing a tough time, feeling my way along the uncertain course from my old life to my new one. Two nights ago we watched "Willy Wonka and The Chocolate Factory" and I loved when Willy Wonka says to a distraught Mrs. Gloop, as she is being led away to find Augustus wherever the chocolate river has taken him, "Nil desperandum, dear lady. Across the desert lies the promised land." Wrote that on a post-it note and carried it around with me all day yesterday. And yesterday was the day things started to turn around.

day 35

This is the image I like best from this week. Another in my ongoing series about paths, divergences. Walking the trails of a local park with my youngest, trying so hard to remain in the moment, keep despair and anxiety at bay, while my beautiful child ran free. He was looking for dogs to pet. I was seeking to distract my brain from its grim circle of obsessive worry by scoping things to photograph. We both found what we were looking for.

day 34

We went to a fair. They had a funky attraction I'd never seen before, where you can get zipped into a giant plastic globe, which is then inflated around you, and then float, fall and scramble around a pool of water inside your own personal bubble. The kids loved it. I had hoped to make some good images at this fair, impressionistic playing about with colors and lights against the night, but ultimately was too busy making sure my kids didn't disappear in the pressing crowds. That's Cole, in the orange t-shirt, my little monkey boy.

day 33

Going on a week since I posted photos -- I have been shooting every day, though sometimes only by the skin of my teeth. I'm experiencing let's just call it a Major Life Meltdown - well, I was busily experiencing it for the past week or so. Knock wood, fingers crossed, toes crossed, whatever superstitious warding-off evil, luck-come-here gesture you got, make it right here right now for me that things are turning around. I found us a house (!!!!!!! -- multiple exclaimation points, this turn of events so wonderful and unexpected that I simply lack words) and we can get out of the hostile, DSM IV-crazy landlord-with-world's-worst-toupee situation that's been crushing my psyche.

Oh, the picture! Riiight. That's why you're here. Crazy week of running around trying to find a place to live get money together call tenants rights agencies and lawyers take care of kids pretend mama's not crying again. So photography definitely at the back of the bus, but each day during this marathon of challenges -- Dorothy Parker's quip, "What fresh hell is this?!" often running through my mind -- I still managed to make a picture. One of them I like quite a bit. Not this one, so much. It's OK, made pretty close to the wire, driving on 95 late on the night of the day I got notice I was being evicted and let's just say my thoughts were places other than photography. But. I still managed to remember, to keep the priority, keep the commitment to something larger than my current series of unfortunate life events, make something. Make a picture. I like the blur, the implied motion. Moving ahead.

day 32

A rough day, this one, in its way. We've been camping for three days in one of my favorite places on earth, Codorus State Park. It's not the Grand Canyon or Grand Tetons or anything at all truly grand, landscape-wise. Just a scruffy little Pennsylvania state park I've been going to ever since I was young, and now I'm delighted to take my own sons there. We laze around the camp, go swimming, fish the lake, ride bikes. One of the places on this Earth where I feel happiest, because of all the simple good times I have enjoyed there over the years. It seeps in, Codorus.

When we go there now we stay in one of the two yurts -- kind of round, permanently placed house-size tents on platforms -- and I realized why lying in the same bottom bunk I always occupy that the sight of the yurt's round peak window dome and wooden interior framing is a visual cue for feeling calm. Happy. In place -- how to explain this. Safe and at home in a physical context, maybe; a feeling essential to my well being but very hard to come by right now.

So I left Wednesday morning after packing up and cleaning out the yurt, the boys having already departed with their cousin and grandma. I was feeling pretty bereft; after a few days of quietly joyful departure from the rounds of anxiety and intractable problems that make up my current life, it was time to rejoin the battle against my personal homelessness and unemployment. (I am literally homeless, being evicted from current house without having found a new one). Just tearful and overwhelmed and dreading all that I must deal with all the while remaining upbeat and positive with the boys.

And then I realized that I always have this other place I can go, i.e. my creative/photography brain, that is like an internal vacation from the rest of my life. My own internal yurt. I had noticed a roadside cross near the park that I found appealing, and so I drove back to my mom's house that way and stopped and made a few photos, and after that the walls moved back a little bit. A little less despair, a little more sunlight. Got to keep moving forward even when the road is curvy and you can't see where exactly it's heading.

Pete

I am stepping a little sideways with this photograph: I took it Sunday, picking the boys up to go camping. They were at their dad's house and they knew that Pete had been sick. That he'd lost so much weight he was a skinny ghost of his former muscular, vital, XL dog self. That he had to be coaxed to eat and even to drink water, that medicine needed to be regularly forced down his throat.

So much has changed in our lives in the past couple years, so much has been lost. We got Pete before both boys were born, and they have never known a life without his furry, patient presence. He allowed them as babies to clamber on him like a living mountain, to pull his ears; he gamely tolerated their inept petting and occasional attempts to ride him like a pony. And always the slow, basso thump of his wagging tail, thumping the floor. A gentle giant.

That Sunday we made the difficult decision to have Pete put down. He had advanced intestinal cancer, there was little to be done, and he was clearly suffering. We didn't want to let go but we needed to. He needed us to let him go. He was nine years old, and a good dog to the very end. The boys and I said good-bye. Pete roused himself to give me one last thorough sniffing - the place where we moved to doesn't allow pets, and so Pete and I have not had much time together recently. Before the split we spent nearly all of our days in each other's company.

Alan and I talked to the boys about how Pete sick and how he wouldn't get better. That he was in a lot of pain, about how the vet was going to give him medicine so that he would not feel any more pain, but that he would to sleep and wouldn't wake up again. They protested, asked questions, but I'm not sure how much they really understood the permanence of that Sunday afternoon goodbye. I'm not sure I understand it myself. We petted him, looked into his trusting eyes, told him over and over that he's a good boy. Good boy. Said our goodbyes. The next evening Alan took him back to the vet for the euthanasia and I deeply appreciate the simultaneous sorrow and resolve this must have involved. I don't know that I could have done it. Alan and I have clashed a great deal, as divorcing couples will do, but we were briefly united in the need to help Pete over the rainbow bridge. A moment of grace.

Petey pup. Good dog.

Day 31

Tuesday, and the weather starting to turn. After a rainy morning a brisk afternoon breeze swept out the humidity and summer lassitude, and ushered in crisp, cool evening. The first hint that summer won't last forever. That autumn waits in the wings, and not very patiently.

Day 30

A photo from the first full day camping, the kids playing in the lake. A friend stayed with us the first night and it was terrific having her there, for all kinds of reasons and not just her photogenic children. (My younger son was there playing in the lake too but was not nearly so aesthetically obliging). Anyway, we had a wonderful time, and I made this picture, which I find astonishingly beautiful. I'm so grateful my friend consented to let me put her unclothed child's photograph online.

Again with this image I find myself bumping up against the limits of iPhonetography: small image size equals not much data within the image file. On film this photograph would be tonally rich -- you would be able to read detail in the shadows, not just black. So I find this image lovely but frustrating: I'd love to print it, and print it big, with great contrast range and velvety blacks and glowing highlights and and and...but because of the medium of origin it's always going to have to be small. And limited.

I also photographed the lake with plastic cameras. So there is yet hope -- I am hoping some of the film images I made have as much potential as this digital image. Yet I have no idea how or when I'll ever process that film, see those photos. I keep feeling limited by the low image quality that is the best one can get from Hipstamatic shots. But I am addicted to the instantaneousness of it. A conundrum.

But then the point of this 365 is to get me making pictures again, which I'm doing. This is non-negotiable. How I go about doing it, though -- that aspect can develop (pardon photography pun) over time. I have some notions about doing sub-projects beneath the 365 umbrella, like maybe dedicating a week to processing film each day so that I can quitmybitchin and present images from negatives for awhile. I enjoy contemplating this prospect.

First, though, I have a few small issues to settle: finding us a new house. Getting going in my new job. Yes, I got the transcribing/editing gig. And I'm feeling grateful. Grateful all over creation.

Day 29

OK, so this is hardly the most sophisticated image I've ever made. But something about this trash can at an I95 rest area reminded me of R2D2, and I love R2D2. I couldn't resist snapping his/its photo. And it's a happy little picture, and I am feeling a lot better today -- like some of the wobble has been worked out my personal planetary orbit -- so a happy little picture works for me. Especially when the other photos I worked so much harder on just didn't work at all. I'm sort of a little bit crazy about this image, actually. Happy!

The boys and I are going camping for the next three days so it might be Wednesday before more pictures get posted. I'll be shooting, of course. Have been doing more and more image making each day and I suspect that is part of the reason my shopping cart seems to be driving a little straighter. Anyway. Watch this space.

Day 28

Went for a good, long run yesterday (one of the other ways I'm attempting to remain upright and more or less functional during these rather rough days, have I mentioned that I just found out yesterday that my dog has cancer?). In the course of my pavement pounding I spotted something I wanted to go back to take pictures of later. So after dinner I went out for a walk back to the place I'd spotted, but on the way there noticed instead a nearby house with these scattered, upside-down chairs. The owners had just washed them, I think -- there's a hose in the background, if you look. I only took three shots because I don't know these people and had to walk pretty far onto their lawn to shoot this. But having seen the three I did get, I'm putting up this iPhone shot and then getting dressed and walking back over with plastic camera in hand to see if they are still there.

I do have me something of a white plastic lawn chair fixation. One of the very first exposures I ever made with a Diana, back in 1993, was a church lawn full of these very same white plastic chairs. There have been many others ever since. Maybe it's just because they're everywhere? No, not just that. I do find something visually compelling about them even in their ubiquitous blandness.

Day 27, Once More With Feeling

Went to scrounge up some work today -- took both a typing test and grammar/spelling/punctuation exam to see if I measure up as a work-from-home court transcriptionist. Yep. That's where working twenty years as a (photo)journalist -- prizewinning, might I add -- has landed me. Not that I'm complaining (much): it's a chance to do time-flexible, steady-paying work from home. And as soon as I know exactly where home is going to be, I imagine I'm going to be feeling a lot less grim about everything. My interior landscape these days looks a lot like 1980s Romania.

So. Until I make it out of Romania, the key is finding the beauty in unexpected places. Like this abandoned parking lot, crumbling asphalt striated with grass. I took quite a few pictures, then looked up to discover a closed-down carnival just down the street. So a rather oddly dislocated morning trying desperately to get work I'd rather not have but am grateful for anyway, and then a happy hour photographing abandoned things. You take what the day brings.

I am disturbed that I for once had my plastic cameras along, and though I thought to get them out for the carnival I did not think of doing so while at this parking lot. Carnival shots are fun, but this parking lot gets much deeper to the heart of what I want, and need, to say with my pictures. But Glen Burnie, where the transcription agency I am attempting to sign on with is, appears a fairly rich landscape for my plastic eye. I shall return.

I barely got last night's photo made, late, amid a great deal of heartache. Same ache today, but I made some good pictures.

You take what the day brings.

Day 26 - Keaton

I will be good; I will be good.
I have set my small jaw for the ages
and nothing can distract me from
solving the appointed emergencies
even with my small brain
—witness the diameter of my hatband
and the depth of the crown of my hat

I will be correct; I know what it is to be a man.
I will be correct or bust.
I will love but not impose my feelings.
I will serve and serve
with lute or I will not say anything.

If the machinery goes, I will repair it.
If it goes again I will repair it again.
My backbone

through these endless etceteras painful.

No, it is not the way to be, they say.
Go with the skid, turn always to leeward,
and see what happens, I ask you, now.

I lost a lovely smile somewhere,
and many colors dropped out.
The rigid spine will break, they say—
bend, bend.

I was made at right angles to the world
and I see it so. I can only see it so.
I do not find all this absurdity people talk about.

Perhaps a paradise, a serious paradise where lovers hold hands
and everything works.
I am not sentimental.

-- Elizabeth Bishop, "Keaton"

Day 25 - Time for a change?

Another one of those images/visual situations I've been admiring from afar for quite some time now, this imposing hedge cut into a sort of living gateway. But it was really frustrating to shoot -- I seem to be running up against the limitations of the iPhone in terms of having it frame the way I want to frame. Which makes me wonder if it's time to start trying other cameras.

The thing is, I really dig the Hipstamatic. I can certainly run all sorts of toycam effects and filters in Photoshop and get myself to the same place visually speaking, the faux-toy camera "look", even if I begin from a straight digital SLR shot. But going about it that feels too, I dunno, intentional? Cynical? I like that the Hipstamatic does it without my intervention. Cleanses some of the guilt from my disingenuous not-really-using-my-Diana hands...

Day 24

This is a rather eerie-looking image, considering that it was taken in the most innocuous of venues -- at the 4-H fair, where we admired prize-winning chickens, sat in on some livestock judging, and thrilled to the barrel racing event. It was a steamy August evening and Jack and Cole were cooling off in a misting tent. I liked Jack's abandon, trying to catch water drops on his tongue amid the unearthly light.

Day 23 -- Looking for a Sign

So for the past couple of weeks it's felt like my life has been getting harder and harder. I mean, knock wood, I know the world can always throw even more and worse shit my way, but during the past ten days there has been an unrelenting series of unfortunate events that has begun just totally eroding my good humor, not to mention my will to get out of bed each day. I feel as though I'm laboring under a bit of a curse these days, that I have somehow inadvertently angered a primitive and extremely vengeful god who is just unleashing all kinds of whoopass upon my feckless head.

Enough complaining. The point being I've been feeling a bit distracted from my 365 project for the past few days, anxious eyes trained more specifically on "house for rent" signs than potential images. (Yes, I need to move. Fairly suddenly and unexpectedly. Sigh). I named this blog "Signs and Wonders" in part because I recognize this year of visual exploration is going to be paralleling a year of intensive life changes. But tonight the two converged, my search for photographic and existential meaning dovetailing with my search for new quarters: I was waiting for a tardy prospective landlord and took myself on a tour of the grounds. It was a really old farm house with multiple buildings in various stages of falling down, and one of them had only this one skeletal wall.

Just as I spotted it the landlord arrived and began hollering down the hill for me, and I nearly began to walk away -- but instead turned back and clicked off three quick frames. Only later did I get to see what had turned up, and I love love love this image. I plan to go back with actual toy cameras and shoot it on film, it's so haunting and stuck in my brain. But even this digital shot from my cel phone makes me really happy -- of all the Hipstamatic shots I've done, this one has the truest toycam vibe.

It just feels so good that, in the midst of feeling such anxiety and stress and despair, I can make a picture that I like so much. Not to exaggerate, but this 365 project is saving my life a little bit these days.

Day 22

Happy birthday Coley. My baby is suddenly five years old. The days, they pass so slowly but the years -- those race right by.