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.