82

In Rehoboth Beach with Heather. A much-needed girls getaway weekend. There is much laying about on beach chairs -- enjoying the odd juxtaposition between warm sand and cool air -- reading and gabbing and napping. We tried for months to get here, but my disastrous life kept derailing our plans. I am so glad to be here now.

81

I know, I know, me and the path pictures. I was trying to do something different with this one but it didn't work. I am unthrilled with this image, also with the other images I made today.

80

The view from the table where I was catching a late lunch at a Salvadoran restaurant.

79

Stories before bedtime. Always.

78

Cole, my darling adventure boy of irrepressible spirit, has struggled with all the new rules the first month of public school kindergarten brings: sit quietly. Some more. No, keep sitting. Also keep being quiet. Good. Keep it up! Only five more hours to go...

Coley is a high energy guy, and before his debut as a K at the district school he was in Montessori, where children are trusted to get up and choose their own work and move around so long as it does not disturb fellow students. This educational approach works well for Cole, though alas other parts of Montessori did not -- for example, there is a learning activity essential to mastering the first three years of Montessori called The Pink Tower. It's graduated wood blocks meant to be put together a certain way to teach pre-math foundational understanding of proportional spatial relations. Cole, on the other hand, really really liked to use The Pink Tower to build robots, not the appropriate educational edifice. Montessori, it turns out, offers freedom of a sort, but it's a highly specific and, to me anyway, surprisingly rigid sort of freedom. Once the other children saw him building robots, then they wanted to build robots too. This was viewed as disruptive: The Pink Tower Must Be Built As Intended. It was asked that Cole not return to Montessori for kindergarten.

So no surprise that within a week of school starting Cole's new teacher was asking for help with behavior modification, and so now we have a plan in place where he begins each day with 10 pennies and he loses one every time the teacher has to correct his behavior. At the end of the day I get an accounting of how many pennies, the number of which remaining relate to colors as on a traffic light, and if it's a "green" day (six or more pennies remaining) then Cole gets a small reward: ice cream, say, or he gets to be the one to pick out the family movie we watch on Friday nights. After his first week, a week of all green days, he earned the cumulative reward of going to the pet store and picking out a betta fish.

My little guy. He's really with the program right now, he loves accumulating the pennies and he's proud of his green days. And I recognize that he's learning important behaviors: how to co-operate in a group setting. Good citizenship, respect, consideration. And I recognize that his teacher is young and has 23 energetic children to shepherd through the day all on her own, and that once chaos breaks out in a classroom things just fall apart. Still I wish the message was a little more nuanced than, sit down and be quiet, good little boy. Here's your ice cream. I have always raised my boys to ask questions, to not just accept authority. That what they think is important too. I plan to raise the future leaders of the rebel forces, something that looks more and more each of these recent kinda scary days like a realistic job opening we might need filled quite urgently some time in the nearish future. I'm not at peace with this, but for the moment Cole is and that's what matters most. My money's on the charm wearing off, however, and a little rebellious behavior resurfacing.

But he sure loves his fish. The betta's name changes each day; he started out as Spike. Today he was Bluey.

77

So it has become my habit, when we stay at my mom's house, that I cruise for photo opportunities by driving the old back roads between the homeplace and Westminster, the nearest town. Since the early days of this project I have thus been passing a mysterious cinder block chimney, standing alone and utterly out of context among rural fields, smothered in leafy vines. I hadn't stopped before; making an intriguing image of such a severe and specific scene would require being there at the right time of day, in the right light and the right weather, and that never seemed to happen. Those planets finally aligned today when I happened to be passing by on my way home from the YMCA. The vines have turned scarlet and I thought the late afternoon sun would limn these with rich golden light, softening the severe lines of the smokestack. Instead, clouds suddenly blocked the sky and the scene became dramatic and dark. Instead of the tonal study in bright, saturated autumn colors there was this black monolith against a swirling gray sky. I was nonplussed -- this was not at all what I was after, I felt like the light had fled from me.

Then had to laugh. I realized the shift in mood wasn't loss of light, just simply a change in light. The light is still there, still all around -- just coming from a slightly different place. Darkness, it seems, could very well be in the eye of the beholder.

Like the man said, once in awhile you get shown the light in the strangest of places if you look at it right.

76 - Up, up and away

Today was totally stressful. I have this funky biodiesel Jeep Grand Wagoneer that I adore but, like other intriguing entities to which I have in the past misguidedly hitched my existential star, it is unreliable. Twice now I have poured time, work and money into making this relationship work, getting the jeep all fixed up and roadworthy, intending to make this truck my daily driver. My brave companion of the road.

Both times I warmed up slowly, getting acquainted by taking small trips near home, and when doing so it bore the boys and me stylishly and effectively. I began to trust. To believe. But once I was ready to seriously invest in the relationship, take it to the next level, really commit, dammit, well -- both times it took me far from home and then just...died. Twice now it has repaid my financial and (not inconsiderable) emotional investment by leaving me stranded. Literally. And this latest time, well. It was sort of more than I could handle gracefully. Life has been good recently, I am grateful for the quiet upswing in our circumstances. But it's startling and distressing to see how little reserve I've been able to rebuild, how quickly and easily knocked back into crisis and despair I seem to be.

Enter my best friend Heather who showed up to sit with me in my interminable wait for the tow truck driver. What a way to spend your Saturday night, right? She then took me out for hamburgers and french fries and pie and in general fluffed me up and smoothed me down and patted me back into something resembling human form instead of a quivering mass of stress and failure.

So we were on our way to dinner after several hours of Heather calming me down and listening patiently to me obsess and complain during the above-mentioned tow truck waiting period. We were both starving and happily anticipating dinner at Baugher's, a long-time favorite country restaurant for both of us. As we cruised into Westminster I spied an automobile dealership that had vast strings of balloons flying above its car lot, curling away into the evening autumn sky. Knowing I'd already rested heavily upon Heather's good graces this day, I asked humbly if she would mind turning the car around to take me back so I could take some photos. Heather very patiently asked if it had to be now, rather than after dinner, and I said very quietly that by the time we were done eating dinner it would be dark and the opportunity lost. To H's vast credit she did not sigh, at least not out loud, and she took the next U-turn and delivered me to the balloon place.

The chance to make some pictures, to reclaim a positive and generative part of myself after a draining day, was indescribably wonderful. Like hitting the reset button on my life and my sense of self, flipping the switch from failure to fruitful. And I really loved the images that resulted. Up, up and away.

Today's image gratefully dedicated to Heather Joslyn: stalwart, confidante, utter ally.