Perfect

I went to the inner ponds of Great Salt Pond and a Great White Egret had come.  I watched as she stood waiting in the grasses, and then stretched, and stabbed, and got her long narrow fish for breakfast.  Every time.  She never failed.

When I watch the birds, I see how perfect they are for all that they have to do.  Their eyes, their beaks, their legs, and of course every feather. They open their wings and the feathers just follow, perfectly formed and fit and open and working together.  They know what to do, simply by being in their bodies.  Should they fish for a living or take up photography?  They don’t ask those kinds of questions. 

It’s different for us humans.  What if a long time ago, someone just built us and dropped us off and said, “We’ll leave you all here on this winter day.  All the other animals will have bodies suited to their survival.  They will have claws, and strength and speed and teeth and wings.  That will be enough for them, but not for you.  If you go out in this weather you’ll be dead in no time.  So you’ll have to figure it out.  Have a nice day, and I’ll be watching to see how you make out.  It should be quite a show.” 

And it was.  It is.

This was taken this past January, at dawn, from Corn Neck Road, looking toward the breakwater in Old Harbor.  With the windchill, it was 35 degrees below zero.  I had trouble getting out of the car long enough to take the picture, but if you look closely, you will see birds flying above the breakwater.

Or maybe we emerged, step by step, changing or being changed in imperceptible ways that added together to make big ways, just like any creative project.  Something moved us, chipped away at us, placed us in a merciless world and then worked out in us, a way to survive.  We became exactly as smart as our physical weakness required us to be.  And as a result, we have options.  The egret had her fish but I had my camera and I could get into my car and go home.  I could cook my dinner with fresh produce from California. 

Whenever I see the birds, I put more faith in my body.  I see I must be perfectly built for something.  So I ask myself:  “What is inherently human?  What is mine to do?”  And then I make lists.  Short list:  “To stay alive.”  Long list:  “To see, to feel, to walk, to speak, to think, to seek and wonder, to love, to learn, to rest and to build.” 

So I try to do that, and sometimes I’m surprised.  I take pictures I didn’t expect to take.  I watch thoughts I never had before make their way onto the page. Things fit together and organize themselves into concepts and patterns, as they just did right here in this unexpected sentence.  They unfold like feathers when a bird reaches out with her wings. 

Perhaps the same principle that operates in nature also operates in me.  Like, nature creates itself in birds by making beaks and feathers; in me through what happens with my hands or in my mind.  The egret is so good at getting those fishes.  I’d be good at it too if that was all I could do.  I think we make a lot more mistakes than birds, because we’re in a different experiment, pushing forward into things that haven’t been done a million times before.  If the world changes, it will take my beautiful egret a long time to make a new beak, but all I have to do is make a new idea.  This egret can stay in a certain habitat, and only at certain times of year, but I’m so flexible, so generic, I can go anywhere.  I’m free as a human, you know?

At some point, and a long time ago, someone took a saw and cut this tree down.  And the spring floods came, I'm guessing, to the Connecticut River, and this tree trunk floated on the currents and tides across Long Island and Block Island Sounds.  All those forces, all that time, and the random chance that it landed on this island.  But here is something unmistakable.  There is nothing like it... the mark of a human hand.

It makes me happy to make things.  Sometimes it feels like, “This is me.  Everything I’ve ever learned is here in this creation.”  And it might not be the best thing, but it’s true in the sense that it’s authentically from me.  Well, it’s from me and from whatever-it-is-that-moves-and-breathes-me.  It’s what we have invented in our making dance together.  Maybe it won’t be a Thing That Changes Everything, but at least it can join in the vast project of making a world that is constantly being born because everyone and everything is making that happen every minute all day long.

I know we have problems, and it’s hard to imagine what the solutions will be, but I think it is very human to solve problems, and we’re not alone in this, not alone at all, and the best solutions seem to come out of nowhere, and necessity calls them out, and I think that all of nature is behind us in this, being perfect like she always is, and because there is such need, specifically because of that need, there is no telling what will happen now.

Eleanor

Elva, a friend who lives on Block Island, likes to read my blog.  Every so often, I see her in the grocery store or she sends me an email and she tells me what she particularly wants me to do.   Last time we spoke, she said that she loves pictures of doors and windows, because they always tell a story.  That made me think of Eleanor’s painting.

Eleanor Garrett was a member of the Spring Street Gallery on Block Island.  During her time there, she grew from making and selling crafts to tole painting to watercolors and other fine art painting.  She retired from the Gallery, only two years ago, in her early 80's.  For many years, and even after she left, she was a reliable presence.  She bustled around.  She helped at the cash register.  She said that the tree roots in the yard made a bumpy walk for an older person.  She gave her opinions freely, complained freely and just as quickly let things go.  She connected us to our history and purpose.  She enjoyed her life.  She cared about everyone.

When I think of Eleanor now, I remember her courage in the last weeks of her life and think of how her children so beautifully honored her at her service.   I remember how Eleanor told them to tell us that she would always be our friend.  I also remember the time that a woman came into the Gallery and bought every single one of Eleanor’s paintings.  Edie and Eleanor and I celebrated with champagne that night, and Eleanor said, “My mother did not raise me to put on airs.  I am still the same person I was this morning.”   And finally, I remember (and this pleases me), that if you go into the Gallery, you will see a picture that Eleanor painted on the inside of the bathroom door.

I’m glad I got to know Eleanor.  I’m glad the Gallery was there because that is how I knew her and that’s where we grew together as artists.  I remember how she stayed connected, how she didn’t let the changes in her life prevent her from being a friend to all of us at the Gallery.

Eleanor’s painting proudly hangs in my kitchen, and like Elva said, it does tell a story.  It shows the chair and table where her mother sat every day, and the window where she looked out, and the Block Island landscape beyond.  I liked this picture when I bought it, but now that Eleanor is gone, I love it, because now my sight is layering on Eleanor’s, like pages.  I see through Eleanor’s eyes and remember Eleanor, just as Eleanor saw and remembered her mother.  

I grew up thinking in practical terms.  I could only spend time on the luxuries of life, like rest and connection and beauty, when everything else was done.  But there were a thousand things, and I was never done.  Now I think it’s exactly the opposite, that these are the necessities; that if you find one thing in your life that helps you, you have to lock it in.

For the first 50 years of my life, I didn’t know I could be an artist.  It was the island and the Gallery that taught me what was possible.  By being an artist at the Gallery, I saw myself and others grow, gain confidence and courage and skill.  I’ve seen art help with great losses.  I’ve seen it show what matters.  I’ve seen it bring people together. 

I try to imagine my life without the work I do now, or without having known Eleanor and the other people I’ve met through art and through the Gallery, and I don’t think I’d be the same person.  I look at the walls in our house that are covered now with my own pictures and the pictures and paintings made by my friends.  That feeds my heart.  I think of my friends and family and I realize that by showing them what I love, they can see me better, and I can see them. 

It’s so funny because sometimes people think of Block Island as a place to come and party.  I remember being on the boat one time and a young man had left his wallet in his car.  His friends said, “Get off the boat, Dude.  Get off the boat!  There’s nothing to do on Block Island if you can’t drink!”  Well, I’ll just say Block Island is a place where you can come and live deeply.  And art can help with that.  I’m glad Block Island is a place where people can grow as artists.  I’m grateful the Gallery has been here for us at the center of what art has meant on Block Island for a generation and that it made a way for Eleanor and me.  And now many other places are here as well, in part because of the Gallery, and art is alive and well on Block Island.  So it’s all good, and everything is moving forward and meantime I have Eleanor’s picture and it will help me to remember.

P.S.  With regret, I won’t be showing at the Gallery this year because it’s a co-op and I won’t be here enough this summer to do my part.  I'm also getting organized.  I have thousands and thousands of pictures.  I very much want to take some time and look at all I have and the best way to offer it to you.  I will have a show in the fall at HeArt Space on Block Island, and people can contact me through this blog for more information about how I’ll be handling orders.  My "Wave" book is available at HeArt Space and at Island Bound.  I'll let you know as I work out other venues for the book.

Reach

I am interested in this picture.  I am so used to working for good pictures of birds – sharp focus, good light through their feathers, good wings in flight.  But I used a higher ISO and so this picture had greater depth of field – good focus on the trees as well as the bird.  Maybe it was the way the shapes in the heron’s wings mirrored the shapes in the reaching branches.  It made me feel that the heron was in its natural home, that this landscape and this bird fit together, that their lives were entwined, inseparable.

 

The camera allows me to see much more than I can see with my own eyes and this is how I come to these conclusions… this heron’s tongue for example.  I never imagined it would be shaped like that.  What a delicate tongue to be protected inside that long beak, to poke into the mud.  How perfect to wriggle out those little morsels. 

The heron settled into its tree in its classic heron pose.  I waited with my telephoto lens at what I hoped would be a non-disturbing distance across a little pond.  I was preparing to stay, like scores of other mornings, with a heron who wasn’t moving and who might not move for hours.  I’ve always admired the ability of birds to wait.  I think it is important to their survival, as important as their ability to hunt or fight  - their ability to rest, to wait, to collect their strength.  So as always, I sat there, trying to match her, wondering what she saw and thought and felt, wondering what was it was like to live her life. 

It was a cold morning, but I could feel that spring was coming.  I considered this.  I mean, after I forgot all the extra stuff, like the fact that taxes were due in two days, after I forgot all the other things in my constructed life, there was how it felt after a long winter when the air was cold, but the sun had just risen and I could feel it warm on my face.  I thought, “We all know this.  We know it across the human race.  We’ve been knowing it, whether we’re humans or other creatures.   We’ve been knowing it together for hundreds of thousands or millions of years.” 

The heron and I were at the hatchery together, she with her instincts and I with mine.  So we waited and I want to tell you that what happened next was something I’ve never seen.  The heron reached, turning and craning her neck, tracking something across the sky.  I turned also, and there was an eagle circling.  The eagle passed and she immediately settled down, groomed her feathers, and went back to her rest. 

Then my dogs began to tussle and the heron turned and looked at us.  If you ever have a large wild bird look at you, something will happen. I’ve felt this a few times, once with a hawk, once with a snowy owl and now this time.  Something in the oldest part of my brain woke up.  There is no word for this that I know of, this I’m-being-studied-and-measured-and-thoroughly-seen-by-a-large-wild-bird feeling, but there it was.

There have always been dozens of heron at the fish hatchery, but I’ve been there all week and I’ve only counted three.  It could be the exceptionally difficult winter, or it could be the eagles are eating them or driving them away.

I learned some things this week:  (1) That the heron have pointy tongues.  (2) That everything reaches, that the trees reach and the birds reach in very similar shapes and for very similar reasons.  (3) That the heron and the landscape are inseparable from each other.  (4) That it’s important to rest, to really rest, to practice resting as a necessity for life.  (5) That the heron reach first with their eyes, like photographers do, and that their whole bodies follow.  (6) That now that the eagles have come the heron might be gone from the fish hatchery, and soon. 

Rescue Operation

This picture is called "Now". 

I went out to West Beach last night (I hate to admit this because I had decided to leave them alone.), looking for a Snowy Owl.  And just at the end of the path was a seagull struggling, wrapped in fishing line.  I called Chris Blane, who had another commitment but gave me good advice.  Then I called Kim Gaffett, who left her dinner on the table to come and help.  We caught the gull by wrapping it in a towel.  We tried to cut the lines but we didn’t have the right clippers with us.  We had to bring it back home.  We discovered the fishing line was more like a fish net, actually, with a large open weave that had wrapped itself under the bird's wings and around its head, and particularly around its foot, where it was tangled and knotted, cutting off circulation and wearing right down to the bone.  We tried to keep the gull’s head covered to keep it as calm as possible, and we turned it one way and another, working in little sections, carefully clipping, like clearing a thicket, until pieces fell away. 

I wondered what the seagull thought of this, being abducted by aliens, squeezed in a towel, carried in a box and a car, clipped at and turned and handled.  We talked to it softly, stroking it a little bit, and I wondered if that would even matter, if our human gestures of comfort could possibly mean anything to a bird.  We felt under its wings, following with our fingers when the line cut under its feathers.  I was amazed at its body heat, how it was soft and fragile and very warm.  The gull seemed relatively calm under the circumstances, or was in shock, one or the other.  When we finally got it free, Kim set it on the ground.  It tried to fly.   Its wings seemed fine but one leg dangled.  It went a few feet and then set down, then it tried and failed again.  We decided not to subject it to another capture and left it where it was for the night.  I brought water and upon consideration, dog food.  By then it was dark.  It was cold and windy.  A little sleet was falling.  When I went to check it during the night and again before dawn, it hadn’t moved from its spot.  I worried.  I wondered how long it had been caught like that, how long it had been struggling, how long afraid, how long without water or food.  I thought about how everything wants to live, and how good that is, how it’s life itself that wants that.  I thought about the forces at work in the night to heal the gull and the other forces bearing down.  I hoped the scales would tip in its favor. 

I considered how it had flapped and struggled, how the wings seemed strong, and how maybe it just needed some peace and quiet. I hoped for time because I know that life always heals in slow motion.  In the morning the gull was up and standing on one foot, delicately pecking at the dog food, sipping the water and looking around.  It objected loudly when some ducks came by to get the food but it gave ample room to the crows.  Some gulls came to visit.  I went out with clean water and more food, and it seemed resigned to my presence, but then I went to take its picture.  I wonder if it thought my camera was a gun, because that did it.  It gathered its forces, spread its wings, caught the wind, and flew away.  Bill said, “Good for you.  After all, ‘What you do for the least of my creatures…’” I said, “No.  Not the least of creatures.”  I had come to love it a little bit.  I said, “The best of creatures.  Really.  It is the best of creatures.” 

Chris called and I saw Kim on the ferry this morning and I was happy to give them a good report.  It’s only one bird but hope it’s OK. 

I can't say this is the best picture I have ever taken, but I was very happy to take it.  That's our gull, flying away this morning at about 7 o'clock.

A Good Person

This is a picture from Patchaug.  The man's house in this story is to the right of this picture, out of the frame, and the waterfalls are behind me.

I went to Patchaug State Forest on the way to work on the boat this week.  I went in the back way.  There was a big marsh with many birds, and two waterfalls, and bridges over the falls. There was a parking lot next to a little cottage.  The cottage was modest but nicely kept. There were signs of careful attention, and of the particular French Canadian esthetic that came with the workers who once filled the textile mills in Eastern Connecticut.  Everything was clean and freshly painted.  Every leaf and blade of grass was in its place.   There was a lighthouse, about five feet tall, with pilings and real dock lines neatly wrapped around them.  On the pilings were wooden pelicans.  There was a black metal eagle over the garage, and four large concrete lions were sitting on their haunches, guarding the sidewalk that led to the front door.

I got out of the car and I thought that Wilson and Molly would stay with me, so I was organizing my cameras and lenses.  I looked up in time to see the dogs scampering straight to the man’s front door.  He was there with his little grand-daughter.  I hurried toward the dogs, but the man called out, “Don’t worry!  Don’t worry.”  I knew I was in the wrong, but the man’s kindness made me more willing to admit it.  I said, “I should have been paying closer attention.”  He said, “They’re wonderful.  This one is older isn’t he?”  I said, “You have a beautiful spot here.  You’re very kind about the dogs.”  To aerate the point, Wilson chose that moment to pee on the man’s perfect shrubs.  I said, “I’m sorry.”  He said, “They have to do that, you know.”

So I left the man, liking him so much that I wanted to buy the house next door or buy him a house on Block Island so that I could have him for a neighbor, and I thought about the times when it is very important to fight for something and times when it is not important at all.

I have never gotten a bird landing quite from this perspective.  I didn't realize how the feathers in his chest spread out and flatten to slow him down.

I went off to see the birds, and I love the earliest days of spring, when the birds are full of electric energy.  I saw this big guy coming in for a carrier landing. 

I liked the simplicity of this one, especially the little grasses, the texture on the bird's wings and their reflections in the water.

I used my telephoto and got a few more pictures of birds, but then I decided to use my close-up lens, because there were these leaves.   I love these also, these remnants that have stayed through a brutal winter, getting thinner and more transparent, but still holding on.   All this fragile strength, all this staying to the very end with the light coming through, all the beautiful ways in which the beating they have taken has changed them, this is what I wanted to show you.

I can’t show this in a picture but I want you to know that these narrow leaves were trembling, almost vibrating in the breeze.

And then I got interested in the waterfall.  It was yellowy brown from all the tannins, from decaying leaves in the water.  I take so many pictures of the ocean, and I’m not used to water this color.  I considered making black and white pictures, but then I thought, “This is the clear, clean color of a living system.   How can I think that’s not good?”  In any case, I thought it would be interesting… I never get this close to crashing water, not with my camera in my hand.  Here was my chance to see what was happening right inside.  I set the shutter speed to 1/2500th of a second, just to see what that would do, and then I switched to much longer exposures. 

Here's the waterfall, looking across the marsh to the forest.  Those two legs are part of the bridge.

Here's a close up, with me just inches from the water.  The shutter speed is 1/2500th of a second.

This shutter speed is 1/15th of a second.

I realize that living next to the state forest the way he does, that man must get a lot of people, right there next to his yard.  Some of them might not be watching their dogs the way they should, and some of them might leave litter, or misbehave in other ways, and it would be reasonable to expect the he would have gotten a perfectly justifiable attitude about it by now.  He could have put “no trespassing” signs all over the place.  But he didn’t.  Not at all.  In fact, I get the feeling he enjoyed seeing us. 

I’m still thinking about him, because he made me see how it was in this particular case, how it can be when someone decides they can just relax about something.   I took a nice picture from across the pond, with the light on the water, and his yard and his lions and his pretty house.  I thought I’d print it for him and drop it off some time, to thank him.

My beautiful trouble makers.

The Edges of Spring

These pictures were taken in late March last year on the ponds and puddles at the fish hatchery.  I'm showing them to you so that you will know that it was just as cold and frozen at this exact time last year, and also because I'm hoping that if winter thinks we've paid enough attention to her beauty, she might feel better about moving on. 

I'm back on the mainland and will be here until Easter.  I'm sanding the teak on our sailboat (the Hans Christian, the SV Grace).  Sad to say, she's on the market.  We're trading into a grandparent boat, a trawler where our grandchildren and nieces and nephews can come and swim off the back and where we can sit in the shade.  In any case, I'll be sanding almost every day that it's not raining. 

I've been working night and day on my e-book, and now I'm showing it to all the little kids I know.  Then, I've just got to work out ISBN numbers and upload it into the correct formats for Kindles and iPads and other devices, and then it will be ready to go.  (Just in time.  It's a book about snow.)  It's good, after such intensity, to be on the boat and think of nothing but the motion of scraping and sanding all that beautiful wood. 

The urge to work on teak trim (or "bright work" as they say,) has come upon me, but it doesn't come upon me often enough.  If it did, I wouldn't have so much to do right now.  It's a nice time at the marina however, not too many people, so that Molly and Wilson can hang out on the dock with me, and once or twice a day someone can come by and talk, first to Wilson and Molly, and then to me. 

So Bill and I have finally admitted that we are not going to cross the Pacific Ocean in our sailboat.  We're going to stay a little closer to home and family and it's lucky that there is quite a lot to see right here.

Swans

I went out to Sachem Pond on the first warm day I can remember.   There was a new stretch of open water.  And the swans were doing something I'd never seen.  They were sailing.  They let the wind fill their feathers and push them along.  They put their beaks down.  I'm not sure if they were filtering water, or if it was part of the game.  They must have been using their feet as well because there was a sort of bobbing motion, bow to stern.  

I've watched the swans all winter and fretted over their situation.  It's been so cold, and I've wondered how they were managing.  It looked like they were containing themselves, holding on.  But this day was different.  They'd sail for a while and it seemed like they were doing it just for fun, and suddenly, they'd  fight and scatter everywhere, and then they'd go back to sailing again.

I went back two days later.  It was windy and much colder.  The swans flew to the lee of the sand dunes by the North Light, trading the large open water by the parking lot for the chance to be out of the wind.  They stayed and I stayed also.  They faced the wind and rested.  Then, they began their beautiful mating dance.

And every so often they poked a neighbor. 

When I'm out with the birds, I try to be patient.   I copy them as they stay and stay, because I realize that being in nature in their way must create a state of mind.   I stay with it sometimes, and sometimes I fidget and hum and talk to myself, because they are ready to wait forever, because they out wait me every time.

I like to do this.  It gives me a sense of who I am.   I don't have to think.  It's not a concept.  My skin knows.   And then I run home to make myself warm.  I'm glad I can do that, and I never forget that they can't.  But I don't want to be so secure with my layers of safety and comfort that I forget that I'm also a creature on the earth.

The sun came out and I felt it warm on my face and the swans immediately flew to the less protected, bigger water. 

It took several shots because the swans were all jumbled together, but here they finally separated.

Here are some of them landing.  I think there were two more, out of frame.  You can see Corn Neck Road at the east edge of Sachem Pond in this picture.

So it's been a good chance for pictures.   I love this time of year, especially because of the birds, because of the new warmth and their relief and stirring and energy. 

And soon, life will make its move.  Soon, they'll be mating and life will weave its way through them into the particular pattern of new swans.  The babies will ride on their backs in the room created by their feathers.  I would love to go with them.  That must be something.

So look, I thought it was cool the way the swan's wing and this wave taken near the parking lot for North Light mirrored each other.  They were taken the same day.  You know that place, where the waves curve around?

Snowy Day

I went out from Scotch to Mansion Beach and back again during the last big snow storm.  Wilson and Molly as you will see, were happy about it.  I loved the quiet and the way the snow made a blanket on everything, even on the sand, right up to the water.  I also loved the way the dense falling snow obscured my sight.  The beach will be covered in people and color and heat and action soon enough, but on this snowy day, I could only see the suggestions of things - just some shapes and shadows and the falling snow and the softest light.  I thought I would let the pictures stand for themselves, and let you enjoy them in peace except to tell you two things:  I am working on making these and other images into a children's E-book.  I hope to have it done in a few weeks.  And also, it should come with a warning because the early indication from children who have been kind enough to read it for me, is that it makes them want to get a puppy.

Learning to Ski

This is my sister Amy, with Anna Belle, her border collie and Wilson, our golden retriever.  We skied together for the first time after my friend Lisa showed me how.

Lisa has been skiing since she was 3 years old, and she kindly consented to teach me.  More than that, she stocked her house with every food she could remember me liking for the past 35 years.  More than that, she told me I was a sturdy person because I gave her dirty looks only on the first day and because I didn’t call for a helicopter rescue on the second.  She also pointed out that the most handsome person on the ski trail (who was dressed like an action figure and scampering UP the hill), stopped to encourage me when he saw my wide-eyed, stiff-kneed, gravity-driven progress.  (I pointed out that he helped me because I reminded him of his grandmother.)  She also had a hot tub, so after we skied, we could run bare foot across her very cold deck and jump in and simmer away while the snow fell down on our faces.  She also gave me hot chocolate.  So in all, a good friend and a successful first skiing venture.

I drove to Moosup and continued to ski with my sister.  We broke a trail, heading out behind their house and the donkey barns, to the open fields beyond. I went skiing every day, at Amy and Stan’s farm, on an old abandoned railroad bed, and at the fish hatchery.  It took some time before I felt secure enough on my feet to where I was willing to bring my cameras.   This was a work in progress.  At one point, my breath frosted on the cameras so that I was shooting completely blind.  At another, the surface suddenly gave out beneath me and I was in snow up to my waist, and I had to extricate myself, with great care for my equipment. 

Here is Amy, being quite the nordic, woodland person.

I was amazed how warm, how hot you can be when you’re working like that in the cold, and I’m not good at it yet, but I can stop myself from falling most of the time, and I can begin to feel how it will be when all of the parts of my body will be working together.  So I’m back on Block Island again and believe it or not, I’m hoping for snow. 

Here are some more pictures from skiing at Stan and Amy's farm.

Anna Belle loved nothing more than to lead us around.  She could run along the top of the wind packed snow on this open field.  She had to work hard in the deeper snow in the woods, and I think that for almost the first time in her life, we began to tire her out.  We were very glad about this in Anna Belle's case.

This is one of Stan's barns, taken from the fields behind. 

Here is the edge of one of their fields.  Growing up in the country, I could take for granted the freedom of the land - the room to breathe as one field opened into another,  the trust that life would reach and tangle into every place where there was space and light to do so, the peace and discovery of the deep forest.  Stan has been opening paths into their woods, so we've been able to get back in there.  The skiing will help us extend our winter range into the fields as well.   I will get out... here on Block Island and on the mainland.  It's easy as a grownup to forget how it was when I could know so much just by being outside.  I can remember.

Here are the donkeys in the barn by the house.  They were waiting in the same place as they were when we set out.

Waiting and Friends and Wonders

This is my friend Lisa's picture.  We've been friends for 35 years. 

I was walking with Wilson and Molly, my golden retrievers.  I started at Andy’s Way and since it was low tide I was able to get through the inner ponds and all the way around to Bean Point.  I went out in the wind and freezing rain because I had seen swans flying and I wanted to see if they would fly by again the next day.

Wilson started to limp.  He sat down and didn’t want to take another step. I knew I couldn’t carry him.   I was trying to rig a harness, first using my orange hunting vest and then my coat and my camera strap but then what would I do with my camera?   Then I thought if we went together through the water maybe that would hold him up but my boots were leaking and I thought a long walk through water that cold would be unwise. 

My cell phone rang.  I had taken my gloves off to rig the harness.   My hands were frozen and I couldn’t get to the phone in time.  It was my mother.  I called back and the line was busy.  I put it in my pocket and it rang again.  I missed it.  I called and the line was busy again.  I called.  I called again.  She picked up.  I said, “What!?”  My mother is hard of hearing.  She said, “What?”  I said, “WHAT!!”  She said, “I was coughing all day when I went to play bridge.  Do you think I’m contagious?”  I said, “I can’t talk now.”

Molly wanted to play with Wilson.  She kept dodging in, nipping at his legs.  I said, “No!” And she kept on until I really yelled at her.  Then she went off at a distance, throwing pieces of ice in the air and playing with those instead.  And I slowly got Wilson back, bending to support him, my big camera knocking against him, coaxing him and fending off Molly.   When I got to the jeep it was so cold that the hatch wouldn’t stay open and I braced it with my back while I put my camera away, carefully brushing off the sand it had acquired when I was stooping for Wilson.  Then I boosted Molly and lifted Wilson into the car.  And then I turned the heater on.  Ahh.  I called my mother who had been worrying.  I apologized to Mom and to Molly.  I talked to my sister who was still with Mom in Florida and leaving the next day to go back to Colorado.

I have written that every time I exert myself the world comes to meet me with so many wonderful pictures.  Well.  I would like to amend that statement, as follows:  Sometimes the pictures don’t come out the way I want.  Sometimes I don’t know what to do.  It was like that all through the fall.

So many things were happening to people we loved.  My sister’s husband died.  There were other big medical events in the family and with friends, and then there were other issues.  I felt like Bill and I were at the center of a storm where everything was whirling around and I was leaving the island because of something huge and then returning to place for a moment of unnatural calm, and then leaving again for something else.

Some of what was happening touched events from the past.  In some ways, I was reliving those times, so whenever I sat down to write, the only things I could think of were things that I wouldn’t say because of the impact that might have on others.  And if I wouldn’t say what was most true for me, what I felt and was living most deeply, then I found I couldn’t say anything.  Even more than that, when I went out with my camera, which has never failed to produce more pictures than I could count, I was suddenly finding nothing.  I was used to going out, and finding eagles fighting with osprey, turtles mating in the pond, waves crashing, birds flashing and weaving in the brilliant, sparkling light.  Now there was nothing.  Nothing at the fish hatchery.  Nothing on Block Island.  There was nothing for me to notice, nothing I was drawn to, nothing in me and nothing out there either. 

I thought that was amazing.  Folks who read my blog kindly wrote to find out if I was still alive, and I kept saying I thought I would write again soon, but weeks went by.  Other than that, I knew that something was going on.  I knew that photography had helped me heal from the very things I was reliving.  I knew it brought me to beauty and abundance and connection when I had needed it the most.  I knew it helped me to my own separate life and to my voice and to my sight and to my own center.  I knew that was enough.  I knew that everything I loved about photography was in there somewhere.  I knew it was reorganizing itself inside of me.  And I knew I was tired.  I didn’t even want to fight with it and everything in the writing and the photography went inward and quiet and down. 

For a month or so, I had a passionate desire to build a camper trailer.  It was a relentless pursuit, not unlike the great snowy owl obsession of 2014.  After that I sanded the boat.  After that I cleaned closets and organized our papers and started early (this is not like me), to work on taxes.  In between, I ran to my family. And of course there were always meals and the house and our other work.  So it’s not like I had nothing to do.  And meantime, I had questions.  Like, once you know something, like all the knobs and fiddles and fine tunings involved in taking pictures, and once you live in a place and take pictures of the same things over and over again for years, what is left to find?

I know about surfers in Hawaii who decided the waves were getting too big and that it was time to go to shore.  Even as they had made up their minds about it, they found that their bodies had decided to go in the opposite direction.  They found themselves paddling out to sea with all their might.  There wasn’t a reason.  They didn’t know anything that would make them do this, but they found it was not in their control.  And then they saw on the horizon, a dim line that clarified the closer it came, until it revealed itself as a monster wave, and two more came, even bigger than that.  They barely made it over the curling crests of those waves.  If they had been closer to shore they would have been killed in the impact zone.

I have always loved that story, because I think it’s about how we just know things sometimes, how it’s important to follow instinct.   Photography and writing have been very helpful to me that way – to go out to take pictures not knowing, or to start with a blank page and start to try to say something, like I’m doing right now, and watching the words slowly work themselves out onto the page, or even as an act of faith, when an instinct says it’s time to stop doing so much, to let things float, to wait. 

 

This is a picture, that with Lisa's permission I made out of the top edge of her beautiful picture. 

I talked with friends and family about it.  Everyone was patient and kind.  I finally wrote what I wouldn't write in public and read it to my cousin Liz, and we both cried, God bless her.  Then I talked to my friend Karen, who said the wisest things about how things morph and change and then she said that after many years of her own journey, she was taking up her painting again.  Then I talked to my friend Lisa who said she would like me to print for her, one of her river pictures.  I said, "I want you to have it really big.  I want you to know how that feels.  It will be good for your development."  And so I did that and in the process, I duplicated the edges of the image to make a canvas "gallery wrap".  That's where you make a mirror image so that you have something to roll around the stretcher bars.  I saw what happened when I did that and then I called Lisa, completely beside myself. 

I cropped and played with it all day, and printed it on three kinds of paper.  It made me happy in every possible way.  I knew what the river meant to Lisa and what it meant when she discovered the integrity of vision in her photography.  I was so happy to have something that was partly me and partly my friend, and to see it was like the thread of conversations with Lisa and with others, that have woven through many years when we have been helps and mirrors for each other.  I knew that this picture came in part out of nature, where it was just itself with nothing extra, and that part was contrived by yours truly, where I made patterns and meanings out of patterns, which is what people do.  I love this thing, what happens when people meet nature, when we take something given and make something human.  I love how that can happen in photography. 

I feel right now I’ve had my rest and that it’s time to start moving again.  I know the only way to know is to do it, to take myself outside again with my camera.  It’s time to take myself to all the same places, and maybe to some new places as well.  (I think that was what the camper trailer was about, which I didn’t build (yet), by the way).  I want to let my feet go where they want to go and to trust, because my feet have always wandered and blundered me into the most amazing places.

That’s been my way of picture taking, anyway, to go around, and follow what I find.  It’s trickier now that I know more about it, because it’s easy to go out with a recipe and do what I already know, and get I’ve already gotten a thousand times.  If I want to follow a formula I might as well stay home and finish our taxes.  And I know that wonder could be out there waiting.  And I would rather have that.

I don’t know what will happen but I know what I want to do now.  I want to put on some clothes that are very warm and very dry.  I want to go outside and remain in a place and let time go by.  I want Wilson and Molly to stay with me, and watch their noses lift together as they smell the wind.  I want to remember that that’s their way of knowing the world, like photography has been mine.  I want to be like them in the way they are so mesmerized, in the way that they give themselves to it and love it so much, in the way that for them, the wind is always new.  I want to see light inside the water, but I also want to look at the places in darkness where astounding colors come through.  I want to see patterns, and when I take my pictures home I want to play with them and see what might be hidden.  I want to tell myself that the connection is more important than the picture; that I just want to be out there in it.

This is the one  where I could see what was natural and what was human made.  I was happy because they were both so beautiful.

I want to print the same pictures over and over on all kinds of paper and see how big a difference little changes can make.  (And this is thanks to my friend Marybeth, who is wonderful photographer and a great lover of photographic paper.)  I want to go back through my thousands of pictures and see what I’ve forgotten. I have recently discovered that the size of a picture is very important.   Sometimes I want to make small pictures that are like icons, like words you can own and hold in your hands.  And sometimes I want them to be very big, so big for example, that when I spread one big canvas wave picture out on a bed, my little nephew joyfully tried to jump inside it.

I want to experiment because I know the power of sight to call directly to instinct.  I want to spend more time with each picture, learning what it has to tell me.  I want to go down and get closer to what I know is running underneath in nature, in my friends and in me; something yearning forward, rich and intimate, complex, unpredictable, perfect, unnamable, difficult, unbreakable, unstoppable and alive.

Here is a close up of the top right hand corner.




Falling Water

My friend's husband died unexpectedly, just a short time ago.  And yesterday, we travelled to see my other friend Lisa, and together we made a ceremony. Lisa, who led, was impeccable, just as I knew she would be.  And my friend put things into a fire - family photographs and a letter and tools for her husband's craft.  And she put a picture their daughter had painted into the fire.  And socks to keep his feet warm.  And his baseball cap - although she commented that in his current condition he might have more hair and not need it so much. And then she spoke to him about their lives together, about their children and grandchildren, about all the things he did well, and about everything she hoped for him now.  It was difficult for her to put her daughter’s painting into the fire and also difficult to put in the baseball cap because it smelled like him.  She said other things and I don’t want to say too much about the things that were just for her and her husband.  But I will tell you what I thought as she was speaking: “This is how you love someone.”

Then we walked down the hill and into the state park where there are many waterfalls.  And we went down and down to the bottom of all the waterfalls and then we had a ceremony for ourselves.  Each of us put something into the water and said our requests for our lives and the lives of those we love.  It didn’t take long.  I would be surprised if any of us spoke for more than a minute.  I think that was good.  We were so done with any need for sounding articulate or for trying to make something happen.  We were simple and honest and when that was accomplished, we didn’t need anything more. 

We went back this morning and I took pictures.  My friend took pictures also, and you might like to know that when she got off the trail a little bit, and got a little bit lost and deep in the woods, she found a baseball cap. 

The first picture I ever took was of a waterfall.  I took it up in Nova Scotia, during the summer between the third and fourth grade, with my father’s camera.  The water that was in that picture has got to be somewhere.  I know it’s still water.  I know it has gone around and around.  Maybe some little molecule was even in these pictures.  The things we put into the water yesterday have already passed from one river to another.  They may be in the Connecticut River already, or even in Long Island Sound.  

I watched how Lisa was with my friend and I tried to learn.  Because Lisa knows because she also lost a husband years ago.  We hoped for small things…whatever my friend wanted… a little rest or a change of scene or some nourishment for a journey that is going to take some time.  And meantime, we like to think of the smoke rising and the water falling, carrying our memories and wishes.  And the wind is blowing in all directions.  And the water itself is carried.

A Little Swim

Wilson and Molly in Great Salt Pond.  I have always liked their colors together with the golden grasses.

I have a waterproof housing for my camera and I've been working up my nerve to use it for several months.  The last time I used it, after all my careful tightening and testing, it leaked.  It doesn't take a lot of salt water to totally destroy a camera, which is what happened.  I sent the housing back to the guy who built it and he put in an improved gasket, but the problem is the little wing nuts that hold the housing together.  I don't trust them.  I think that's what happened...one of them got knocked last time.  The housing can't leak if it rides around in a dinghy next to a motor that vibrates all the screws loose, or if someone puts something on top of it, or if I get thrown by a wave.  It can't leak ever, no matter what happens. I need at least one fail safe and possibly another one after that.  So this is a work in progress. 

Meantime, it was such a beautiful evening.  The dogs were in the water and there were white egrets edging the pond.  The fall light was showing everything in gold and copper colors.  I waded into the water, mostly looking out toward the egrets but also being very careful where I put my feet.  I imagined how to fall.  I've read stories about photographers who fell into the water on their backs, their heads submerged, but their arms up, their camera held high above the water.  That was the plan. 

Here are three egrets at the edge of Great Salt Pond.  See the Great Blue Heron?  He's a newcomer I think.  I haven't seen him all summer.  Blue Heron are exactly the same birds as the Egrets, except for their color. 

It was a cool evening with beautiful warm light.  The birds, who can wait patiently fishing for hours, eventually flew, and I followed one, turning as he turned and I got his wings open against the sky.

It's an aspiration of mine... to get the perfect picture of almost nothing but coppery, smooth, atmospheric light.  I love Egrets and Heron in any case, their great elegance, their primordial ways.  You know birds are from dinosaur days, correct?  So maybe if there was a sky like this and a bird like this, this could have been back in the day.  I mean, actually back in the day.

And then we went swimming.  I love to swim and Wilson and Molly love to swim with me.  Sometimes we swim side by side, three dogs in the pond, and sometimes they go to shore and tussle while I'm swimming.  This is the perfect time to do this.  No people to bother on the beaches while the dogs run around.  No birds nesting.  But the water is getting colder.  I have all these little tricks for measuring how how cold it's getting day by day.  It's one thing to get into the water.  It's another to stay.  There comes a day when I don't get used to it, when it just stays cold the whole time.  That was yesterday.   

I love all the things that can only be seen from down inside the water - and I want to show you.  I've been planning how I was going to do this for months, but the limiting factor is that housing.  Maybe I can solve it before the water gets too cold to get in.  We'll see.  I might have another few weeks.  For now I have to be content to get as close as possible.

Sometimes, just at sunset, the wind dies and Great Salt Pond becomes as still as glass.  This was after I finished swimming.  I was still wet, carrying my fins and snorkel and other gear back to the car, with my dogs jumping around me.  I had to shoot quickly, as the light was changing very fast.  I was gingerly balancing the camera, holding it away from me to keep it from getting sandy and salty.  I liked the patterns made by the sand with the outgoing tide, and I also like the touches of smooth light.   I had the telephoto on the camera when I really could have used the wide angle lens.  I didn't have time to do anything about it and had to improvise.  This is actually six pictures stitched together in Photoshop. 




Seasonal Migration

Very early morning, Quinebaug Valley Trout Hatchery, Central Village, CT.

So I realize I’ve been invisible lately and I wanted to catch up and tell you about it.  We’ve been back in the house for just over a month and I’ve been going though a bout of weirdness.  I mean, it’s good, but there is a process to moving back in, and it surprises me every year.  It’s not like we’re moving back home.   It’s more like we’re moving in to a place that hasn’t been home all summer and now we’re making it home again.  It takes a while. There are questions under the surface, the answers being acted out as I slowly put my cupboards and drawers in order.  How are things different this year?  What have I learned?  What is important this time?

We are not the first people to live a life entirely measured and changed with the seasons.  This is one thing I like about it.  It’s an old way, marked by big transitions.  It creates many seasonal chances to choose and recreate a life.

Take photography, for example.  If this year is like other years, putting a camera around my neck will soon will be as automatic as picking up my car keys.  But in summer it’s different.  It’s difficult to be out with all the people and the equipment and two dogs.  Inertia carries me for a while, and then I just stop.  And then I can forget that I ever took pictures.

Light is everything in photography, as you know.

I went out the other day.  It was interesting to watch myself unpack the process, especially to watch the progressive removal of the obstacles I had constructed for myself.  I gathered my equipment, convinced that it would be hard to get all the lenses and batteries and memory cards together.  But it wasn’t hard. 

Then I went out to the fish hatchery where I didn’t even want to go.  I was sure that I had seen everything already, like heron.  I thought, “Big deal.  I’ve seen them hundreds of times.”  But I began to notice the light.  You know, it was a beautiful morning.  

See the blue heron in the fog?  That's a shot I didn't expect.

Dawning light in fog through the grasses.

I didn’t want to bring different lenses because I didn’t want to carry my backpack, but I did carry my backpack.  I didn’t want to change the lenses back and forth because that is such a pain.  I said, “It won’t make that much difference.”  But I did change them back and forth and it did make a difference.


This is what a close up lens will do for you.

And when I saw the seagulls dashing around, I initially dismissed them.  I said, “I’ve taken so many seagull pictures that I can’t imagine getting new ones.” But then the light played on their wings.   And the contrast with the dark forest made the white in their feathers shine so fine, and the gulls were feeding…wheeling and turning, their feathers splayed to show what I always hoped to show in feathers, everything wild and akimbo and spreading and flashing, and at the same time, so ordered and skillful, so effortless and perfect.

If you look closely at the seagulls in the water, you'll see that the one on the right has a fish in it's mouth.  All the other gulls immediately knew and are converging on that spot.

The commitment to the dive.

I thought I had seen it all with seagulls but I got to see something new.  And it was good enough when I was out there taking the pictures, but this is the thing about photography.  I got to take them home with me.  I got to see them, really see them, see like people could never see before they had cameras, see the moment the seagull turns, or drops the fish, see the whirling motions stopped forever.  See the gulls, see the look in their eyes, see their bodies dropping through the laser path cut with their eyes, see them enter the water and come up with a fish, see the water splashing, the fish twisting and dying, the light dancing.

When you do this for a while, it changes what you think about.  It changes what you dwell in. It changes what you know.  It changes how you feel about everything.

Two gulls, one with a fish.

He dropped it.

Last night, we sat on the floor with our grandson who will soon be one year old.  He and his father fed the cat.  I had forgotten how tricky it is to get kibble into a scoop and drop some of it onto the floor, then to carefully pick up the little bits, to have them stick to your fingers, inspect each one, and get them into a dish.  I am so glad our son loves to be with Julian through all the time it takes to do this… that he never gets tired of being with Julian, seeing through Julian’s eyes.

This is what photography is for…to see like Kevin does with Julian…to have the wonder of seeing again.

Sometimes morning light is silver like this.

My sister’s husband Paul is at his home with hospice care right now because of throat cancer.  A few nights ago, he went out naked to see the stars.  He didn’t care that he was naked.  He didn’t even care that it was a cloudy night.  He knew it was his life and he wanted the fullness of his moment outside and under the sky.  This is also what photography is for.

Digital cameras can perform certain actions to reduce the size of the file, turning them into “.jpegs”.  (This process reduces the file to 1/10th of its original size.  It stands for “joint photographic experts group”.)  But many cameras can also shoot “.raw”.  Pictures taken this way are not compressed. No decisions have been automatically made about what’s important.  Nothing has been filtered or removed.  The files are large and unwieldy, but everything is there.  

I think this is a good aspiration as I reconstruct my photographer self for this season.  I would like to be raw…to be more transparent to the process, to forget what I think I’ve done before, to have fewer opinions, to make fewer snap decisions, to let more in.

I realized last night about Julian.  He was all about feeding the cat.  But he couldn’t see what we saw, that it was not about the cat at all, but about him, and what he is becoming through all the busy things in his day.  And of course Bill and I see something else, how Kevin and Royah are working so hard, loving Julian every second.  And how that love is getting into them, shaping their lives, forming them.    

This is detail from the picture above.

I do put up my own obstacles but every time, every single time I move around them, every time I inconvenience myself or believe my way past some doubt or objection, or every time I just keep moving, just keep putting one foot in front of the other, even if I don’t think it will work, it moves me by degrees.  I know there are life circumstances to contend with, the way things are, and I often don’t know where things are going.  Sometimes I know the next step I can take, but I don’t know the one that comes after. But I find that life is always there to meet me, returning every effort I make with something of its own.  I think when I open up it’s a small thing, but when life opens up, I mean, when the whole thing opens up, then it’s really something.  It’s so big.  It gives a hundred or a thousand or a million times over.  And then whatever defense, whatever protection I think I need, whatever I think I’m not good enough to hope for, whatever is left of the wall around my heart, starts to soften because the world is so beautiful.   So I think I’ll work with that a little bit more.



And very beautiful seagulls in flight.

Done and Done

So I had the opening of my show on Saturday and I want to give you a full report.

First, I thought you might like to see the pictures on the walls at the Spring Street Gallery.

Looking into the show space.

Right wall.

I said before that I would feel happy and grateful when I got the pictures all done but that was not exactly the case. 

As the opening got closer, it was more like I felt stretched and strained.  Because we were still not living in the house, I made up a policy at the last minute that there would be no food at the opening that had to be chopped or cooked or prepared in any way. So there was a strong emphasis on grapes and crackers and cheese and wine, which turned out to be just fine. 

Gallery members rushed forward to help, bringing flowers, music and lemonade, arranging platters of food, serving wine, cleaning up and so on.  I wanted to kiss every one of them.   Friends called or wrote to send good wishes.  My sister Cathy and her children came.  Bill came.  Many friends came.  We had a nice party.  It was over by 7, which was great because that is a very good bedtime on Block Island.

Left wall.

The next morning we moved back into the house.  My friend Gabby, who manages our “turn-over” cleaning, brought two big guys and we moved all our stuff around.  By noon, bedrooms were turned into offices and all of our boxes were at least in the right locations.  I had carefully taken all the clothes out of the drawers in the spring and put them away, all organized in special boxes.  I had forgotten I had done that.  I was surprised and pleased with myself.

I’m beginning to feel like one of those toys you can buy where sponges are compressed into tiny packages…then you put them in water and they slowly expand and turn into animals or alphabet shapes or something.  I'm like that right now… slowly decompressing….

I’m working in the Gallery every morning this week on account of my show.  The most interesting people have come in.  I have very much enjoyed our conversations.   I realize that I am slowly feeling the gratitude that I expected I would eventually feel, because every day I get to gaze at my pictures and they are all together and look so finished and gallery-esque.  And finally now, I have a chance to dwell on each picture and remember all those moments when I took them.   I like all of the pictures in my show and I love some of them.   I love them so much that they feed me every time I see them, and that is a lucky thing.

 

The Heart of a Place

This picture is from Block Island.  It's called "The Sun Drawing Water".

So I’ve been feverishly working on my show for several weeks and I wanted to tell you about it.   (The show by the way, is this coming Saturday, from 5 - 7, at the Spring Street Gallery on Block Island.)

I went through my pictures for the year.  I picked out a little over a hundred pictures, and then I studied them every which way.  I culled through the pictures and then culled them again, favoring the ones I liked the most and the ones I hoped others would like.  I also imposed upon the good graces of family and friends to give me their opinions.  I kept casting around for a concept… a story to tell that would make the selection of pictures make sense.  That was tricky because I liked so many pictures from so many different places.

OK, well there are waves from Block Island.  What a surprise.  But have also have many others.  I should tell you that I actually desaturated this picture from what you saw before, taking it half way to black and white.  While the actual colors at sunset were more vibrant, I liked the softer colors.

I finally got down to a few dozen pictures.  I printed some small ones to see how the colors on the screen would work out on actual paper.  I made adjustments.  Then, I started to think about sizes.  I liked some when they were nice and small… only six inches square, and some got bigger and bigger and until I had a few that were almost four feet tall.

This is one of the small ones, only six inches square.  It's hard to give you a sense of scale, here in the blog, because some pictures change completely if you change their size.  I'm doing this one, both on paper, matted and framed, and on wood in encaustic wax.

Here's another Block Island wave picture, taken the same evening as the one with the big rock above.  The real colors were in melon oranges and greens but the black and white was my favorite.

I printed them and then there were the inevitable reprints.  I was framing one large picture, leaning over a 19” by 29” image, and a drop of my sweat fell on the picture.  Another one was entirely about a large span of perfect calm water, glowing through the fog.  After I printed it, I found a few tiny dots from sensor dust.  There was another long picture, with rocks going back into the distance.  It posed a classic photography problem because a camera “sees” in a narrower “dynamic range”, or span from light to dark, than a person sees.  So the bright water and the dark rocks stood in more contrast to each other than was actually so on that day. I lightened the rocks to be closer to what I remembered.  Then, I thought they were too light and so I went back and reprinted the original file.  But then they were too dark and I went back and lightened some of the rocks.  Then I changed my mind and went back to the one I printed the first time.

This is the one from Nova Scotia where I kept fooling around with the color of the rocks.  What happens is you see it on the screen when it's back lit and then when you print on mat paper it's darker.  So you have to account for that.  The folks at Pro Digital Gear (see below) are suggesting I buy a calibrated monitor, where what I see here on the screen would be much closer to the actual print.  I'm tempted.  It would save a lot of time.

I made this one really big, and as you can see, if there is the tiniest little spot in all that expanse of flat calm water there is no place to hide.  I had to reprint it.  This is also from Nova Scotia.

Now it was time to give them names.  Sometimes an excellent name pops into my head, and sometimes not so much.  Edie named the first picture in this blog, “The Sun Drawing Water” because that’s what her father used to say when rays of sun came through the clouds, presumably sipping water from the ocean.  I named the one with all the stones “Long Walk” because that’s when my 85-year old mother got a much longer outing than we planned on the tippy shores of Nova Scotia.  At other times, I fell back as usual onto the simplest, most functional names.  It’s like when I was a kid and the six of us children could not agree on a name for our cat.  So we finally named her “Cat”.  So I have names like that:  “Egret 1, 2, and 3”.  And “Blue Heron 1 and 2”.

There were also moments of synchronicity.  For example, I’m doing a new thing this year because of my friends Karen and Robin, called “encaustic wax”.  You prepare a wooden base and then glue on a picture using special stuff and then you paint it with bees wax mixed with resin and then you take a heat gun and you melt some of it off.  I asked my friend Larry to make the wooden bases for me.  I went to see him in Moosup, bringing the intended pictures, so there would not be any mistake.  We took an hour one morning and measured very carefully together. 

Now, Larry’s work is perfect.  I’ve never known him to measure anything incorrectly. But he made the wooden bases and I went and picked them up in Moosup and I could see that they were too tall.  I decided to save them for another time.  Then I thought of a pair of pictures I had worked on.  I was attached to them because they were from the morning of the anniversary of my father’s death but they were an odd size and I had put them aside.  I didn’t want to do them.  I argued with myself.  I had enough pictures.  I had never done anything that big in wax.  I didn’t have the time and isn’t that why I drive myself so crazy anyway, trying to do too much in too many directions?  Wasn’t it better to simplify?  That would be my new motto…to simplify, especially when I’m living like a nomad in the summer… That was the secret… the key to everything…to live an orderly, serene, intentional life.  But I couldn’t get those pictures out of my head.  I finally said, “Oh fine.  If the pictures are the right size I’ll do it.”  And they were.  They were 23 ¾ inches wide and 43 ¾ inches tall.  When things slot in like that, who am I to object?  So I’m not making any promises but I’m going to work on them.

This will be a super big one in the encaustic wax.  There is another one to go with it, taken at the same time.  As I said, I've never done this size before, but if it works, they'll both be in my show.  Waterfront 1 and 2.

Pretty soon, I’ll see the final pictures, all matted and framed or covered in wax and done.  As my niece Elisabeth (who helped me, by the way, with matting) would say, “Done and done.”  That’s when I will feel lucky and grateful. 

Because everyone has his or her own way of seeing and choosing what to see.  And not it's just people who do so.  In my whole year of pictures, there were Wilson and Molly, and birds and turtles and deer and insects and many other creatures and they were all out there seeing exactly what they needed to see, in exactly the way they needed to see it, for their own particular purpose.  Every landscape, every crashing wave, every still, calm pond, every span of stones sweeping into the distance, was holding a world of creatures, alive and breathing and watching.  And there I was with my little camera in one particular spot and I got to see it in my way also.

It is something to review your life as represented in a year of pictures.  And then to choose and choose, progressively narrowing down to the ones that seem most beautiful or significant.  And then to have them in front of you, and then to put them up on a wall. 

You feel exposed at first when people come into the Gallery and start looking, but sometimes you get to know a person in the connection that is made around a picture, and you know her in a way that is beyond the ways that people often get to know each other.  And because people are normally kind and because you get stronger, you become willing to take more risks in your pictures and more willing to stand up and let yourself show what matters to you and in that way, you get to be more of who you are.

Our house is still rented, and will be until the day after the opening for the show.  With moving around so much and with my congenitally short attention span, there is major coordination going on all the time just to know where my toothbrush might be.  (It is missing at the moment.) That means I’m tired.  That means that putting a show together, with mats and frames and papers and printing and all the associated stuff, not to mention the food for the show, not to mention figuring out what I’m going to wear when I’ve worn the same thing every day for three months, is going to be interesting.  But things are moving along.  It will all get done.  It’s getting done now. 

I hope when you read this you don’t get overtaken with all the complications.  I mean, they are there. I just have to get through them.  And if I didn’t have this pressure, this show to put on, I would never have pushed it the way I am pushing, I would never have begun to find out what is possible.  In the end it’s wonderful.  It’s my life, affirmed in all these pictures, lived and seen and remembered and shared.

This is one of three egrets, creatively named Egret 1, 2, and 3.   They are little 6" pictures, on paper, matted and framed.

Now I’m standing back and looking at all my pictures for the show, which are arrayed because of boundless generosity and kindness, along the walls of a bedroom at our friends’ Paula and Greg’s (and Ricki and Alex and Max's) house.  There are the ones you've seen in this blog and then if the encaustic goes well, 17 more.

Why did I pick these particular pictures?  I was always looking for light… light on or through the water… special light breaking through the fog… the last light of the day or the first light of morning.  I am struck by how much is always happening everywhere… light dancing, wind blowing, waves crashing, plants growing or going to seed, birds flying.  The pictures remind me of what was happening on the day of each picture, of what those places mean.  They reflect what I hope is close to the heart or spirit of these places, at least to my eyes.   

So that will be the name of my show, The Heart of a Place.  That’s whether it’s Block Island or Moosup or Nova Scotia or anywhere, there is always a heart to be found by paying close attention. 

This wave is from Block Island again, and it's similar to some of my others.  I like it because it looks a little smokey.  I called it Salt and Smoke.

 

PS.  For those of you who are photographers, I want to tell you about some colleagues who have also become friends through the years.  I go to the folks at Pro Digital Gear in Salem, CT. for my cameras and lenses and papers and printers and inks.  They are the people who cheerfully helped me when I spilled a can of soda on my camera or when I have to do a repair on my giant printer myself rather than bringing someone over from the mainland.  I also went there just last week because I have another big project and they were very generous with their time and expertise.  John Fast, one of their experts, is having a photography show this coming Friday.  Here is info about his show at the Artist's Cooperative Gallery of Westerly, RI. And here is Pro Digital Gear's website.  Best prices anywhere.  These folks are professional and good to every single person who calls them on the phone.

And also Stu-Art Supplies.  They cut my mats and provide me with the parts to do all my framing.  They have beautiful, thick, museum quality materials and Nielsen frames.  If there is the slightest question or problem they help immediately, even if I am stammering my way through an order on the phone, calling at the last minute. getting dyslexically confused between mat outside sizes and inside sizes and frame heights and widths and so on.  They are wonderful people also.  Here is their site.    And here is their blog.

You've seen this picture before if you've been following this blog.  It's a great old tree from Amy and Stan's farm.  It's one of the pictures I still have to frame and I haven't named it yet.  Or maybe it will be Great Old Tree.  In any case, it's in the show even though it's different from the others because I love it so much.






Malcolm Greenaway

Looking up in the tower of Southeast Light.  Taken by Malcolm Greenaway with a "fish eye" lens.  I love this photo and I highly recommend that you go to his Gallery on Water Street (right near the theater) to see it because it's pretty good here but it is incredible in person.

I want to tell you about a good thing.  Malcolm Greenaway wrote an article for the Block Island Summer Times, demonstrating the use of a “fish eye” lens.  He took some pictures of the interior of the Southeast Light and put them in the article.  And he also, by way of illustration, took a picture of the interior of the Spring Street Gallery. 

Malcolm could have taken a picture of his own gallery, but he took a picture of ours and put that in the article.  Malcolm was looking for a room with ceiling beams so that he could show how the fish eye lens bent them toward a circle, and that was foremost in his mind.  But it also shows a generosity of spirit that comes out in other ways.  He and his wife Nancy come to most of our shows and openings and often support the work of new artists.  Malcolm sends me articles and links that he thinks will helpful.  He shows me his equipment and tells me how he does things.  He calls and tells me when he’s seen a good bird, a snowy owl in particular.

Here is the interior of the Spring Street Gallery.  My work can be seen in miniature, around the front door, but what you can really see is the rug.  That's my rug.  And, just to give you an idea of how a fish eye lens works, that odd little shape at the bottom of the picture is the bottom of Malcolm's legs and the top of his feet. 

I can tell you, because his workshop is up above our Gallery, how hard he works all the time.  His attention to every step of the process is amazing.  I would have to say that if there is a picture in his Gallery, you can know that to the best of his or anyone’s human ability, it is absolutely perfect.

I love many things about photography but one of the things I love the most is my circle of photography friends.  They are serious about photography, crazy about it in fact, and all quite gifted in what they do.  And everybody’s work is so different.  It is fascinating actually, to observe all the ways of seeing the world as demonstrated through their eyes.

You can find Malcolm’s article in the most recent Block Island Summer Times.  You can check out Malcolm’s website here: malcolmgreenaway.com/gallery.html .

His pictures of the Southeast Light and of course, many others are available at his Gallery on Water Street, right near the Theater, here on Block Island. 

Here is Malcolm's picture of the tower at the Southeast Light, looking down.

 

PS.  I’m back on the island and all is well.  I’m starting to work through all my pictures from the year because my show will be coming up in September.  It's been raining but it's beautiful again today.   There is a tropical storm coming up the coast so maybe there will be waves.  

Have a good week, everyone.

Sunflowers

Sunflowers track the sun only when they are in the bud stage.  (This is an example of heliotropism, aka, science.)  When they turn into flowers, they face east, in this case away from the evening sun.  This may protect  their delicate petals from too much sun exposure.

I’ve been in Moosup, which has been pretty light duty, really.  Nick can do stairs and take care of many things himself, and my mom has been scheduling the pills and nurses, so my part has been to keep Mom and Nick company and to buy groceries with an emphasis on salt-free items as well as fruits and vegetables.  Today, for the first time, Nick will be up for an expedition and so we’ll go for a drive.

Yesterday, I went 15 miles from Moosup to Buttonwood Farms in Griswold, CT, to take pictures in a field of sunflowers.  Like the hatchery, I expected to have it to myself.  So I was quite surprised to see a whole thing happening.  Scores of cars lining the roads, a hundred people, long lines to buy ice-cream, a farmer pulling a train of little carts, painted to look like black and white cows, completely filled with children, another ride for grown-ups where the farmer stopped at intervals to expound I assume, on interesting facts about sunflowers.

I thought, “Where did you people come from?  I’ve never seen you outdoors for any reason.  Why aren’t you home playing video games?”  But there were so many people.  There were many professional photographers, or at least people with very expensive cameras.  There were also people from China. You don’t see that every day in Griswold. 

It was a beautiful evening.  Great cumulus clouds had been building all day, so much that I was sure there would be a storm, but the clouds began to dissipate as the air cooled toward the evening, and the light was unexpectedly breaking through.

I took my pictures and then sat on a hill, facing the sun and waiting.  This was new… so much of my time in nature is spent alone, or rather, with Wilson and Molly.  But here I was with many people, all of them strangers, and we were all there and instinctively happy together, to see the big sky and the clouds and the setting sun and the light splayed across the fields, dimming and deepening. 

 

Here are sunflowers in the few moments before the last light.

Here is the farmhouse across the street, with reflected light from the setting sun.  The farm house is actually cream colored.  You can see the light is very red.

I drove back to my families’ house along dark winding roads and saw a line of little animals.  I thought they were ducks, but as I drew closer, I saw that they were baby skunks.  They were completely destabilized by my arrival.  Two went across the road.  Two more started to follow, but changed their minds and scurried in the opposite direction, then they changed their minds, then changed them again.  Then they walked along the side of the road for about 10 feet.  Then they went back into the road again.  Then one changed his mind and in turning, bumped into the other and then they circled around in a panic, and then they finally made it.  Phew.

I stopped for groceries and decided to buy a six-pack of beer.  The clerk carded me.  I said, “Really?”  She gave me that look that only a sixteen-year old can give.  I said, “Thank you very much.  I haven’t been carded in thirty years.”  I thought, “I’m old enough to be your mother.  I’m probably old enough to be your mother’s mother.”  But I gave her my driver’s license and somehow she determined, my apparent perpetual youth notwithstanding, that I was over 21.

Quite an interesting day…and one more thing.  When all schedules and plans have been disrupted by sudden illness, when I’m busy taking care, it’s good to have my photography.  It's something to return to, something that’s mine.  It helps to bring me back to the will for what I do for anyone, and to the nourishment for my life.

I wanted to crop this to just the flower, but my sister Amy said not to do it.

Science

This is an osprey observing me through her feathers,  and me observing her, upon my return to Block Island.

My niece has a friend, a scientist, and I suggested she show him my blog.  She said, “I don’t think so.  Not just yet.”  She tried to be kind.  “Your blog is…not very scientific.”  My niece thought it might be better to introduce him to me slowly, so he doesn’t run away.  I think this is wise, but not because of science.

I hope you will forgive this little digression into my father's pictures from the Peribonka trip because the story I am about to tell is a little about science and a little about my family and who we are and who we were and especially about my brother Nick and the people who took care of him at the hospital.  It's also about science and love put together, as you'll see. 

This is me in the yellow shirt, then clockwise to my sisters, Amy, Cathy and Mary.  Mary was the only one to notice my brother Nick sneaking up behind.  This is taken at our base camp.

My brother George...remember I said the pike were as big as he was?  Well, I guess that memory is myth as much as anything, especially when it comes to fishing.

But I did remember the driftwood correctly! 

This is my father, having a wonderful time. 

My mother, not so much.

My father took this picture, loving what I love about photography.

One of the wonderful things about photography is that it has many points of entry.  If science is your thing, you can enter there.  Or if you’re into soul or feeling or memories, you can enter that way also.  You can do each thing or all of them together.   In my case, I take pictures the way I cook.  I actually do know things, scientific things, despite what certain people think, but I lead with what I like.  I taste the soup.  Does it need little more salt, a little more depth of field?

I’ve been thinking about this all week, how science and feeling, technology and insight work together, especially in the context of what’s been going on…my brother’s open-heart surgery.  I asked my husband about it.  I said, “How would you want a surgeon to feel when he was touching your heart?”  He said, I would want him to be detached and objective.  I would not want him to be all dreamy with reverence for my human life.  I would want him to do his job.”  So there you are. 

But this same surgeon, this knowledge guy, this procedures guy, this science guy, was in my brother’s room when my mother called.  He answered the phone by laughing and saying, “Nick Bochain’s administrative assistant!”  And he had obviously taken the time to learn about my brother.   “You are going to have your operation and have a normal life.  That’s why we do it.  It’s just like your father.  He had this same operation and then he lived another thirty years.” 

He didn’t have to say that.  I mean, it wasn’t rocket science to get to know my brother and our family and our families’ history and to use that to address my brother’s concerns.  But what a concept, especially today, when doctors often have less time with a patient than the guy in Bangalore has when he talks to you about your phone bill. The doctor had to make a decision to do this.  All of the people who worked with my brother had to make the same decision.  And they did.   They knew him.  I found that extraordinary.  It made all the difference in the world.

Hartford Hospital has a wonderful reputation for cardiac care.  They didn’t cut corners on their professional standards in order to be kind to my brother.  They accomplished all things, not just the doctors, but the nurses, the nurse practitioners, and the other specialists and the people who brought dinner, as well as the people in the gift shop.  They did it with such seamlessness that I have to believe that someone is setting the tone for this, that this is how they function, that they do this all the time.  The way things are, I think this might take as much skillful intention as the surgery.

I think when you know something, when you’ve known it for a while, it sort of gets into your system.  Then you can really do something, because you can use your knowledge as a whole person.  That’s the way a microbiologist can know her microbes; a doctor, her patients; a physicist, her theories; a photographer, her pictures; a mother, her child; a cook, her soup.  You can fit things together.  You can wake up in the morning with a new idea.  You can say, “The numbers looked good, but something told me to run another test”.   You can make a giant leap to a totally new and totally true surprise.  You could possibly save someone’s life, or change the way someone sees the world or give hope or comfort to a person or to a whole family.

You might like to know that my brother got a clean bill on his heart less than six months ago.  His EKG was good.  Now I’ll tell you something I really didn’t know.  An EKG will look perfect if all your arteries are equally blocked, as they were in my brother’s case.  (70 – 80% across the board.  He had six bypasses.)  I can easily imagine a scenario where my brother might have said, “The test said my heart was fine.  It must be indigestion.”  I can easily imagine saying that myself.   The point is that true numbers lie, true science fails, if detached from human purpose and complexity and history and context. 

Goro Yoshida travelled from Japan to Germany in the early 1930’s.  Germany was widely acknowledged at that time as having the world’s finest precision machinery industry and the resulting new cameras, the Leica II and Contax I, were the best 35 mm focal-plane shutter cameras that had ever come to market.  Yoshida-san decided that instead of buying a German camera for what would have been six month’s salary, he could make one himself, and beyond that, he decided there was enough technical skill in Japan to produce more cameras.  He used technology that was then being broadly applied in the military buildup before the war.  Do you know what he named his first camera, at that critical moment, at that turning point in Japan?  Kwanon, after the Buddhist goddess of compassion.  Kwanon or Kannon observes the cries of the world; she can’t rest while there is suffering.  Her compassion helps bring peace into the world.  

After the war, Kannon became Canon and that became the company.  I like to think that Yoshida-san was expressing a courageous point, or at least a hope for a life-giving use of technology.  I know that the thousand reaching arms of Kannon have now become the many million eyes of photographers, who continue to observe and record the myriad beauties and sufferings in the world.  Technology and compassion together.  Paying close attention.  Keeping eyes open.  Showing people what is happening.  Showing them so their hearts and minds can know and respond.  Good science. 

My father went to Japan for R+R during the Korean War.  There, he bought his camera.  He took many pictures of the war, and I'm in the process of scanning them.  There are pictures of tanks and camps and night time strafing.  There are also pictures of things he loved.  Trees and mountains and birds in flight.


PS.  My brother is doing well.  My sincere thanks to all who sent or felt good wishes.  I send you gratitude and happiness.  Thank you, science.  Thank you, people with knowledge, skill, compassion and laughter.  Thank you for your good minds and hearts and words and hands.  Thank you, Hartford Hospital.

This is the same osprey as before, circling her nest, watching me every minute.  My shutter speed was 1/500th of a second.  My aperture was f/9.  My ISO was 500.  My focal length was 400 mm.  This is an example of science.  I know the bird doesn't like me and wants me to go away.  This is an example of insight.




Brother Nick

The summer after 5th grade during my father’s two-week plant shutdown we loaded up the VW bus with fishing gear and cooking stuff and a big tent and army surplus sleeping bags made out of olive-green wool.  We put a canoe on top of the car and drove far north, to Quebec, up near Hudson Bay.  Then we drove three hundred miles on a dirt road to a hydroelectric dam on the Peribonka River.  Then Burt Bouget loaded us onto his boat and we went another 12 miles on Lac Peribonka.  Then we carried our stuff, hopping from tree trunk to tree trunk because 50 feet of driftwood lined the lake, many feet deep, entire trees, tangled and jammed together, the result of all that land being flooded by the dam.  And then we set up camp.  (We all had compasses and whistles and topographical maps and we knew how to use them.  The ground was covered with moss and lichen and tiny wild blueberries.)  Then my brother Nick and I cut a trail for another mile to another lake and then we portaged our canoe and then we went fishing for Pike that were almost as tall as my brother George, who was seven at the time.  We also found another fish that the Indians called “Wannanish”.  These were smaller, “Wall-Eyed” Pike.

This was Dad’s idea of the best time, to have his little platoon, to have us all organized and zooming around.  I loved it also.  (He also loved it when we sang, which we often did when we were driving, which was much better from his point of view, than fighting, which is what six kids also love to do on a long ride. I sang for 1000 miles straight to keep my Dad awake while he drove all night to get home from this trip.  He might have preferred the fighting.  That’s a lot of “I’m Henry the 8th I Am.”)

But in any case, back at the lake, my mother threatened divorce when my sister Cathy, who was five at the time, developed a fever from so many mosquito bites.  So we broke camp and went to an Indian Reservation where Dad had friends and we stayed at their house and then we went fishing again, for more Wannanish.

I say all of this so you’ll know I grew up liking the forest or water of any kind.  This was where all the good stuff happened.  Anything fun, anything interesting or exciting, it all happened there.  Whenever I went to the big city, like for example, Danielson, CT. (pop. 4000), where we would go to Fisher’s Big Wheel, I would feel sorry for all the people because in such a big city they had nothing to do. 

One time Nick and I decided to go exploring.  We were still young children. He kept saying, “Follow me and you won’t get lost.”  And we went happily though fields and forests through Moosup and Wauregan and winding up actually, in Danielson, where we found Mr. Gebo’s house and he called our parents. 

And on the eve of the Gulf War when my brother George was in the third tank to go in and face the “Republican Guard”, my father put on his flight suit and got out his coffee mug from the Korean War and parked himself in front of the TV.  He watched CNN and never left his chair until the danger was over.  Meantime, Nick and I went miles through the forest, walking through the night for many hours, walking and walking, burning through all our fears and worries about George.  

Nick had a heart attack early this week.  I came off to the mainland and we’ve been going to Hartford Hospital with our mother every day.  We’re about an hour away.  We’re living that hospital life… not at all like it was with my father because that went on for five years.  But it made us remember the way it was back then, when we forgot how life could be without medical stuff going on. I’m not taking pictures right now, but I thought I would show you at least one good picture from a forest.  This is where I go in need.  I go to the woods or to the water. 

My brother was scheduled for triple by-pass surgery today but it’s been put off until Monday.  My 85-year old mom is tired, so I’ll go alone to see him tomorrow and again on Saturday and then my sister Amy will take Sunday.  And Amy and Mom will take Monday and Tuesday while I go back to the Island and then I’ll come back on Wednesday and maybe he’ll come home on Thursday or Friday.

Everybody says Hartford Hospital has a great cardiac unit and I believe it.  I love the way they’ve been treating my brother.  I love it that they all know everything about him and are doing all the right things in a coordinated way.  I love it that they are explaining everything, first to my brother and then to us.  I love it that they apologized when they had to change the day of the surgery because my brother’s blood was still too thin from other procedures.  I love it that a beautiful nurse comes in and says, “How’s my man?” 

They say that people are like islands, connected underneath.  And this exactly how I feel about my brother. So many people are thinking about us, praying and wishing for good things.  I feel that this is a major point in everything, to find out we are not alone, to be human beings together, caring about what happens. 

My brother will be well.


 

 

Morning Light

Taken from Crescent Beach at about 6 AM.  The sun is up so early at this time of year!  See the tiny black spots up in the cloud?  Those are little birds whizzing by.

I’ve been on a quest to find the perfect light in the morning.  There is simple pure light when the sun is rising on a clear day but the best thing is when there is fog.  I wanted to see the fog burning off and the light coming through.  I wanted to be on the water already when the sun was rising, so I aimed for getting up at 4:30.  When the morning came however, I talked myself out of it.  So I didn’t make it down to the beach at 5, but at 6.  The sun had already risen and if there had been fog on the water it had already burned off.  So I got this shot up above, very nice, but I was disappointed in myself for not getting down just a little bit sooner.

I saw that fog was still blowing in from the west so I went to that side of the island.  Here are shots of the green and the mist, and especially in this shot, you can see the misty “Ireland” side of the island. 

This is in the southwest part of the island, looking toward Rodman's Hollow.

This was taken in Rodman's Hollow.  Do you see that bright edge by the farthest bluffs?  That’s looking north… that’s where I was when I took the first picture.  You can see it’s bright over there.

I did get out the next day, early like I wanted, and I got all the fog I could possibly use.

This is Mansion Beach, looking south into the fog.

There was just one woman walking on the beach.  Cool and misty and wonderful at this time of day. 

The sun began to show itself.  I was hoping the light would break through and it did.

Here is the sun, just breaking through.  See the lace in the water?

And here it is a little later... the sun was soft on the water.

The sun only lasted for a minute and then the fog socked in again.  I waited, hoping for another chance with this beautiful light.   I waited through fleas that woke up and bit me for about half an hour, disappearing as suddenly as they came.  I went in for a swim but abandoned that plan when I felt the strength of the current around my legs.  (I have learned to be careful.  Mansion Beach is a wonderful place to take pictures and a wonderful place to swim, but the tide makes a current that runs north along this shoreline.  When it hits the point that you see in the distance in this picture, it curves out into the ocean.  If you can feel the current running against your legs, you do not want to be in this water, believe me.) 

So I left and went farther south to the Town Beach for my swim with the dogs.  I continued to look toward Mansion however, telling myself to let go because I already had my good pictures.  But I think if the fog had begun to lift, I would have run right back again.

The fog thickened and deepened.   It was like that all day.  There is a hurricane coming up the coast… you already know that… Hurricane Arthur… we’ll get the edge of it tonight.  So the weather has turned wet, starting with fog all day yesterday and rain on and off today.  Then it will rain all night and possibly clear by morning. 

Tomorrow will be beautiful.  There might be big waves… we’ll see.  Even after the waves have calmed you can still feel the agitation in the water.  It’s like the water remembers for a little while.  (There will certainly be strong currents.)

We’ve had the most perfect weather up until now.  It was good to have this day for resting.  After our morning walk and pictures, the dogs have been sleeping all day.  I’ve been working on the blog.  It’s good to feel the plants are finally getting all the rain they need.