through the lens, both metaphoric and physical, grief has transformed how i look at things, and what i look at.  no longer asking myself if something looks pretty or interesting, i wonder simply which element has made me feel – feel like looking further, feel like taking the picture.  i put whatever it is in the center of the viewfinder, or the center of my attention, and get closer until it fills the frame. snap. click. i have found a little something i am looking for.

this is not to say i am taking better pictures now, or that i ever was capturing anything which could transcend the conversation in my mind to touch something universal in others. but i’ll keep trying.

what marv and barbara’s deaths brought was a conviction that the place to start, the only place i had to begin, was being fully in my self.  looking at the love i have for them.  recording something about the persons i lost the day they died.  discovering that the “you” i was before, is gone as irrevocably as they are.

but love of some kind has begun pouring in, filling spaces which needed to be emptied with nothing more tangible than afternoon light. glowing on a plastic bag, the corner of the sofa, the gathers of muslin across the curtain rod. i can’t see going back, ever, to the life where i wondered if i had something to say. because i do. and it is this:

look. see. what is beautiful remains.