These Things I Had Long Forgotten

So I had this film camera once. A Pentax K-1000. For my first two years of high school I pretty much took it everywhere. I'd spend hours in the school's developing lab; no matter how many times I washed them, my clothes always still kind of smelled like developer, or fixer. And then one day, I guess I just stopped using it. And I guess one day became five, and then five became ten and then before I knew it, 17 years went by and I found my old camera tucked away in an attic box. Untouched.

I brought it downstairs, and, without saying a word to anyone, sat by an open window. I brought it up to my eye, and pressed the shutter button, not expecting anything. Click. Then I advanced the film lever, and felt the familiar tug of film inside. My heart. There was film inside. Old film.

After we sent it to Richard's to be developed, Thomas and I joked about what might be on that roll. Old crushes. School dances. Field hockey games.

Today we got the email saying our film scans were ready to be downloaded. We were on the road, and I made us pull over on the side of the highway so I could look right away. I couldn't wait to see this crazy expired film. The goofy friends from Freshman year.

When I clicked on the folder, and these images appeared, there was nothing that could have stopped my eyes from welling up.

It was 1996, a tiny maple sugar town in Canada. My sweet, beyond kind, ma tante Claire-Helene. I forgot I even ever took these, and honestly, even as I look at them tonight, I still don't remember.

But I remember her. The way her skin always smelled like baby powder, the way she laughed at all of my silly stories even though she didn't know any English at all. I remember one time she made me scrambled eggs and all of the eggs she cracked had two yokes. I remember a small cuckoo clock right next to her fridge went off just as she was showing me the small double yokes sliding into the bottom of the bowl. I remember the picture of her husband stuck on her fridge. She touched it with her crooked finger tip each time she walked by. I remember she had really awful arthritis, and that's why her fingers were so crooked. I remember she was always making something with her hands. Cross-stitch, or slippers, or tissue box holders that looked like doll houses. I remember one time she laughed so hard that she snorted. I remember she had the finest, softest hairs on her cheeks.

I remember loving her so hard, it hurt.

Tears rolling down my face, it still does.

When I sent this old film out, I never thought I'd get back 17 year old images of her, ma tante, now long gone.

There are zero words in the human language for my overwhelming gratitude.

These images have not been re-touched. I opened them in LR but sat there, frozen. She is perfect. These are perfect. Exactly how they are.

Her. Always.

So much I could write.

But she alone is a poem.

A ten-million-thousand-billion-words-all-at-once poem.

That I could never come close to reciting.

Micaela + The River

"You can't find peace by avoiding life."

-Virginia Wolf

Every single time I step in, I am more in awe of it all. So grateful for tonight with this powerful and beautiful woman.

Jakkelyn + Max + The River

During our time together, Jakkelyn shared the story of how she rescued Max. In this moment, there is no question that they had, in fact, and in very profound and beautiful ways, rescued one another.

These river experiences bring a sense of 'home' to my heart that I have never known.

Imperfect and Messy

It's a funny thing. A messy room. Socks drying on the line. Empty bed frame with more spiderwebs, then dreams, ever being made. Piles of laundry, some clean and unfolded, some dirty and still muddy with memories of wading in the creek. Photos lining the dresser, framed and poised, voices and sounds trapped tightly between glass and cardboard, begging to be picked up and relived. Nail clippers, and eye drops, and creams for gardener's knuckles. I look at the window shades and can't help but wonder what Oma was wearing the day she picked them out. Was she all dressed up for a day of shopping, or was she tired from a long morning of cooking for the children. And if she was dressed up, did she still have clay in the cracks of her cuticles and did the cashier notice as she handed her the change. These echoes of things; I can hear them. The time two lovers slept back to back, stiff and silent, tucked-in only by an unshared apology. The time they stayed up until 3am repainting the walls, laughing hysterically as she danced, deliriously, and without music, on top of the plastic-tarped floor, after the last stroke. The time their little one jumped off the bed and bumped her chin on the nightstand, and only a bath and a song made the tears dry.

His shirts still hang in the closet. Even though his footsteps no longer break the silence of early morning.

I feel these things heavier than you might imagine. As I stand there, camera in hand, tracing the outline of of things unspoken.

It is the messy and the imperfect that bring my soul awake.

There are so many perfectly-placed and well-staged places and photographs. Sterile spaces have their tales to tell, too. But the stories of sterility are of "No jumping on the beds," and "Don't mess that up!" and my bones cannot find that vibration. Those are not my stories to tell. Like an untuned piano, I can still certainly play, it's just nothing to ever call music.

I live an imperfect life. I dance in the unending rainshower of imperfect circumstances. That is the human experience. That is where I belong.

Sand castles are nice, but I've always been the girl digging deep into the dirt, bare hands and mudcaked cheeks. Earthworms in my pocket, seaweed tangled hair.

There was a wedding I shot last year. And I cried the entire way home. An undiluted prayer of immeasurable gratitude. A small cottage, untouched for forever years, on a dead-end street, cradled by the sea. I return to that place almost daily in my thoughts, to revisit and remember the space where my heart beat the loudest. Yesterday, completely by fate, I captured a different wedding on that same small road. Another messy and imperfect home, vibrating profoundly with heart-aching tales of times past. And once again, breathing deeply in the middle of it all, I was exactly where I was born to be.