Blog Archives

all the days we’ve been apart

I saw ghosts that day.

The first one was when I turned (randomly, I thought at first) down a ranch road. A wave of memories of one of my best friends from high school and college almost swept me away the very second I made the turn; I guess I thought I knew the things that resided in my memory but I was wrong. And then I saw the house where my friend’s grandparents used to live. I know it was the same house; I could feel it. I had made previous efforts to find it before, but it wasn’t until I wasn’t looking for it that it appeared to me. As I drove by, slowly, I acknowledged the ghosts that I had stirred up.

Later, I went to the town where my adult-life best friend lived. She died almost two years ago, and I am still staggered by the loss. I had lunch at a place we’d gone to before. Then I drove by the house where she’d lived (and where she died); her husband’s truck was in the driveway and I recognized some of his things in the yard. I stopped, briefly, and nodded sadly through my tears at the ghosts who were still there.

It was not the day I expected to have, but it was the day I got.

Eckhart, Texas
photographed 2.19.2023

sometimes there are too many contrasts

There was a lot going on here.

It was the first night of my long-anticipated, often-delayed trip to Cuba. I was trying to settle in to what I was seeing and feeling. The contrasts (in both of those things) left me feeling unsettled, and it was a feeling that stayed with me the whole I time I was there.

Av. Bélgica
Havana, Cuba
photographed 11.5.2023

the damage and the dying done

We only had a very short time to visit this cemetery; a whole day wouldn’t have been enough. I had to hurry…and fell into the trap of being so busy taking pictures that I failed to slow down and take in the feeling of the place, to really SEE what was there. (For this, I have no excuse: a have a tattoo on my wrist that says, “Take time to see.” I didn’t even take time to read my own ink.)

But anyway, here’s a mausoleum with a reflection.

And, because I was in a mood when I wrote this, I threw in a Bruce Cockburn line – the damage and the dying done – because I felt like it. (It’s from a beautiful spoken word piece “The Charity of Night.”)

Necrópolis Cristóbal Colón
Havana, Cuba 
photographed 11.11.2022

dog/frame

Sometimes the line between a brilliant photographic capture and a thing that *almost* worked is thin. Other times the dog’s front feet are off the ground and that makes the photographer laugh (even though she’s not particularly a dog person most of the time) and decide to post it anyway.

Havana, Cuba
photographed 11.11.2022

to see the face of god

Do you see it? Do you see the face on that cross?

St. Paul Evangelical Lutheran Church
Oxford, Texas

photographed 2.19.2023