And we’ll laugh. We’ll celebrate the mist on our faces as the sun beat down and the heat rose up from the pavement, awake in the shelter that surrounds us. And those moments, they will be our infinity.
Writing
Vapor
Remnants of Puerto Rico
“I see,” you said, “We are the sun, we are the moon, we are the streetlight and we are the rain. We are the earth and we are the clouds and we are nothing and we are everything and we are the dark and we are the light. We are each other and all we have is now.”
We Are Night Zombies
I bought an old, musty copy of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road online. One of those hardcover books where the right edge of the paper is torn, not cut. The previous owner was a library in Pennsylvania, and it carries with it the dusty smell found only within the narrow aisles of a small town library. It is perfect.
Several times now I’ve found myself re-reading McCarthy’s disorganized bursts of language, awed by how he can so successfully pull off such chaos. He describes a post-apocalyptic world where survivors are cannibals and the only Good seems to reside within a father and his son, struggling to survive. The father, forever unnamed, often falls into faint remembrances of life before, a testament to the equal power and fragility of memory.
She held his hand in her lap and he could feel the tops of her stockings through the thin stuff of her summer dress. Freeze this frame. Now call down your dark and your cold and be damned.
Amazing.
Mothers
At the Sheep and Wool Festival (mentioned earlier), I caught this candid moment of my mom talking to Annie, another yarn vendor and a woman who played a feature role in my childhood.
Many of my most memorable moments from my youth were exploring the woods surrounding Annie’s farm with her son Kip. Through the warm, humid Maryland summers, Kip and I would wander shirtless along streams, testing the patience of snapping turtles, climbing trees, exploring 50 year-old junk yards, and getting lost in corn fields.
I remember dinners outside, watching the cows graze. Fixing broken fences in the rain before the sheep got out. Other nights, Kip and I would sleep in his tree house, but only after stretching an extension cord from the farmhouse so we could hook up his old analog television. For an hour, we’d fight for reception with a mangled clothes hanger before settling in to grainy late-night movies. One winter, a blizzard struck and I was snowed in at their farm. We were stuck there for almost a week as we waited for their mile-long driveway to be plowed. A month later, he was shut in at our farm for the very same reason.
Kip and I share the gift of growing under the wings of profoundly strong women who provided us with childhoods that seem grounded only in fantasy. My own mother is fiercely independent, free-spirited, and loves few things more than color (her boys being a rare exception). Annie has worked the land her entire life; she is one of the most stubborn, hard-working, and caring people I’ve met. They’ve raised their boys to be aware of the world surrounding them, to explore, to appreciate what’s given and to work for something more.
Consider this my very belated Mothers’ Day post, and a reminder that every day we should be thankful of those that have inspired us.
In the airport
Sara and I returned from a bit of a vacation to Florida, visiting my best friend from college. It was a weekend of science and partying (those two not mutually exclusive, of course).
We were waiting to be picked up at Miami International, looking for Adam in the distance. Moments later, we realized we were actually in the drop-off zone and rushed below to the arrivals pick up. Whoops.
Memories of Hobbes
I’ve got a lot of photographs from the last couple days that I’ll be posting. It has been one of my most genuine summer-feeling summers, albeit a busy one.
Like most kids, I had a radio flyer wagon. My brother and I would take turns dragging each other around in it, often daring the other to take it down The Hill nearby. This usually resulted in a rather robust collection of bruises and scrapes, respected reminders of our war with gravity.
Reading Calvin and Hobbes, even over a decade after it concluded, still brings me back to those muggy days when we eagerly awaited a slight breeze, a cool glass of lemonade, and a neon band-aide.
She laughs on the beach
I tend to take a lot of photographs of Sara. And while I think many of them are visually stronger than the photo above, this has to be my new favorite.
While at a family friend’s cabin in West Virginia, we grilled up dinner and drank margaritas. Full and happy, we all walked a short distance to this lake, which was edged by a round mountain.
The genuineness of her smile combined with the fact that there was a man walking his horse in the background are really what do it for me. Oftentimes the candid shots in the middle of a clicking frenzy are really the best.
To Be Alone With You
This Memorial Day weekend found me in Cumberland, Maryland taking a break from the city to enjoy the mountain town and visit with friends. It also saw the tragic crushing of my poor Canon SD1000.
Fortunately, only the digital display is broken. I have to resort to the primitive, almost caveman-like method of looking through the viewfinder to frame the shot I want. It also means I can’t review the picture after snapping it. I know, I know – truly tragic.
This was one such non-reviewed picture that was a pleasant surprise when downloading my pictures earlier this evening. It was snapped in the home of Cumberland’s amazingly talented artist, Beth Piver.
Missing England Redux
My subconscious, possibly influenced by my last post, took me back to England in my dreams last night. I was visiting Cambridge again, and my parents seemed to have moved back there.
I don’t remember much else, except for the fact that I woke up with the disappointment that it was just a dream and a craving for a pint of Boddingtons. Whether or not this officially makes me an alcoholic is debatable.
