When, after wriggling and extending its petals toward the sun for almost a week, the anemone’s stem was severed by a mischievous critter (or faerie), I carried its slain body inside and put it in a vase. I fed it water. Gave it a spot on the sill above the kitchen sink. It seemed as good a place as any to live out one’s life.
While the anemone stayed cool indoors (praise to the almighty god that is central AC), its outside companions drooped in the late summer heat. Despite its edge, I knew the anemone’s days were numbered. One by one, its petals started to drop and rest like wrinkled eyelids on the weathered sill. Intermittently, for no apparent reason, it folded in on itself as if harboring an ache. Each time, I assumed it was The End. Thank you, small bloom, for providing me with a bit of relief in your final days. Later, I would re-enter the kitchen, and lo, the anemone was open again! I did not possess the instinct to question the inner workings of a flower propped in an inch of water. I was simply happy to witness it a smidge longer, brightening the room with its cuplike face, which occasionally turned away from the window and shone directly toward me like the Pixar lamp.
To practice photography is to be tasked with constantly paying attention to the world around you. I suppose you could say the same thing about being human—it is our unspoken obligation to be here and witness life’s both miraculous and, at times, confounding unfolding.
Every time I reach for my camera, whether I’m entirely aware of it or not, I’m committing to being a witness to the present moment. Sometimes, the moment consists of nothing more than a strange beam of light due to a smoky morning sky coming to rest on a bloom. Other times, it’s a cat sprawled flat on a tabletop or asleep on my true love’s lap. Or it is my love’s shoulder at daybreak, half-covered with linen like a mountain slope misty with fog. Whatever the moment reveals, I stop. Listen. Not to any sound, because in that fragment of time, all sounds retreat, but to the beckoning of the moment. Witness me, it begs. Witness my fleetingness and simplicity before the day crashes forward, and I disappear without a thought from your head.
This appeal is my impetus for making pictures right now. It informs my approach, which is: Be there. Don’t think too hard. If I have an impulse, listen to it. The moment will be gone soon, so don’t hesitate. Jump in. It’s all temporary, including any mistakes. Invite everything to the table. Feast on every small moment as if it were a last meal. It very well could be.
It’s getting darker earlier, and leaves are eddying down streets lined with tattered trees swaying overhead. The first whisper of cool air on a sunlit afternoon filled me with nostalgia for long-lost times and places. I’ve been weepy—not because I want to return to anywhere or anyone I’ve been, but because everything ends and rearranges so quickly. I know it’s futile to try to hold on.1 At the same time, I can’t help but laugh-cry at a world so paper-thin and ever-changing.
“How strange it is to be anything at all,” sings Jeff Mangum of Neutral Milk Hotel2, a band I haven’t listened to since college when I had long blonde hair and monitored every morsel of food I ate.
How strange, indeed.
*
Recently, I said goodbye to someone who, in all likelihood, I will never see again. Standing in the doorway, fumbling for the right words, I was overcome with emotion, which I held in lest I fall to pieces. I’ve not known this person for long, but in our short time together, I spent many hours with them, ones I admittedly was not always present for. Why is it that as soon as something ends, you suddenly realize all the ways you could have done it differently? I’m sure I could have been kinder. Listened better. Made them laugh more often. Yes, I was struggling on certain days with my own issues. But still. How hard is it to be kind to someone who needs it?
(Note: We all need it.)
Hand on the doorknob, I looked back at their face, open and shining like a flower. Witness me, it seemed to beg. Witness my fleetingness and simplicity before the day crashes forward, and I disappear without a thought from your head.
*
I don’t believe that making pictures is a replacement for truly Being Here, but rather, it is a portal to seeing and feeling more deeply. Photography is an opportunity, a permission slip in many ways, to fall eye-first in love with life. You need not be good, cool, or especially interesting to practice photography (or any art, for that matter). You need only be committed to opening your eyes, mind, and heart.
My success in photography and life does not depend upon receiving accolades or recognition; though it might happen, it’s not something I can control. What I can control is my ability to be present and kinder to myself and the people, plants, and animals around me. I can hold all things tenderly, like a blossom. Bring them inside and prop them in a vase. If that’s all that results from my journey with photography—a collection of moments otherwise ignored—it will have been worth every shot. 𓇢𓆸
Earlier this year, I wrote about trying to hold onto moments in a post titled Lightning! Snow! Cats!
Al, this is so rich with life, thank you. Your sweet anemone, “folded in on itself as if harboring an ache.” I’m grateful she was so well attended to in her last days. Your observation of the geography of your beloveds shoulder reminded me of a line from a song we used to listen to so often, ‘I was lost in the lakes, in the shapes your body makes’, it’s called Your Rocky Spine…
Falling into witnessing feels so sacred, and I feel you’ve captured that so perfectly here. How strange indeed, to live in a world, and to be, so paper-thin and ever changing… Laugh-crying might be the only appropriate response! Bless you for the ways you honour life with your noticing ♥️
Beautiful beautiful beautiful! What a lovely and inspiring post. Such magical words are rare, you’re so talented 💕