Following my weird
Early mornings, still lifes, and a new friend.
As far back as I can recall, I’ve been inclined to stay up late. Even with the best intentions of getting to bed at a decent hour, once 9:30 PM rolls around, it’s like a switch gets flipped inside me, and I become animated, capable of things daylight-me only dreamed of. Projects I’ve procrastinated on are motorized. Chores get checked off their list. Creative ambitions, at last, are heard and attended to. Away from the concerns and pressures of the strait-laced day, the strangely-lit night wraps me in its shadowy embrace, permitting me to be as quiet, creative, and off-kilter as I please. Shower in the dark at midnight? Done. Time to revamp my website or start an exercise routine? Why not! It’s only 11:30 PM.
(For all my love of the sun and its warmth, the moon and I might be closer kin. After all, I titled this collection of writing Reflecting Light not Emitting Light!)
Given my penchant for staying up past my bedtime, it’s baffling, bordering on chaotic then, why I recently volunteered to be the morning cat feeder. When presented with this offering, this unexpected changing of the guard, Will asked me, skeptically, “Are you sure?” before clasping his hands to his face, feigning joyful tears, as I nodded yes. Yes, I would like to stumble out of bed at dawn and give our yowling cats two scoops of dry food before crawling back under the covers. Yes, I would like to be chronically underslept and a little moody all of the time.
What would compel me to do such a thing—change my night owl tendencies in favor of becoming the early bird, the one who gets the worm? When the worm is the palest champagne light streaking in through our kitchen window first thing in the morning, I’ll gladly get up any day. Even when there’s a strong likelihood it won’t be there, cloaked in blue or gray, the knowledge that it might be fills my heart with glee. On days when the light appears, I linger. I stand or sit at the table with a glass of cool water and listen to the birds trilling outside and the stillness. My hair’s disheveled, and I can’t see well because I’ve neglected to put on my glasses. But that’s okay. I’m cradled in the hands of early morning, which is not dissimilar to the arms of night. I’m in a safe and sacred space. The cats crunch through their kibble as the tulips on the table softly unfold to greet the day. Everything is awakening and becoming, and I, too, feel a burgeoning sense of purpose and wonder at the world brightening around me.
Maybe I’m turning over a new leaf, I muse, moving from room to room, opening up the curtains and letting even more light in. Maybe, with the onset of spring, I’m unwittingly changing and sprouting into a different thing, one with its face turned to the morning sun.
In honor of this changing of the seasons, both within and without me, I’ve felt compelled to arrange and photograph still lifes. As an ardent collector of objects, natural and otherwise, it brings me great pleasure to gather things from the outside world and my home and place them next to each other in an intricate display reminiscent of the backdrop to a mouse’s tea party. Things that may seem dead or dull on the surface—crisp strawflowers, papery butterfly wings from summers past, hollow wasps’ nests—hum with feeling when held or looked upon. Though they are still in the sense that they do not move, they carry the essence of life, just in a quieter form.
I try to remember this sentiment in times when I’m feeling low. Like the brown grass weighted beneath blankets of snow, I wonder when (sometimes if) the thoughts pressing down on me will clear, and Mr. Blue Sky will show his face. Or will another onslaught of sleet accumulate and needle me to the point of wilted exhaustion? Willingly, I surrender to what feels like death, though I am not dead; I am only waiting to emerge and feel the tender rays of hope and joy again.
Sure enough, I wait a while, sometimes only a few hours or minutes, and it happens. Thoughts melt. The sky clears. Sun beats warm on my face. There is salvation in knowing that everything changes, including my capacity to weather—and direct—the natural phenomena that occur inside my body and brain.
Thank you, is the mantra, more like prayer, I’ve started repeating under my breath.
Thank you, anxious rain, for revealing the parts of me that need love and attention.
Thank you, fallen branch, for making me imperfect and showing me how to live with pain and grace.
Thank you, snow and ice, for teaching me how to soften.
Thank you, bitter winds, for helping me to let go.
While I don’t think it’s possible to be grateful for everything—there’s too much inexplicable suffering in the world for me to subscribe to that notion—I feel like most situations and experiences, in the words of Brother David Steindl-Rast, offer the “opportunity to learn something.”1 It might not be pretty! Or particularly comforting! Nonetheless, the opportunity is there. I’ve found that sometimes my challenge is simply to learn how to persist despite the forces or unfavorable circumstances that would convince me such an endeavor is useless. It is not. After all, spring always follows winter. The swollen earth revives. And the shape-shifting moon is proof that change and fluctuation, while uncomfortable at times, are intrinsic to being whole.
Another thing that’s a bit uncomfortable yet makes me feel whole? Following my weird. Not to be confused with Joseph Campbell’s following your bliss, albeit connected, following my weird looks like playing with the ceramic cat collection I’ve had since I was a kid (it’s not just cats; there’s a goat and a mushroom, too, among other things) before arranging them in a still life. Following my weird looks like scouring the house for bird bones I thought I’d saved but it turns out I hadn’t, and being a tad cross. It means making pictures that, even if not explicitly weird, feel warm and whimsical, which in my book is akin to weird!
Following my weird looks a lot like staying up extra late to finish a somewhat meandering photo essay (ahem) while also waking up extremely early to feed a pair of furry roommates and watch some flowers get doused in light.
It feels like coming to life.
On a recent photo walk, I came across something equally life-giving. It was early evening, and I was headed down a trail, still slushy with snowmelt, when I abruptly stopped to make a picture. While it’s not uncommon for me to suddenly become transfixed by a particular subject and stop to photograph it, in this instance, I felt moved, practically steered, by an unknown force to stop and stare.
In front of me lay a large, fallen tree and, beyond that, a semi-frozen marsh with stiff reeds jutting into the air. With my camera suspended from my neck, I instinctively unfolded the viewfinder and peered down into it. I examined the scene from multiple angles, unsure whether or not to make a picture. (With the high and rising cost of film these days, I’ve become a bit choosier about how I expend each roll.) After a minute of humming and hawing, I decided against it and went to close the viewfinder. Right before I did, though, something caught my eye.
What the…
I glanced up from my camera to see, in the flesh, a small blue and green dinosaur. It was climbing up the fallen tree like a mountainside, its sights set on reaching some distant peak. Upon witnessing this spectacular display of not just whimsy but determination, I smiled so hard, for a brief moment, I forgot myself.
YES, LITTLE DINOSAUR, I thought. YOU CAN DO THIS!
His name, I found out, is Jeremy. Naturally, I was a bit reticent at first because I don’t spend a lot of time around dinosaurs; even for his stature, Jeremy makes a towering impression. But after sitting with him for a while, I went out on a limb and asked if I could photograph the remainder of his journey. To my delight, he happily obliged.
There I was then! A newly enlisted documentary photographer! In the back of my head, a (truly miserable) voice scoffed and said, “Really? You’re gonna use up your last roll of film photographing a dinosaur? Ok then… Go for it. Just know that while you’re doing that, other people are making meaningful portraits and landscapes… You know—work that actually matters.”
I ignored the voice and went on photographing Jeremy’s slow and steady ascent. I learned that folks in his past had warned him such an undertaking was foolish and not to attempt it. They advised him to get a “real” dinosaur job—whatever that means. Jeremy didn’t listen. Inside, he knew who he was and what he needed to do, even if it meant facing the sharp March winds head-on.
After several falls and stumbles, including one critical fail that left him severely bruised and questioning his entire life’s purpose, Jeremy made it to the summit. Although it only took him five minutes, in pocket-sized dinosaur time, that’s like months.
Inspired by his tenacity and not wanting to say goodbye just yet, I asked Jeremy if he’d like to come home with me and go on more adventures together. He could climb stuff, I could keep making pictures of him… It’d be fun! While he was flattered at the offer, he and I both knew it couldn’t happen. A dinosaur like him needed to stay on that path and inspire whimsy in the hearts of whoever chanced to walk down it. That was Jeremy’s purpose. It only took hiking up the side of a felled tree to figure it out.
Feeling sentimental, I closed up my camera and started for home, my pockets empty where, in an alternate reality, there might have been a small blue and green dinosaur. Although his lopsided shape had made a lasting imprint on the soft cushion of my heart, I felt its absence reverberate with each step I took.
I turned one last time to get a look at my dinosaur friend. From a distance, he glistened in the setting sun, and at that moment, I knew leaving Jeremy behind was the right thing to do. He wasn’t my dinosaur. He was the world’s dinosaur. Just as the world had guided me to him that day, it would guide someone else, who would feel all the same delight I felt upon seeing a dinosaur casually perched atop an otherwise ordinary tree, so wonderfully weird and out of place.
And what a gift that would be. ✶
Update: Three days later, I went back to check on Jeremy. He was happy to see me. Turns out, living on that tree was less whimsical than he thought! Since the last time I’d seen him, he’d fallen into a ridge, and his face was pressed against the rough bark. I helped him get back on his feet, and by then it was clear: he wanted to go home with me. I didn’t argue, of course, just slipped him in my coat pocket, and off we went, two travelers. Now he lives on a shelf in my home, where the evening light shines in and illuminates his gorgeous dinosaur face.
For more wisdom from Br. David Steindl-Rast, including his thoughts on gratitude, check out this episode of On Being with Krista Tippett.
Oh, what a wonderful read! And I am glad you shared Jeremy’s story! ♥️
I finally listened to the blue skies playlist.... Really enjoyed.. Thank you!