i like roaring fires, down comforters, wool sweaters, beanies, and hot coffee as much as the next, but there’s something to be said about bitter, sharp-type exhalation, holy shit cold. the way it tends to cut through everything, even the filters of your mind and focus you in on the feeling of being cold.
but it should be said i took this from inside, beanie on, hot coffee in hand.
remember the one we all inhabited 10 years ago? the one rife with paranoia or wonder, depending on your proclivity for mass hysteria or your ability to take Prince’s words to heart.
they slip by so easily, these years. and it’s just as effortless, it seems, our ability to forget, move on, fall back into routine, to be ruled by indifference. the rain that falls from the sky one day, becomes the cloud the next.
the windows in my office are double pained, sometimes they’re frosted over and i can’t see out, sometimes the ice forms in intricate patterns, so beautiful they can only exist a short time. sometimes they’re perfectly clear and i can see the cobwebs. but the view is always the same, a big spidery tree. right now there is snow on the limbs, and a few leaves that didn’t get their eviction notice.
some months from now, rebirth, full regalia. and in a few more, with a shuttering wind, a day’s worth of raking, all to be undone by two beautiful children and their unlimited exuberance. pretty soon another year, and another. and then a decade, or two.
what will we forget, and whom? what new leaves arrive, and their destiny? boat races in the fall rain? pressed between pages? raked, bagged and shipped off? what will our destiny be?
whatever comes to you in these next days, years, generations, please don’t forget to live them as if they matter. no matter that they are too beautiful to last. and always party like it’s 1999.
xob
it’s winter; things, people, dreams, resolutions… they all die. why then do i feel so alive?
is it this pink enemy remix? my children’s maniacal laughter from downstairs as they play with their christmas toys? the freedom solitude brings at 2 in the morning, ensconced in headphones?
whatever it is, i’m not questioning its motives or methods, just praying it hangs around for a good long while.
another call to all the blessings that have fallen at my feat these past years.
i find myself here. 20 years ago, i’d have laughed right in your pretty face had you told me i’d be living in iowa. the fact something like that could have happened 20 years ago, and i’d have the retrospect 20 years later is just as mind boggling. but that’s rambling.
so yes, i’m in des moines now. it’s odd to be so at home in such an unfamiliar place, but after four barely tolerable years in a boston suburb, the first months here have given us things we’d never have, or feel, in mass. it’s a nice enough place, and in a different time, maybe even a fantastic place, but it was never home.
this is home. even thou i’m from the beach in southern california, something about this part of the mid-west just feels right. it’s cold thou, colder than boston ever was. more snow too. but it’s gorgeous. and peaceful. and kind.
Digital Dalliance: An Introduction
When my first-born burst onto the scene almost five (damn) years ago, the in-laws, who were experiencing grandparenthood for the first time, openly lamented in the lack of photographs coming their way.
And then, as if I wasn’t getting the hint, they put a Nikon Coolpix into my hands and told me to let ‘er rip. Until then, I had resisted digital cameras much in the same way an Olympian long distance runner resists Big Macs. But they had a point.
So I took the camera and began to snap up shots of my little baby. And they still lamented the dirge of pictures.
I’ve since bought a DSLR and can’t imagine what it’s like to have kids and not have a digital camera. They should hand one out when any new parent leaves the hospital with their first bundle of joy. If not for the sheer amount of use it’ll get and to keep the image thirsty grandparents at bay (in my case barely) but like any good piece of electronics, it’s always cool to have a new toy to play with. The baby’s pretty cool too.
And when I first got the Coolpix, I took it with me wherever I went. When I wasn’t using it to document first steps and smiles, I was snapping up things like this.
