garrison beau scott

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.

Today we took the offspring out for a walk along the Charles River. There’s a great path that winds its way behind Newton and Watertown, perfect for a lazy afternoon stroll. My daughter, Emmy, saw the Polaroid camera in the car, and asked if she could take some pictures.

She might as well have asked me if it was okay to breathe.

In the past, when we’ve gone out like that, I would always gently remind her that she had a camera along for the trip and ask if there was anything she wanted to take pictures of. But then I remembered my unspoken promise to my children to never push them in any direction. So today I said nothing, and was pleasantly surprised when of her own accord, she began asking if she could use it.

Not just hold it, or have it, but actually use it. So when she spotted something, she asked for it, and then magic. Here’s her favorite, which just so happens to be mine as well.

That smudge in the lower left of the white border is peanut butter. Kids… God love ‘em.

I think this was sometime in 1998. I was assisting on a fashion shoot for a very talented photographer, and very cool guy, Philip Newton. We were in Napa and it really wasn’t work, if only because the people were so amazing to work with, from the models, AD’s, moho driver, and of course Philip himself. Lugging sandbags and c-stands up and down grape-vine covered hills is never toilsome when the people you’re doing it with, and for, are genuinely wonderful.

And did I mention we were doing it in Napa? We were able to secure some amazing locations, and some of the more enjoyable moments were spent walking these incredible properties looking for the setting for the next shot. It was on one of these walks that I noticed this scene and asked to borrow the Polaroid so I could take a snap of this tree.