There are very few human beings who receive the truth, complete and staggering, by instant illumination. Most of them acquire it fragment by fragment, on a small scale, by successive developments, cellularly, like a laborious mosaic.
~Anais Nin

“If you want to reach a state of bliss, then go beyond your ego and the internal dialogue. Make a decision to relinquish the need to control, the need to be approved, and the need to judge. Those are the three things the ego is doing all the time.” Deepak Chopra

I have never really lived on my own but I have always needed a space of my own–a space just to be. I grew up in a family with seven children four of whom were 12+ years younger than I was, and while my mom tried hard to give the older ones their space, really the only time that things were quiet was at night, maybe that is where I learned to love my insomnia. At just 20, I was married and I went right from home to building a life with my husband and subsequent two children, and as anyone who has children knows, there is no solitude for a mother, even the bathroom isn’t free from baby seats and toddlers banging on the door and night time is full of feedings and diaper changes and, for me, feeding machines and oxygen monitors. I homeschooled both of my children from kindergarten through highschool and so for a long time, my space to be was found in the quiet of forty-five minute drives to and from college as I crept my way through my degree for 11+ years.

Now that I’m on my own, I have mixed feelings on the personal space that I have always found so necessary. There are times when both my kids are at their dads that I settle into the silence and have a space to breathe, to read, to write, to play my ukulele, to just be and I think, this is good. There are other times when the silence weighs on me and I fill it with music or the television going in the background and I wish I could walk into the other room and see what they are doing and I think, this is sad. And it’s okay for it to be both, change is a part of life and we have to accept the sad with the good and keep moving forward. All in all, though, with my daughter’s eye for decorating, I have made a small space for myself and for my children (yes, we need a bigger space, it will come) that feels like a good space to just be.

I have always been more of a random photographer outside of portrait photography, something catches my eye and I reach for the camera. This has been good for me in that it has trained me to always be looking, not just in the obvious “Scenic Overlook: Stop Here and Take a Picture” kind way, but in the sense of looking at everything and watching for something to pop out. Lately, though I’ve noticed more of a trend in my photographs to work into a series. I’ve been looking at more artistic photographers works and seeing how they use a series of photographs, or a collection, if you will, to make a larger cohesive whole–a story. The fact that it is winter, helps, in that there is a beautiful dormant feel to winter and the cloudy skies of Michigan winter lend itself to a timelessness that has been drawing me. Old buildings and barns snag my attention and I am starting to feel this pull in my bones towards a bigger scope project than just taking random photographs that I find very exciting.

I drove down a road that ended at a path that led to the lake and it was worth the icy walk. As soon as I got close to the lake I could hear the most amazing sound, it wasn’t the sound of waves, but the sound of ice shattering and grinding and shifting.

I took a video clip just to capture the sound, it really was an amazing thing to just sit quiet and listen for awhile.

Ice Flow from Walking the Wall on Vimeo.

Lost to the Sea

She watched the sun rise from the sea
On yet another morning.
With icy fingers in her hair,
She heard the seals keening.

Their song was wild and mournful,
A tale of wind and waves—
And something sang of loneliness
That echoed from far off caves.

~me, 2003

I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethro’
Gleams that untravell’d world, whose margin fades
For ever and for ever when I move.
~Tennyson, Ulysses

I have been meaning to take a picture of this beautiful old barn for ever, but I always just drive by and think, “one day” I will take a picture of this. This is a year about “now” not “one day” so I stopped.