they say that to grow, you must feel fully into where you are in the present. you must notice and inquire about all the sensations, the thoughts, the whole experience of right now. and so i do. i feel the tiny hollers coming from somewhere near the base of my spine. i feel the pinching twist deep below the incision along my rib cage. i feel pressure, heat, and clenching under my sternum. there is the experience of sadness. loneliness. resignation. i wonder what was fantasy, what was real, what is alive and what is dying. the poignancy is overwhelming at times, expansive at others. saltwater runs out of me from a bottomless source and, without warning, my mind flashes imagery of hands, dreams, history, red sand, motorcycles, and maypoles.

all this–and the story is really a simple one. a twenty year relationship changed. the first holiday spent doing it differently. the first of many new things.

the familiar will always beckon. if only for being known. and so i sit with the intense feeling of that. i sit with the haunting, with what is hard, and now, and just is. with the sore throat, the pride, the embarrassment, the gratitude, the anger, the devastation, and the reconstruction. i sit with longing and with loneliness. i sit with ache and awakening. i sit with pattern, habit, and memory. i sit with fear and finding. i sit with illusion and with truth. i sit in the heaviness that is my body and i feel everything.

and, somehow, in defiance or conspiracy, sunday morning still comes. i find my way up. pour coffee, make breakfast. and, above the steam, sunlight meets my face through the rain-spotted kitchen window.

photo: just now, through the kitchen window. november 2010.

today i am thankful for the crumbs on the table and the friends seated next to them. as the sanskrit prayer plays through the tinny laptop speaker and my eyes see through the blur of transition and the spin of head and heart, i know today (again) that all is as it should be.

i am grateful for those places i’ve had to go. the places i’ve willed to go. the places i’ve yearned to go. the dark caves and the shallow waters. the floating and the flying. the times weighted with the stones of seemingly unbearable truths, and the days that have passed as feathers floating on a whisper. i am grateful that fires burn, sun shines, earth quakes, and planets spin–and that i have absolutely no control over any of it. i am grateful for my loves, my fears, and for the cavern and the temple that reside squarely in my chest. i am grateful for gazes and glances, for a warm hand on my shoulder, for my son and my daughter.

today i am exhausted and renewed. resigned and nostalgic. a little punchy and always melancholic. i am awake and ever arriving. here and hopeful. calm and calling. opening another door and letting the light in.

This is love: to fly toward a secret sky, to cause a hundred veils to fall each moment. First to let go of life. Finally, to take a step without feet. ~Rumi

her expression has been haunting me since i posted my original girl effect entry late last night. or was that eary this morning? as i drove my own girl to school today, i had a big old knot in my belly, the knowing that something was out of alignment in the way that i approached this assignment. the words i chose, the style i did it in, the control i tried to have over it: it didn’t fit. it did not fit because it is not my way.

so as she stares me down, i have to tell you the truth. i’m uncomfortable with big bold imperatives and commanding calls. when i composed the post, something in me felt such a huge responsibility to do right by this girl in the photo, and all girls really, that i froze. i borrowed from the formats of other bloggers who comfortably increase their font size to make a point. i feared that my style was not bold enough to do justice to the cause.

but here’s the thing. all i want for this girl, for my daughter, and for myself, is freedom. freedom to be exactly who we are. to be full expressions of our potential. i believe in the girl effect. i believe that if you give a girl an education, if you offer her love and encouragement, if you provide her with the resources to learn and to discover HER way, she will give back to herself, her children, her community, and the planet. we will all be better for it. this is what i has taken me (almost) forty years to learn. and this is what i am teaching my children.

so, in alignment with what i believe and know to be true, i offer you a more authentic post. one that is done my way. where i tell you, honestly and in small font, that i love nothing more than to travel the world and to capture the beauty of girls and women. that in seeing them, i see myself. the me inside that is eager to sit in the front row and unafraid to look someone in the eye. i want only for her freedom. i want only for OUR freedom.

i am new to the world of aid and development. to the theories and strategies of how best to affect change where there is great suffering in the world. it is complicated, i am learning, and maybe someday it will be in alignment for me to use bold titles and to tell you with confidence what i think you should do. what i know myself to be today is an artist. a humanitarian photographer. i know this is my way. i connect through experience. through seeing. and so i offer you what i think is my best offering to this cause: images of girls i’ve seen. girls who need support. girls i’ve stood right in front of, girls who have looked right at me, and shown me the way. these girls have had a huge effect on me. seems the very least i could do is give back.

do you see what i see? the potential for freedom? the power to ease suffering? that we really are all made of the same stuff?

if so, do something. and do it your way. you’ll know what that is. start here if you need some suggestions.

God speaks to each of us as he makes us,
then walks with us silently out of the night.

These are the words we dimly hear:

You, sent out beyond your recall,
go to the limits of your longing.
Embody me.

Flare up like a flame
and make big shadows I can move in.

Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.
Just keep going. No feeling is final.
Don’t let yourself lose me.

Nearby is the country they call life.
You will know it by its seriousness.

Give me your hand.

-Rainer Maria Rilke

i am going there. to the beauty, and to the terror. around the seriousness. to the embodiment. to the tar pits of discomfort. and to the insanity that laughs. i am observing and i am finding that there is delicacy there. quiet strength and a strong hand (my own) reaching for me between the waves.

this is a quiet time,  but it is by no means a void.

photos: friday morning sunrise swim. east beach. santa barbara, ca.