Focus.  Concentrate.  What is important?  Who decides?  And what about the other stuff?  Again, photography acts as a metaphor for life.  How do you get the experience of your own powers of creation?  Make decisions, make art, and you know that you are making a universe.  Then, unmake it, and you’ll know what you can control and change.

Is the glass half empty?  Half full?  Is the glass solid or as liquid as its contents but moving at a different speed?  Am I half done with my life or beginning a new day?  Are the things that exist only in my memory real or not?  If they exist in my memory, have I lost them? 

I had a birthday on Wednesday, and a good cry on Thursday.  The quiet, summer afternoon transported me to another time and place.  My husband was alive, snoring in the Lazy Boy in my living room.  I had a living room – a full house with 4 bedrooms.  My oldest daughter was in her room, reading children’s books.  My son was in the yard playing with a next door neighbor.  My two youngest daughters were entwined on a bed, thumbs in their mouths, damp curls encircling their sleepy heads.  It seemed so palpable…and so untouchable.  Never again; though, yes, it was.  Once.  LOSS loomed in my brain.  A word I envisioned; I’d conjured it like the scene of that composite day.  When I focused on it, I was awash in gut pain.  It was powerful.  Over moments, the focus softened.  Its power faded.  It became a muted background of warmth, of subtle longing, a wistful smile.  There are other things in my life.  Some embryonic, some ripening.  That previous life is like the green light of a summer day.  It is there, all around.  It is not in focus, though.  It is enough.

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