The Holly and the Ivy

 

I always knew I was meant to meet you. When I read the description of your class in the catalog I knew I had to be there. When Eugene reviewed my work and I mentioned your class and he thought it would be an excellent choice and inside I thought see I know. When I sat there on the first day waiting for you searching for your face not knowing what you looked like but feeling I would know who I am supposed to meet. And when we did meet face to face I knew immediately you were the person I was meant to have and mean so much in my life. And also I could tell in that moment something would happen were we could be lost from the other for awhile as maybe you were that kind of person of miscommunication and sensitivities and am I am one always fearful to reach out. Yet I knew I had to connect to you in the moment for whatever the future would be. 

I'm sorry you never got to see me be your dream for me and myself. I hope you had some faith in me that one day it would come together even if I don't have faith myself in these matters anymore. I just keep working even with nothing ahead, nothing forward that my work will go anywhere, not like back in the times we had. The world worked out differently and the fates did not meet my path for whatever reason, and that kind of photo world that once existed to be discovered in has been gone for the past decade. We are all treading water in the smaller fishbowl. 

Yet I keep going anyway because against it all nothing can touch the faith in my work and the love I have for it, nothing ever will replace it. You're not suppose to say that as an artist because this can't be a substitute for humans and human connection and it isn't but it is part of my connection to the human and the universal. Photography is a love letter in a world that has almost driven me into the ground with the darkest tests of sadness and loss. Thank you for being in my life for you are a part of that love.

 

 

Happy Birthday mom, I could watch you paint every day and be excited about what you are excited to conjure outside yourself. That creating art forces us to move closer to being in touch with the world outside ourselves. In our corner of the universe you are one of the brightest parts of the toughness and bravery that is has taken to live our lives. Still laughing and still curious and still sensitive and still loving and still finding purpose and still finding meaning and believing it all has meaning.