1. Two days ago, I discovered I'd lost my small camera bag, the one that my Nikon D3100 fits into perfectly. I also keep a spark battery in its front pocket. This morning, I called the Visitor Center at Brookside Gardens -- I got to thinking that I might have left the bag on a bench while taking pictures there on Sunday. Sure enough. A thoughtful person turned in my bag. I happily drove over and retrieved it. I had a lump in my throat. That bag and I have had great fun together over the last five years. I didn't want it to be gone.
2. While driving back home from the lost and found, I listened on the radio to Susan Faludi talk with Diane Rehm about her book, In the Darkroom, that Faludi has recently published about her father's decision at the age of 74 to become a woman. It's a complicated story. Faludi had been estranged from her father for most of her adult life because of what a domineering and violent man he had been and then, out of nowhere, she got an email from him announcing, "I have had enough of impersonating a macho aggressive man that I have never been inside."She also commissioned her daughter to sit with her, listen to her, and to write his and then her story. Faludi agreed to.
Once again, and this happens regularly, I pondered the indeterminate, ever shifting nature of reality and all those years I looked to Shakespeare -- and later Buddha -- to help me come to grips with impermanence. I haven't come to grips with it. I long for stability and permanence and security and am unsettled by things not being what I thought they were or wished they were, even though, in my head, I know this is the way things are. We live in constant flux. Back at Whitworth, we used to call this living in tension and we struggled (another key Whitworth word!) to live authentic Christian lives within tension of impermanence. I still do. So, yeah. I try to live at peace, but, at the same time, I live in the tensions wrought by contradiction and instability.
All this was going through my mind and I managed to keep the Sube on the road and arrive home safely!
3. Early in the afternoon, I drove up to the historical Main Street of Ellicott City, MD to work on the latest Sibling Photo Assignment. I enjoyed my stroll up and down both sides of Main Street and my photo session was a modest success. I'll reveal the assignment later and post pictures when I've completed it. Suffice it to say that I am going to go back out in the world on Friday and shoot some more and see if I can improve upon what I've already done. I've decided to complete this assignment without taking pictures of flowers or of anything else in nature and it's a challenge for me, especially because I'm shooting in color.
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