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Showing posts from August, 2005

Eight months old

She's an amazing and beautiful baby girl. She has more facial expressions than any baby I know. She uses her eyebrows and lips grandly, eloquently and with verve. Laid back doesn't apply. Happy as a lark and giggling with gusto turns on a dime to furious and blowing raspberries to signal her strong disapproval. Her sister gets away with little; this is no shy, follower of a second child. She's strong, a strong presence who won't be forgotten or ignored. She not only tries to keep up with but also tries to outdo her sister regularly. In the car, on Sunday, she sang a chorus to her sister's song. As her sister---frustrated to share the limelight---got louder and louder, so did she. Smart as a whip, stubborn as a mule, precocious, curious, mobile, sensitive, going in two directions at once, clinging to me and yet moving away as fast as she can...she's not yet a year but she's a lifetime away from a mere eight months ago.

"Work is Love made visible." by Kahlil Gibran

Mothering and photography are my loves and my work. It's nice how they mesh together to display that. I do all that I do from love; my doing is an outward manifestation of that love. However, once I put it out there, it is no longer just mine. It will be viewed from a different angle and perspective, and might be missed, or misinterpreted. At the end of the day, I always hope that I get the benefit of the doubt or suspension of disbelief and all that I do is understood as being done from love. With kids, though, you don't always know. Lately, my daughter has been convinced I am so mean and out to ruin her day. Perhaps she thinks I lie awake at night plotting. It's okay to laugh. I have to, but I admit, a little piece of my heart breaks every time. Why can't she know that all this work is done from love?

"Order is the shape upon which beauty depends."

A quote from Pearl Buck: "Order is the shape upon which beauty depends." My stock in trade is making things look lovely; or rather, it is to capture and preserve then display the beauty that is already around us. There are many studies about beauty. And it all boils down to the point that all humans, regardless of race, ethnicity, culture, etc. find balanced things beautiful. Order, balance, beauty. Is disorder ugly? Or is it uncomfortable? A friend recently looked around a room and sighed happily, "This is beautiful, wonderful. I love this." I looked around the room and felt tired. She saw beauty in the chaos of fifteen young children running, screaming, crying, laughing, and yelling. She saw a pattern, order. Her quilt was woven and beautiful in that room. I saw disorder. My quilt was unraveling. In the end, it is all about point of view, so beauty is quite dependent not upon order, but upon the perception of what shapes order holds. I find this beautiful, do you?