Prompted

You don’t see it right away, but it’s there. The straw in its mouth, the one it must gather for home; for the nest. It symbolizes a continues gathering until woven pieces can finally hold things together. It is an amazing labor of love. It is much like our work in everything we care for. We labor with love and gather what is needed for the home, for our nest. The home where we live in, with its kitchen and rooms, and the home in our hearts; the place where we gather strength and courage; the place where we gather our dreams and make them real.

What is curious about this moment is its pause. I was witness to it; it was a pretty long one. This maya bird took a moment to perhaps gather its breath; as if to take whatever was in sight all in. A little bird marveling at the world.

I watch these birds every morning now. They teach me how to pause, to breathe, and take in a bit of the world outside my window. I feel like a little bird marveling at the world. There is work to be done, but I shall marvel at the world.

The beautiful, beautiful gift that photography has given me is a voice. A voice for the words in my heart. I think I kept on looking for a way to find a place for all that. I knew I could write, but I wasn’t sure what I could give to the world. I knew I needed to give back something and I thought, why would the world be interested in my love letters? And then it stretches further to, why would the world be interested in my confusion and heart ache? How would the world benefit from all that? I couldn’t figure it out until there were these ‘prompts’ – you take a photo based on a concept, a word, and you could write about it if you want, or leave it to speak for itself. I am drawn to writing about it because when I capture something, I am certainly capturing a moment. And most of the time I like to paint that moment with words, too. What I have realized is that every moment contains a gift. Yes, every moment. Can you imagine how many gifts there are? Certainly enough to give back to the world.

‘Prompts’ are like inspiration, except I think when we just rely on inspiration, we tend to wait for it to come. That’s fine, but we shouldn’t just wait. And wait. And wait. Because maybe we don’t even know what exactly we’re waiting for; a magic feeling? Pixie dust? Nah. It doesn’t really work that way. I think we have to commit to something. It doesn’t even have to be big. So, if you’re prompted, let’s say with a word, you’re given a direction; a kind of path to follow, a way for your eyes to see or find something that’s already there. Somehow inspiration is everywhere; all you have to do is capture it. *insert magic feeling and pixie dust here*

What have you been prompted to notice, see, or capture lately?

Words and image courtesy of Guest Blogger Jennifer Hagendorn Dizon. She can found at Instragram as @beautifulnothing, on flickr as Creative Jen or on her blog The Divine in Everything.

Season of Renewal

Spring is life
Spring is hope
So is love and
happiness.
Spring renews.
Without spring,
life is forlorn.
Spring is nostalgia
after a bitter storm.
Put spring in your heart.

 -Spring, by Archie Greenidge

Spring , in all it's tangible newness, has always held a sense of renewal to me.  I can hear it in the way the birds sing their melodies with the rising sun and see it in the new growth that is starting to show on my favorite tree.  With the passing of my best friend at summer's end last year, the fall and winter were especially long for me.  It was a choice I made, choosing to cocoon myself with my family and a few close friends but it's time to shed the winter and let the spring do it's healing magic.  So bring on the sunshine and do your thing, springtime.  I'm ready for you. 

Today, rejoice in the new season and share a little of your springtime with us. 

How to Live

Having come to the hopefully, middle of my life, the question of How to Live? has never loomed larger. In fact, it has bubbled up from within me this 47^th year of my life not as a whisper or a nudge, but as a volcano/tsunami/earthquake/tumbling end-over-end-in-deep-space-without-the-astronaut-rope-to-the-mother-ship, that has left me feeling deeply disoriented, spiritually bankrupt, and quite frankly, in an anguishing pain.

A life-long hater of all things cigarettes, I actually bought a pack one day recently, thinking I should take up smoking. I have nearly gone insane from emotional pain in the last 10 months with the last 3 months being particularly horrendous. And I mean literally insane.

I have spent roughly the last 30 years working on myself. In that time, through hard work, a variety of therapies and spiritual work, I gratefully managed to have broken the cycle of violence, addiction and aggression in myself that is my family tree. And yet here I am, wondering if there is any Thing or One or Power out there in the universe who cares personally about my life and my existence.

I have developed an intimate relationship with Despair this year. I believe this is what the philosophers officially call an Existential Crisis.

Other people would probably just say I need to buck up, get over it, forget the recent past, and move on. And maybe I do need to do all those things. But telling someone who is grieving, lost, desperate, emptied out of things they knew, is like telling a pig to fly. Sometimes, the spiritual practice we have cultivated or had for many years ceases to be effective. We find ourselves simply unable to go on the way we have been. We crave comfort for the blows we have received. We want respite from the torture of heart and mind. We crave wholeness. We wish we could laugh like we did in the old days.

I know enough not to strike out to try and make myself feel better. Staying still and quiet can sometimes feel like you are turning an ocean liner on a dime. It is a Herculean effort and one that awakens me each night at 3.30 am. I often feel I can find no way out of the emptiness and betrayal and injustice of it all.

What I am describing is the lesson I am learning at mid-life which is how to accept life on life’s terms. To surrender to the way things have gone, which is not to say I agree or like them, or think some people have treated me decently, but rather to say, the question of How to Live? begins with surrender and acceptance. These are not easy things for me. I kick and scream and cry and wail. I feel as if I will die.

There are things going on in my life right now that I have no idea how to accept. They are too big, too unfair, too upsetting. They turn my stomach to acid and upset me so much I usually make a sound out loud.

I’d like to share with you one of two things I have discovered as a way through the process of grief, loss, being emptied out, disoriented, betrayal, being lied too, humiliated…. whatever your particular heart pain is, and toward acceptance and serenity (the other one is for another post another time!).

You are either holding it in your hand, on your lap, or staring into it right now. It is your camera phone and your computer.

Bet you didn’t expect that right?!

Well, neither did I.

Here’s what I have found: Our refuge lies in our ability to express ourselves and in our ability to lose ourselves in the world around us.

Every day now, I go out into the world with my iPhone and look at people and light and the environment. I have found that walking is one of the only things that soothes my pain. So I have been walking all over NYC taking pictures. Sometimes I am out there for hours and hours. Well, actually, I am usually  out there for hours and hours! (I recently had to get a bigger external hard drive to store all my photos) I don’t know if it’s because I am getting older, or just my particular state these days, but the quality of light has been indescribably beautiful to me at certain times of day.

When I take photos with my iPhone, I am absorbed into the act of looking and seeing and therefore forget about my pain and myself. It is the most magical occurrence. I lose track of time and feel a reprieve unlike any I have known. The world goes on even though I often feel I cannot. The human condition is right there in front of me. The colors and gestures and surprises that catch my eye deliver me. My perspective is literally changed—it’s expanded, softened, and moves into a sort of hope. Which is another way to say I have received a little bit of acceptance and serenity from my camera and the act of looking.

As I write this, it has been 10 days since I had to put the love of my life, my 14-year-old dog, Rumi, down. She had been failing in health for a couple months and when her quality of life crossed a certain threshold, I didn’t want her to feel one more ounce of suffering. She was put down at home, I held her in my arms, and she was surrounded by four exceptional, gentle, women who cried along with me and helped me function afterwards. I have been deeply affected by her death, and had to leave my apartment in the days after, her absence was so enormous and felt like the last straw in a string of deep losses. 

It’s sometimes the right thing to get on a plane and fly to the sun and beach, which is what I did.

The reason I tell you this about my sweet dog, is because the day after she died, I woke up and went to get her food out of the fridge like I have for all those years and realized she wasn’t here anymore and that I would never be able to see her or kiss her or hold her again. I had no idea how to manage my feelings. I was choking I was crying so hard—and then I heard this voice inside that said, Write to her.

So, being the Moleskine hoarder that I am, I walked over to my desk and opened a brand new one and began in my favorite black marker, Dear Rumi, I miss you so much… It’s been years since I hand wrote in a journal, but I have written to her every day since she left and I feel so close to her. My point here is not the Moleskine. My point is the writing. The pouring out of feelings to someone you think will listen and who loves you so much and never wants you to hurt. We simply cannot bear these things alone.

We are never lost to ourselves when we take refuge in our creative expression. There is deep comfort to be felt there.

All this is to say, I hope you will join Tracey Clark and I for our month-long photography course, Two Takes which is about using photography to support, sustain, and comfort you in your life.

Which, for me, is another way to say, How to Live?

Images and words from photographer and writer Bindu Wiles. You can find more about Bindu on her blog or find her on Instagram @binduwiles.

Share with us today the image(s) in which you have found refuge and you'll be entered to win a random drawing for a complementary registration for Two Takes. Leave your comment by midnight EST 3/8. The winner will be announced on Friday 3/9.

the great wide open

There have been times when I've got my head and heart so wrapped up in something that I lose sight of everything else. Sometimes it's work related, or I'm focusing on family matters or it can even be just the drudgery of the daily grind that  can keep me down. Whatever the case, some days feel a lot less hopeful then others.

Luckily, there always comes days when with the sun I look up, and out, and past the place I've been and I can see into the great wide open. The place where hope lives and the beauty of possibility lifts my spirits and soothes my soul. Where I am content to be where I am and also energized to move forward. Why wouldn't I be? Look at that place. It's awesome!

Of course, if everyday looked like that, then I wouldn't be nearly as impressed, or spellbound or enchanted by what I see. The contrast of the not-so-great days in comparison to days that look like this make the this so much sweeter.

My guess is you know exactly what I'm talking about. That the darkness makes way for light far more beautiful than any other light you've ever seen. That coming up for air and seeing this stretch out before you feels better than you could have ever remembered. That's the thing about hope and love and beauty. You can only experience it to it's fullest when it's been gone for a while.

As we begin this week, share a image that offers a view of the great wide open, full of possibility! Let's all soak in the goodness of today...and tomorrow.

Life Through My Lens

The word trickled through my core group of girlfriends, my tribe, that there was a diagnosis of breast cancer.  We have all been friends since high school, some of us even longer, and the majority of us are still here in California while our sweet friend who had just been diagnosed lives out of state. When something like this happens, the first people you want and need is your family. Like most of us, her family is here in California as well.  We knew that even though she was trying to be brave, she needed them. The decision to fly her in to be with her family was a simple one, so we put her on a plane and brought her home.

After we picked her up at the airport, we took her to lunch where we talked about high school and old crushes and who was still married and who had divorced.  And we laughed.  A lot.  Then finally, in a quiet and safe moment, her eyes filled with tears.  Letting go of the false bravado, she let all of her fears come to the surface and spill over while us, her tribe, did what we do best: we surrounded her with all the love, faith and hope we could give her.  It was at that moment that I picked up my camera and took this photo. 

I've taken hundreds of those happy photos we all take of babies and families and people.  I'm a photographer.  It's what I do.  But life is so much more than that, and that's what I tend to photograph: life in all it's glorious, raw beauty.  It's also what I tend to do when I can't really put what I'm feeling into words so I let my camera do the speaking for me.  When my grandma was at the end of her days, I documented it with my camera.  When my son was critically ill and there was nothing I could do but wait and hope and pray, my camera was my saving grace.  So while this photo isn't your basic posed and happy photo, the love in that photo is undeniable and that, my friends, is everything.  It's what life is all about.

Share with us today your photos depicting life. Tell us a story. We're listening.