I’ve checked out the book from the library at least six times. Blind Spot by Teju Cole. The first few times, I think I only looked at the pictures. But these last few times, I’ve read the paragraphs that accompany each photograph, too. This book is almost an instruction manual for the art of seeing, and I love it more with each read.

Your progress is not a line, direct or winding, from one point to another, but a flickering series of scenes. A street is not only its tarred surface, the buildings alongside it, the cars fast or slow, the people around you. It is also the way those things relate to one another, the way they combine and recombine. As some elements slip out of view, new ones become visible: you are moving, slowly, and in the middle of this multi-dimensional movement you must decide when to press the shutter, decide which of these rapidly refreshing instants is more interesting than the others around it. A second before, it has not yet arrived. A second later, it is irretrievably gone. —Teju Cole, Blind Spot

 

I can’t decide if I am terribly naive or maybe just plain old arrogant. For most of my fifties, I felt fairly invincible. Fit, active, healthy. Aging was, in my mind, something that happened to other people. Not me. But passing through the pandemic, I rolled into my sixties, and ran smack dab into my own mortality. On the day that I took these pictures I had a routine appointment with my doctor. Weight and blood pressure both creeping up. The physician was kind . . . using words like post-menopausal and family history and doing the best you can. She gave tips like keeping a food diary and weighing myself daily— things I’ve worked hard to leave behind. Keep moving, she said. I explained my photo walks and the miles I cover, one foot before the other. For a little while, I felt sorry for myself. I slipped back into old ways, thinking I have not done enough. Cue worry and self-criticism and pressure. But the doctor does not know me. She doesn’t know how hard I have worked to stop trying to fix myself from the outside in. She doesn’t know that there are things more important than trying to be perfect (or have the perfect BMI score). A ride in the country, a day trip to take pictures, and I am restored. With my camera in hand, I am reassured that I am on the right path for me. I’ve spent a lifetime accommodating others and in the process, I’ve given away so much of myself, it sometimes feels as though there is nothing of me left. Or maybe that sense of self just never really developed at all. It’s hard to know yourself when you grow up seeking safety by trying to please others. Now is the time to let my light shine.

These are the gathering places. If there is anything I have learned at all, it is that fear can isolate us in ways far-reaching. Those sharp words we utter. Those feelings of doubt and shame. Loneliness. The times we sit in the car and cry those big tears, overtaken. They all seem rooted in fear of one shade or the other. And the path to relief and joy is not to deny those fears, bury them, hide from them or run from them. The way to healing is acknowledging the pain. If there is even one person who bears witness to your sorrow, that pain is lessened. And you can breathe again. Just by gathering.

 

“But there’s another way to pay attention. A less intense way. Like when you’re enjoying a colorful sunset or lying in a field watching the clouds drift by overhead. You’re still observing, but with a sense of effortlessness and curiosity.” —The Way Out, Alan Gordon with Alon Ziv

I’m bored of taking pictures of flowers alone, finding myself more interested in the architecture of gardens. The textures and light and the most basic and essential elements of gardens. The tools, the planting, the watering. Buds and blossoms. Things just beginning to grow and certainly those things in decay. I do not have access to the inside of the greenhouse, so I make the best of focusing through 2 layers of glass—the lens and the wall of the greenhouse.

Not having to fix everything right away is really liberating.

I’m grateful for this season of life. Even the night’s when I wake up at 4am and can’t get back to sleep. Without such nights, I doubt I would have this opportunity to explore and take pictures in the garden at sunrise.