A local landmark, the Snack Shack, is closing for good. I’ve taken pictures of the place in its heyday, and I’m glad I did. All that is left now are remnants. A sign with the menu printed on the side and a toilet out back.

We rode down to visit Wayside Park in Dahlgren, Virginia but the park had been subsumed into the landscape of the new Harry Nice bridge between Virginia and Southern Maryland. Next door, there is Barnes Field Park. The ball fields are being readied for spring games and there is another version of a snack shack there, too.

These pictures are not social commentary. They do not represent nostalgia or longing. Not anticipation, appreciation or even hope. In my mind, they are art.

"To make living itself an art, that is the goal."—Henry Miller

There is something so ordered about these pictures. Carefully framed. Coordinated. All lined up like a family posing for a Christmas card picture. The arrangement doesn’t feel phony, but it does feel safe. Safe is not bad or wrong. It is perfectly natural to want to feel safe. But once we find our footing and feel safe for awhile, we can begin to stop protecting and guarding. We can come to see life as fragile. And maybe it is our ability to embrace this fragility that allows us to create art that is meaningful in a deeper kind of way, where the whole of human experience is felt rather than crafted. I can arrange as many collages as I want, take as many pretty pictures as I see, but there is no way to order life.

The picture in the middle, the one of the pink camellias, was taken in front of the cozy cottage where my Great Aunt Christine and Great Uncle Gene lived on Monroe Bay Avenue. It’s one of the few houses left in the small town where I grew up that is still recognizable. Aunt Christine was my grandfather’s sister, one of seven children in that family. She and Uncle Gene had no children of their own but I recall they treated me and my sisters with delight. When my mother passed away I somehow ended up with a family Bible that had been Aunt Christine’s. Inside, births and deaths of various family members were carefully recorded in her beautiful script handwriting. These memories color my days like creamer poured into a steaming mug of coffee. There is no judgment, just a sweet recalling.

Some years I think I will not take another spring picture. Not a magnolia blossom or a Lenten rose. I will not wrestle with the green-yellow of spring grass or inhale pollen that makes my asthma flare. I vow to look for different subjects. And then spring sneaks up on me. I feel like a kid again. Only this time, I am not afraid to be myself. I hold the camera knowing it connects me to the world. It feels as though I have spent most of my life looking for a sense of belonging. And now I have found it in the place least expected—inside myself.

More pictures on film . . . Olympus OM-1 and Kodak portra 400

Short Stories.

I waited a long time for this season of life, where every day did not have to be compressed.

Long story, short.

I am careful to make space so that the stories have room to unfold. My schedule is often wide open and this means I say no a lot. There has been an adjustment, much like the loosening of a spring, making breathing easier and acceptance possible.

The sieves used to prepare the soil for the garden. The vintage clothing hanging in the window of Folking. The dock at Hick’s Landing on a chilly end-of-winter morning. Almost spring magnolia blooms at Grelen Nursery. The mural on the side of the botanical apothecary.

These are the short stories of my week. On film.