My Finds
I doubt there is a secret to living a good life. If there were one, I wouldn’t keep it a secret.
It seems to me that life is one long process of discovery and change. Everywhere I go I find more pieces of the puzzle. Even when I thought the border was complete, it turns out there is another section. Another way to see. Even another way to breathe. I spend a lot of my time in physical therapy working on breathing exercises designed to help my body let go - a kind of down regulation. And when I can calm my nervous system . . . I see the world with greater clarity and every picture feels like a new direction, a new piece of the puzzle.
Piano, Strange’s Florist, May 2023
Bloomia
Peony Field, King George, Virginia, May 2023
Only a day earlier I had driven past the field, covered with thousands of cotton candy pink puffs. But on Mother’s Day morning, the harvest of peonies was nearly complete. Like the phantom pain of a missing limb, I could smell their fragrance even as the blooms were long gone.
Dichotomy
Tanning and Bail Bonds, Hanover, Virginia, May 2023
I’m not sure if this is a distinctly Southern practice or if this phenomenon happens all over the United States. Regardless, I often notice the juxtaposition of two very different, and often contradictory, businesses in the same building. I can only imagine the improbability of bailing someone out of jail with a spray tan and an up-do.