Gap Time

A couple of weeks ago I decided that I was in need of

Gap Time —

a time to take a break from writing and sharing photographs.

It’s been a much needed break, more for my mental health, than for any other reason. Writing a blog regularly usually feeds my soul. But sometimes I get wrapped up in approval seeking or other kinds of thinking that I find are not helpful or healthy. When I notice those behaviors or thoughts creeping up I find the best way to step back into a sense of balance is to take a break.

So I took a break. And it was a lovely freeing restful break.

Today I am glad to be back writing again and sharing photographs. And most of all I am grateful to be feeling more balanced, relaxed, and at peace with myself and all of my foibles.

Minding the Gap

I came across a wonderful quote by writer and poet Mark Nepo on Instagram this week. And it felt so appropriate to where I feel I’ve been these past two weeks. Nepo went on to share the story behind  his words about “mind the gap.’ I thought his story was quite beautiful. So I’m sharing it with you today…

When I was thirty, I traveled to London for the first time to visit a friend in grad school. I immediately felt the history in the old buildings and streets. My second day there, we took the Underground from Victoria Station. As our train arrived, I realized that the space between the platform and the train was much greater than in the States. I looked at the edge of the platform. And there, etched in the concrete, was the phrase, “Mind the Gap.” The phrase instantly seemed an instruction from the gods.
Mind the gap between stillness and motion. Mind the gap between who we are and who we hope to be. Mind the gap between what’s visible and what’s not. Mind the gap between the inner life and the outer life. The phrase has stayed with me ever since—for our search for meaning depends on how we mind the gap and how we enter the spaces between things. And while we are the sum of our actions and words, the life of who we are is in the spaces filled with Spirit between our actions and words.
In time, minding the gap leads to entering the gap, which leads to living in the spaces between what is known and what remains unknown. The gap between the details of the world is where we find the invisible energy that holds everything together. 
On my return from that trip, I became a student of the gap between what we intend and what we discover. Over the years, I stopped visiting the spaces between things and started living there. I started meeting the world from the inside of life rather than darting from one external circumstance to another. What I’ve learned from this is that the heart is the perceptual organ that braids the unseeable with the seeable. The heart is the instrument that connects us to the enormous foundation that remains out of view. And so, by minding the gap and living in the gap, we help each other endure, as William Faulkner says, by lifting each other’s heart.
— Mark Nepo, Drinking From the River of Life

After reading Nepo’s words about the gap I realized that what I aspire to do in my photography and writing is to “mind the gap,” see the unseeable and visit the spaces between. I also aspire to live in “the gap,” that mysterious liminal space that is my source of wonder, joy, and beauty.

During the past 2 weeks I started taking a 3-week online class called ICM and Multiple Exposure Photography. The teacher of the class lives in the Netherlands, 2 students are from Great Britain, one from France, one from Australia, and then there is me from the United States. It’s been fascinating seeing how our love of photography connects us. And also amazing seeing photos from Australia featuring wild kangaroos leaping through the landscape. This is not something I typically see. And it was magical.

I am starting a project for this class that marries the assignment from our instructor with my desire to express feelings and experiences with grief in the past two months. Not sure how it will turn out. But it feels good to have a physical way to explore my feelings through art.

How do you mind the gap in your life? Is it time to carve out some soul time?

May you walk in beauty.

Note: Today’s photos are a combination of ICM (intentional camera movement) images layered with other images, sometimes ICM, sometimes not, for the class that I am currently taking.