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Something Larger

Yesterday as I came in the door from the garage I forgot for a moment that my dear cat Gracie was no longer with us. My heart lifted for a moment expecting her to greet me at the door. And then when I realized that no, she wasn’t there to greet me, I felt a wave of grief. Every day I feel as if I am learning something new about the topography of grief. But mostly I realize that grief is teaching me about Something Larger and more universal about life. I feel as if I am learning about love Read more…

By Marilyn, ago

Mistakes Happen

This morning I picked up my camera to photograph a pair of mallard ducks in the pond behind our house. Unfortunately I had forgotten that the last time I used my camera I set the camera settings to allow longer exposures for intentional camera movement images. I made about a dozen photos but I was so busy watching and photographing the ducks that I didn’t look closely at the photos I had made. When I finally looked at them, every single photo was full of motion blur. I found myself saying, “Oh well… Mistakes Happen… unexpected things happen, let’s see Read more…

By Marilyn, ago

The In Between Spaces

The turning of the seasons each year brings me many opportunities to explore The In Between Spaces when the season is neither all one or all another thing. For me this is the season of possibility, liminality, standing on the threshold, neither in one place or another. Who knows what each day will bring? This morning I saw a glaze of ice covering most of the pond behind our house. Earlier this week I noticed that the ice of winter had finally melted — water to ice, ice to water, water to ice again. That is the way of this Read more…

By Marilyn, ago

Is It Already Spring?

Yesterday I noticed that the ice in the pond behind our house had all melted. And it was also gone in the pond that is just down the hill across the street from us and in Parker’s Lake which is also nearby. I found myself asking Is It Already Spring? This is not such an unusual question when I remember last winter and the snow which persisted until mid-April. I saw photos on Instagram yesterday of early spring flowers at the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum, and on my walk, I saw signs of the early blooms of some of the trees Read more…

By Marilyn, ago

Bear Witness

I went to Lakewood Cemetery late last week to make ICM photographs for my final photography class assignment (a 3-week class that I am enjoying immensely). My intention was to go there and somehow in some way Bear Witness to all of my feelings swirling in the midst of this winter’s events, both positive and negative. Somehow I thought that I could use the setting to express the mix of phenomenal beauty and pain of living in this world. Essentially, all expression has two noble intentions: to try to say what is unsayable and to bear witness to what is. Read more…

By Marilyn, ago