Cancer, Photography, PTSD, Thoughts

A New Lens on Life

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Sometimes the numb sneaks up on me and settles in under my awareness leaving disconnection, isolation, and feelinglessness in place of life. I trudge on through days or weeks (sometimes years) without knowing I’m disconnected from deep emotion. Then suddenly it passes and I am flooded with the disconnected emotion returning. Like a couple of days ago when I found myself wanting to cry when I should have been relieved.

Yesterday I took a new (to me) camera lens out for a test spin. As so often happens, focusing on something else which requires me to be completely present and in the world let my subconscious work. As I wandered about learning just how shallow of a depth of field an 85mm f/1.8 camera lens has, things started to shift into place.

Earlier this year, in the middle of realizing we were going to need to move across the country, I found out I likely have thyroid cancer. Apparently, there hasn’t been enough trauma in my life, so the universe added the big “C” to my story.

It started simply enough in January at my annual physical. My doctor felt something on one lobe of my thyroid, and so out of an abundance of caution she sent me to have an ultrasound. It came back suspicious. Which prompted an FNA (Fine Needle Aspiration) biopsy. Which came back as very suspicious. A sample was sent for further testing, which came back as likely cancer… but not completely positive. I was for a few moments, very appropiately freaked out, but soon slid into numbness as it became too much. Dysfunctional coping skills learned in childhood to live with repeated trauma resurfaced to help me avoid feeling this too.

The next step is a Surgical Biopsy, which is a misnomer since it means actually taking out that half of the thyroid. So while my life is turning over, I consult with a surgeon and set a date for surgery in Atlanta after we are set to move to Chicago. It’s the only real step I can take, so blind and numb, I accept it. Then a few weeks later after we switch our move destination to California. I manage to wrangle a consult with a surgeon in the Bay Area.

The day after our one-way trip to SFO, I meet my new surgeon. We set August 14th as my new surgery date. Already overloaded with the move, there is only a twinge of feeling. Then nothing.

The surgery came and went, along with my whole thyroid since a rapid pathology check during the surgery finally confirmed cancer. So my “surgical biopsy” became a Thyroidectomy. Post surgical pathology confirmed good margins all around the spots of cancer, but also that it has spread to an adjacent lymph node.

That bit in a lymph node raised my risk. So, I was sent for a RAI (RadioActive Iodine) scan to check for further spread and assess for the need of RAI therapy. The 90 minutes I spent having to lie perfectly still in that machine while sensors looked for gamma rays emitted by the I-123 absorbed by any thyroid remnants and possible spots of cancer gave me a chance to use another of my childhood survival skills – disconnecting from the current moment by dissociation. The followup consult with the nuclear medicine doctor brought good news. Besides the expected thyroid remnants, there was nothing. No further spread.

I should have been relieved, joyous, happy; a weight lifted off my shoulders. Instead for the last two days, all I’ve felt is scared. All I’ve wanted to do is cry. I can feel it just under the surface, ready to spill forth, but it hasn’t yet. I’m not quite unstuck from numb.

Walking around yesterday with my new camera lens, I was getting frustrated at taking so many out of focus shots. As I fiddled and adjusted, I found that a higher f-stop gave me clear subjects. Then I discovered things further away were in better focus even when the lens was wide open. By the end of my walk I was getting several keepers. I wasn’t creating art yet, but I was figuring out how with extra care and attention I could create beauty with this lens.

Later in the evening as I was sorting photos and discarding (so, so many) bad ones, I could more clearly see on the larger display of my computer what had been happening. Taking photos with the lens wide open at a distance of about 6 feet, the depth of field (the range of what is in focus) is only about 1.5 inches. Everything closer or further away than that thin slice of space 6 feet away is fuzzy –out of focus. A breeze moving a flower back and forth pushes the bloom out of the small range which is in focus. One petal might be sharp, but the rest of them would be blurry.

I nailed the focus in this shot… on the leaf just below the flower and the petal closest to it.

This lens, as glorious as it is, has a very narrow window of tolerance for focus. So it appears do I.

Faced with something overwhelming, such as cancer, and then topped with the possibility of metastasis, I flew out of my narrow window of tolerance for feeling emotion. I dropped right back to my long-practiced coping mechanism of numb. Getting diagnosed with cancer is a traumatic event. It leaves no control over what will happen. It leads to pain, to suffering, and possibly even to death. These experiences are literally the very things which cause PTSD. A traumatic childhood set me up to deal with future trauma reflexively in the way I always had.

So here I am with a new lens on my life. I have to handle things very carefully. I can still create art, make a life worth living, and feel my feelings, but it takes great attention and skill when even the slightest breeze can blow me out the window into numb.

PTSD, Thoughts

Golden Dream

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For over a year my life has been frozen. I’ve been wading through a world trying to not only erase who I am but drive me into the shadows. Every day seemed to bring a new effort to shrink my existence and take away my rights, Being a childhood trauma survivor, the effect is multiplied, pushing me back into anxiety, fear, and disconnection. I’ve been wandering through life mildly triggered and disconnected, once again questioning whether I can have a meaningful life in this world which feels so unsafe.

There are three typical reactions to a traumatic situation. The first two, fight or flight are colloquial knowledge. The third, the freeze , is less well known outside of the psychological and mental health professions. It can be a precursor to fight or flight as the body prepares to take one action or the other. It can also be a defense mechanism in and of itself, like the snow hare who freezes against the backdrop of the white, drift covered forest floor when the arctic fox trots by. As a trauma survivor, I often get caught in a freeze like that hare when there is no clear path to safety.

As a queer woman in The South married to another queer woman, we stood out. As a married girl couple holding hands or kissing or just being together we were intensely visible even in our small queer friendly town. At first it was validating to be seen, but as the culture war on queer folk turned to a legislative attacks being seen made us a visible target.

“Don’t Say Gay,” Drag Bans, Bathroom Bills, and other laws passed around us in Florida, Alabama, and Tennessee. I disconnected from knowing more.

I had grown up in hot, humid central Florida, where Disney World visits were just part of life. Every major holiday, visit by a family member, or significant life event seemed to call for a trip to Disney. The joyful escape into a world of fantasy had become woven into the fabric of my life. As an adult I continued to find joy in its embrace, first with my son, then later with my wife. But suddenly Florida was a culture-warrior on the front lines of battle. The state of my long adopted hometown was feeling less safe. My days got fuzzier. I vacillated between compulsively checking the news and actively avoiding it in competing efforts to be informed and to avoid obsessive immersion.

Cinderella Castle at Walt Disney World just before Enchantment, my happy place.

Then on a trip to Disney World we stopped for gas in Gainesville, FL. As I stood pumping gas into the car, my wife opened the passenger door and held out a bag. “Hey, Babe – could you put this in the trash can for me?” with synchronized precision, three other customers around us all turned and stared at me, at us – the queer couple. It had suddenly become personal and intensely uncomfortable. We flew to Orlando on our next trip.

Just wishing things would get better, that the world would come to its senses, seemed hopeless. So, filled with helplessness and unsure of a path forward, I slipped into a traumatic freeze. Falling back into the coping skills I’d learned as a child, unable to protect myself or run away from what was happening, I became stuck – frozen. My home, my career, my life was in a place which was becoming increasingly unsafe and unwelcoming. Suddenly, intrusive memories from my past were coming up unbidden again. I was going backwards. I struggled to enjoy or even live my life because I felt unsafe most of the time. My little progressive book loving town no longer felt safe enough anymore.

Then early this year, my own state joined in legislative culture war with 14 anti-LGBT bills during the legislative session and a ban on DEI in higher education where my day job is. Sure the ban was disguised as protecting academic freedom, but shortly after it was enacted anything with diversity in the title was canceled or cut. Somehow the threat getting so close, right on my own doorstep, helped get me unstuck. I caught up to where my wife had been for a while. It was time to leave before things got worse, before something bad happened to us, before we got trapped and couldn’t go.

Even though I had been stuck over the preceding year, we’d managed to explore places we could move to. Travel helped keep my mind from falling into the darkest places, so we checked out Albuquerque, Denver, Albany NY, Southern California, and Chicago. They all had their charms and challenges, but Chicago seemed to fit us best. It was the city of my young childhood and my beloved Cubbies. I’d always loved it. The towering skyscrapers, the expansive lake, affordable homes, great restaurants, and lots of culture just felt right. So as the need for action unfroze me some, we started planning a move by looking at houses and jobs. It seemed destiny was showing us a path forward, and things were working out. We were going to the Windy City and the safety of its warm midwestern charm.

The Windy City is alive.

And yet, fate still wasn’t done with me, I just didn’t know it. We flew to Chicago for a long weekend and picked the suburb we were going to live in. We met the Realtor we were going to buy through. We explored and got comfortable. Out of the blue, I got a call for an interview in San Francisco…then a followup interview.

Months earlier on a lark, I’d submitted an application to a university in San Francisco — my favorite city on earth. It was someplace I’d always wanted to live, but believed to be forever out of reach. So I never expected my application would amount to anything or that we could actually make a move across the country to one of the highest cost of living regions in America. It was a pleasant fantasy, an effort to escape my fear and pain.

An offer arrived for that university job in San Francisco. After we’d decided to move to Chicago, after we had made plans, told people, gotten comfortable with the idea, and even bought new winter coats. Now the truly unexpected was in front of me.

This offer seemed good enough that we could make it work. My wife’s company even had an office nearby. There would be no frigid, snowy winters. I’d evolved from being stuck, to a hopeful path to Chicago, to having choices. These were not just the choices of desperation, but between things I truly wanted. We decided to follow our dream. After having only visited San Francisco twice in her life, for a total of 5 days, my wife took a leap and jumped aboard for the ride. We would move to the bay area and follow my golden dream.

Six weeks later with all of our belongings in six suitcases and a couple of moving containers plus our car on a transport truck, we left The South on a one-way flight to SFO. That was three months ago at the beginning of this endlessly sunny California summer. Those five-and-a-half hours in the air shifted my life completely from where I was. Here nobody notices the queer girl couple, we are simply part of the cultural tapestry. We see ourselves reflected in many others. The laws work to protect our rights instead of the opposite. As I find my place in our chosen home, it has started to sink in. I am safe here.

Today I sit in a coffee shop with my laptop able to write for the first time in almost a year. I am finally thawing enough in California’s golden sun to find my voice again, to be present in the world. I am alive again. I never want to lose the freedom I have found here.

PTSD

Past becomes present

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It’s taken me many years to realize the past is never truly behind us. No matter how hard I work to process memories, to build coping skills, to make a safe place for myself in the world, to keep grounded in the present, at any moment the past can become my present. Despite all of my work and awareness, it still surprises me that past trauma leaks into the present.

I was traveling recently, spending a few days in Albuquerque with my wife enjoying New Mexican food and time with new friends. Like all travel there were ups and downs. Visiting the Folk Art Museum in Santa Fe and lunch at The Pantry were both definite positives, the altitude, summertime heat, and sparsity of the Albuquerque’s downtown distinct negatives. Yet, as we wound down the last night our trip was leaning into the positive experience column.

Then a cousin reached out to let me know she’d heard my mom was in the hospital in Florida. Her electrolytes were very low and things were serious. It was too late to call anyone on the east coast, so I had to sit with worry until morning when I could call to my mother’s best friend for more info. It was a long night, and fortunately I found the situation had improved overnight and mom was out of danger. Yet I’ve been reeling ever since on an emotional time travel journey I didn’t expect or need.

ABQ as seen from the air

Anxiety has become my almost constant companion. Arms crawling and aching, an ongoing drop in my stomach, fuzzy and disconnected from the world, I have just been getting through each day. Every time I talk to my mother, it throws me further off, to the point my wife takes one glance at me post phone call, and asks what’s wrong. And yet, I still struggle to connect to whatever these feelings are because I am once again the child who could be unsafe at any moment.

For years after my childhood memories came tumbling out of my head, I was completely disconnected from my mother. Interacting with her was too much of a trigger for me. I’d wind up struggling and anxious, yet disconnected from those same emotions. Instead I’d feel flat and numb just like I had been as a child. Which made sense – I’d never been able to deal with what happened to me in the moment. I was a child with no tools and no means of escape, so the experiences and emotions got bottled up and stored in the cellar for another day, or maybe forever.

For a decade, I’ve been operating on the premise that time and work in therapy would lessen the impact of these past experiences and emotions. That they were being processed into manageable chunks. Since the Pandemic, I have slowly, cautiously reconnected with my mother in small ways. Occasional texts, comments on posted photographs, or a card might pass between us, but never real contact. Finally last year we met for dinner on a visit to Florida at a restaurant familiar to both of us. My wife and my mother finally got to meet, and I was OK. Still, we went back to occasional contact, which has been ok until now.

I guess I am learning that there is a difference between playing in the shallow end of the pool next to the stairs where I can easily climb out to walk away and the power of a deep ocean filled with towering waves and tricky rip currents. Suddenly I’ve been tossed into the abyss, with my meager swimming skills from the kiddie pool swamped by the swells. All I can do is keep floating and wait for the current to let me go so I can swim back to shore.

Emotional Time Travel has been part of my experience before, but it’s never been so pervasive as this, lasting for weeks. If I am so affected by interacting with someone who was adjacent to my childhood experiences what will it be like if I reconnect with someone who experienced them with me? Or worse, how could I cope with running into an abuser from my past? I fear I will be lost at sea.

Art, PTSD

One Way

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The life of a trauma survivor doesn’t feel like a straight line, but rather like those geometric shapes I used to draw as a child with a spirograph. You’d put the tip of your pen in a hole inside a small clear plastic gear, which sat inside of a ring gear on a sheet of paper. You’d loop the pen around and around with the line surfing away from a central point, but always, eventually looping back to that same starting point now matter how much you’d loop and swirl.

Examples of spirograph drawings

It would look like maybe you were going someplace new, but however interesting the path, you always looped back through that same groove to the starting point. It’s pretty to look at, but you don’t really get anywhere.

Going through life with childhood trauma mirrors that looping experience. You start heading away from the trauma, getting on with your life. Until something happens which reminds you. Something big, like the death of an abuser, or something small like unexpected the smell of bleach.

Congratulations, you’ve hit the apex of your arc, no longer soaring through the blankness of possibility, looping away from your past. Inexorably the gravity of trauma pulls you — back down crashing into the singularity. After a while in the black hole, you gather yourself, breathe and start to move away again. Over, and over and over the cycle runs.

Lately I’ve been wondering if the point of trauma therapy is about making those loops taller and taller, about expanding the ring gear which keeps you cycling through the same past. And maybe, just maybe that ring expands so much that it thins out to the breaking point. Instead of constraining the arc the ring fractures, and suddenly you are free. Having reached escape velocity, you can make a one way departure from your past. The original trauma isn’t erased, you’re just no longer doomed to spend your life circling it.

But you’re not constantly looping back, down into the darkness, where do we go from here? There is only one way to go. Forward. Before the past can pull you back in again.

And so I turn my face into the wind and start moving into my future. I choose to live my life, for me. I’ve lost so much to trauma in the early years, and then decades more trapped in the after effects, unaware trauma was keeping me stuck, unable to live. So now when I feel free of the pull of darkness, I choose to do hard things just to prove I can, to remind me how strong I really am. To push myself to stretch that loop to the breaking point, and finally beyond. I choose to tell my story because it needs to be told, and maybe it will help somebody somewhere make sense of their their own story.

PTSD

Rain Crashes Down

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For the last several weeks I’ve been battling The Numb. It’s spread over my life insidiously, filling the lows like rain does puddles, and shaving off the highs of my days leaving me flat and disconnected from feeling. The world around me seems slightly distant, as seen through a window from inside. It’s clearly out there but sensory input is muted by glass and walls insulating me from feeling.

I have coping mechanisms, but they aren’t working as well as I wish they would. My go-to methods of pushing back the numb seem blunted lately. Walking outside works while I’m moving. Footfalls literally ground me with each step. Once I’m done though, things turn flat again. Music will sometimes catch a feeling for the length of a song if I’m lucky, but then it too fades into the background. Even photography, walking with my camera to see intently and capture beauty I can feel in the world around me is fleeting, lasting not much longer than the click of the shutter.

I’ve been in this place before. In between the flood of memories, I would go flat, my sensory limit reached, my receptors for feeling overloaded. Eventually they would calm and reset, allowing me to feel again. Like now, I crave getting feelings back, reentering the world of color and variety. I know I should know the feelings will return, the numb will fade and I will return to balance, but in the middle of emotional doldrums, that’s a challenging thing to hold on to.

So I reach for the expedient thing – distraction. Reading the news, following blogs on my favorite topics (Disney, photography, travel, etc), and training for a 10 mile race in April are ways to fill time that pull my attention away from the numb even if they don’t bring much feeling back.

But then I wonder if some of the things I’m reading in the news about the state of the world I live in — war, strife, and hate — are part of the cause and the news is becoming less of a coping mechanism. The world feels less safe lately with the war in the Ukraine and numerous legislative attacks on LGBT people and our right to exist. It’s all suddenly become more personal, and I’m starting to suspect that is eliciting an old protective response.

As a child I lived in an unsafe world where bad things could happen at any moment, and even people I should be able to trust might hurt me. My world *was* unsafe, and there was nothing I could do about it. I was powerless in the face of repeated trauma. Even those who should protect me were part of it. A child can’t stand up to or get away from parents and caregivers who abuse. So I coped by finding a way to not know most of the time and by disconnecting from my feelings.

This feels a lot like the world outside my window right now. So perhaps it makes sense I’m disconnecting and numb so much, that I’m falling back to what has worked in the past.

But then suddenly today out of the blue came the most powerful grounding tool I can use. While driving to pick up my wife, rain came crashing down.

Rain Crashes Down

Heavy pelting rain is a whole body, multi-sensory experience for me. The sound of the rain fills my ears, if it’s heavy enough (like tonight) I can even feel the sound. The smell of the air changes as it becomes heavy touching my skin in a cool, humid caress. The water in the air absorbs other sound, and so the rest of the world goes quiet. The light dims and diffuses, giving my tired eyes relief.

That brief, unexpected rainstorm picked me up and slammed me into the ground. I sat and watched the water run in rivulets down the car windows as I waited for my wife. Drops would form into beads, which would merge together and gathering critical mass course down the glass. They washed away for a while my overload. The numb parted and I can feel again.

I hope it rains tomorrow.

Photography, PTSD

A Photo a Day to Keep the Numb Away

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Normally I don’t notice how numb I can be throughout the day. Time slips by as I go about my daily tasks and routine. I’m usually without awareness of disconnection from my emotional experience. It’s not until I encounter something which elicits a strong emotion that my general numbness becomes apparent. Those strong feelings are bold, scalding coffee cutting through my foggy emotional morning. When I’m paying attention, and attuned to my internal emotional state, I find I crave strong emotions much as night owls jones for their morning coffee.

Mug lined with the remains of a Latte

I’ve written often about my emotional numbness before. You can find mention of it in “The Bridge” and other posts here, yet I still have trouble holding on to the knowledge that numbness is a symptom of PTSD. When I know I’m overwhelmed and numb, I have various tools to help me come back to the world of feeling – cold glass on my face, a walk outside, a cup of hot coffee or tea, snuggling with Thurman or one of my stuffed animals. These all help most when I’m overwhelmed, but none truly gets me unnumb.

Early on working through my returning childhood memories, I found journaling the most effective way to process my experiences. Peeking into my life back then you’d find me in a coffee shop with my headphones on writing in my journal. Unknowingly I was using my two secret weapons to climb out of the pit of unfeeling into the world of color, emotion, and light — music and creative pursuits.

Four Old Bullet Journals
A collection of old journals. Did you notice I like Teal?!

Music is a constant in my world. It not only keeps me present, but it brings emotion to the surface on its own. I’ve discovered some artists and music types work better for me than others to elicit an emotional response. If I’m writing, ambient chill and non-vocal trance open the floodgates without disturbing the flow of words onto the page. If I’m drawing or taking camera walks, my playlist expands to include electronic pop and vocal trance. So there is often music playing in my headphones as I walk, or at my desk as I work to write. Playlists are like the handle of a lumberjack’s favorite axe there’s a well worn groove that fits me perfectly.

And yet, I am numb and disconnected from my emotional experience more than I want. I crave connection with my feelings, and to keep the numb at bay. So, this year I’m going to try something a bit different. I’m going to lean into one of my creative pursuits in a new way.

Leaning purple flowers
Even the flowers say I should lean into photography…

I’m going to do a 365 photography challenge — posting a photo a day on Instagram. Taking photographs forces me to see the world in a different way. In order to capture a photo that has meaning, I have to pay attention and feel whatever my subject is. If I don’t feel I can’t make a good picture. Seems like a challenge for someone who is numb right?

Fortunately, there is some untold magic for me in holding a camera and trying to find the image I want, in trying to feel the emotion I want to capture. When working to see strongly, to be open to the world of light, the numbness begins to thaw. I’m unaware it’s happening until the tingle of presence washes over me. The process reminds me of Arthur Dent learning to fly in “So Long and Thanks for All the Fish.” He forgot to hit the ground when he was falling, and so started flying. When looking for an image that speaks to me, I forget to bump into the numbness and instead soar into fervor and sentiment.

So every day that I can this year, I will focus on finding at least one image that sparks a reaction in me. I’ll capture and share it with the world in hopes that this repeated action over time of finding feeling will make it a habit. Perhaps a photo a day will keep the numb away.

Poppies on a Northern California hillside
Perhaps this can be the first catch-up photo of the day!
Disney, Photography

Flowers of Disney

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Growing up on the Space Coast of Florida near the Port Canaveral home of Disney Cruise Line and just an hour from Walt Disney World, it was probably inevitable I’d become a bit of a Disney fan. Being so close, I’m sure I went to the parks at least a dozen times before I graduated from high school. When I moved away after finishing college, there was at least a dozen year gap before I returned with my six year old son, and could rediscover the parks through his eyes. From the rides, to the parades, to the hidden mickeys to the deep theming, I watched him find joy for himself as I had. Sharing in his experiences I found happiness there too. In high school, I never expected I’d be visiting Disney world as an adult much focusing on the flowers of Disney World.

Since that first return, I’ve been back at least another dozen times with my son. Now he is grown, and I continue visit, but now with my wife. On good days it is a place for us to escape the pressures of daily life. It is somewhere to be present without worrying about what comes next and to feel joy without judgement. However as a survivor of childhood trauma who lives with PTSD, the crowds can overwhelm, the enclosed queues can make me feel trapped, and frustrated parents yelling at their children can trigger me.

Fresh Orchids grace the lobby of the Contemporary Hotel at Walt Disney World.

I’ve found my typical coping techniques can sometimes work in these situations, but not always. Fortunately, I’ve discovered a very specific distraction which I’m currently enjoying. I pay extra attention to the flowers of Disney. I find if I slow down a bit and try to notice, the detailed landscaping becomes more visible. I wander the parks with my camera handy in my backpack looking for flowers, and find they are everywhere.

Snapdragons almost under my feet in the hub as I wait for the Festival of Fantasy parade.

They offer calm in the middle of the maelstrom. They are indifferent to the lives of those around them. They only car about sun, water and soil. For years, I missed the thousands of blooms present in the parks every day. Then I started to look. Now I find planters everywhere full of common varieties – well tended greenery crowned with color.

Impatients covered with dew in the town square.

Sometimes I find something a bit more exotic. In either case, I pull my camera out and search for what catch my eye, for bursts of color which make me feel something. Then I carefully frame and capture them as closely to how I experience them as I can. I soak in the beauty around me which others walking by a few feet away miss. The calm focus helps keep me present.

Hostas along a path outside the entrance of Disney Hollywood Studios

I breathe, I absorb the calm, and feel better, ready for the next thing, able to be fully present. As my collection of photos grows, I’ve wondered – why not share them with others? So here some from my last trip, and hopefully there will be more to come. I want to share both my calm and my joy es expressed by nature’s fireworks close to the ground.

A bed of flowers in the Magic Kingdom.
Photography, PTSD

Spring Forward

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It’s the time of year when the world is warming and brightening in fits and starts. Grey skies follow sun warmed blooming flowers, both trailed by frost – it makes the senses spin and the wardrobe catapult back and forth from sweaters to shorts. This is a bitter sweet time of year for me as winter gives way to spring, with a promise of the summer so full of reminders of the things I don’t want to remember.

Sunset in late winter.

I love the edge seasons, the in-between, the becoming. Fall and Spring are my home in the quarters of the year. Perhaps because change fits me like the old sweater I wore just last week, or because like the capris of a couple days ago, they are the harbinger of things to come. Spring and Fall keep me on my toes wondering what is next. Perhaps it’s because they are neither too hot or too cold – extremes I no longer seem to enjoy much. Deep inside, I know long, hot summer days connect to things just below awareness, bringing floating fragments to the surface, a tingly crawling to my arms, and a shake to my hands. So I’ll linger in spring as long as I can in the momentary embrace of a safe season. Sometimes I’d rather not spring forward.

A wall of purple life in the brown of winter.

Last week the three giant Japanese Magnolia trees at the park next to our house were beginning their yearly display. Driving home I saw them blossoming forth through the misty overcast evening. Disappointed at the poor light of the late hour, and determined to capture some decent photos this year, I made a mental note to head out the next day with my camera when the sun was right and the weather favorable.

It actually took for days for everything to align, but I found myself stomping up and down the little hillside with camera in hand trying to do justice to the sea of buds just set to open. While I searched, a neighbor I’d not yet met saw me and wandered over to introduce himself. It turns out he organizes a local photography meetup group. His card in my pocket, I went back to what I was focused on, intent on capturing an image which would convey the feeling of facing a flood of color. I found myself working hard to stay in this moment for as long as possible even after I was sure I had what I’d originally come for.

Japanese Magnolia tree covered in buds

Then I walked with the camera for a bit to find another moment, but as the evening wore on, I wasn’t seeing much to capture eye and heart, so I headed home. My thoughts were wandering too far from the serenity of the blooms. I felt their pull to darker places, and without something to keep my attention I decided it best to be home if an unpleasant memory or flashback popped up.

Stepping back in the house, done for the evening, I set my camera on the table and headed to the back porch to check out the sinking sun. I found something unexpected in one of my wind chimes.

I love wind chimes, their sound, their look, their delicate swaying presence. I have a special spot in my soul for geode chimes specifically. I’m sure I’ll write about them some day and dredge up a picture of my first geode – the one I picked from a pile at a roadside stand outside of Yellowstone then handed to an overalled man who cut it in two on his diamond bladed saw. The idea of prehistoric gas bubbles trapped in rock was already up the alley of this budding science geek, but then when I looked inside… there were crystals – geologic art hidden inside a boring grey rock. I was hooked.

A geode holds our star in its core.

Here, perfectly aligned with the setting sun on my back porch, one of my geode chimes held our star in its crystals. The universe once again is reminding me to stay present, to pay attention, to see the wonders in front of me, and not to give echos of the past too much sway.

Photography, Writing

The Bridge

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I am so excited to share my first publication! Published by the spectacular crew at SFWP – the Santa Fe Writers Project – I present

“The Bridge” —> here

as included in the 27th issue of the SFWP Quarterly. Please read and enjoy! Feel free to leave something in the tip jar if you like it or simply want to support independent literary publications.

You can follow #SFWP on twitter and instagram – I certainly do! Many thanks to Monica Prince and Nicole Schmidt for finding my piece worthy of their special issue focused on the body.

A bit of background – bridges both literal and metaphorical litter the landscape of my life. So it seems only fitting that my first published piece is about a bridge. Even more specifically apropos I found photos of the Golden Gate from a solo trip years ago to enliven this entry. Suppose I’ll have to explain some to connect those things together, how one bridge led to another.

Often I write here about my attempts to cope with the after effects of childhood trauma in the present day, about the struggle to make sense of it all. Back in the early days of remembering these long hidden parts of my childhood, when fresh memories were flooding forth daily, I was completely overwhelmed. Almost a year later still exhausted despite the flow finally reducing to a narrow stream, I had nothing left. None of it made much sense and I had little capacity to create some order from fragmented bits of childhood newly strewn across my awareness.

Given the opportunity to spend a day, a single 24 hour day in San Francisco before attending a conference in San Jose, I lept at the chance. I needed time and space to myself, an opportunity to reflect while revisiting my favorite city on the planet. Perhaps it would help. I needed to try something to help myself find some small respite.

One night a few weeks before the trip, I sketched freehand from memory the Golden Gate Bridge – solid, eternal, foreboding, and yet reassuring. The sketch inspired my plan a visit to the bay front, to sketch again from real life in hopes of calming the anxiousness within. Maybe some of the strength I saw in my mind’s eye would rub off on me for real as the graphite of pencil rubbed off on paper as I sketched from shore.

Finally the day arrived. Fresh from my bright blue airport shuttle and with several hours before sunset, I walked from my hotel near the Presidio down through the Palace of Fine Arts to the bay – to sketch. The scrape of pencil on paper, the low moan of the wind, the screeching of the gulls, the rumble of distant surf and lap of water kept me present while I worked.

Yet, before I finished, it was apparent I needed to move. The anxiety and tears were back yet again, brought forth by something unknown. Perhaps memories of family trips to the Bay Area as a child. Perhaps something else. In any case, my best tool for dealing with overwhelm was to walk. So on the spot, I resolved to walk to Fort Point and the Bridge.

I had hoped for introspection, for knowledge, for calm from my visit to sketch beach. Instead I found my path incomplete. As I walked more realization dawned. This journey – how to become who I am, whatever I am, was just beginning. I was so unsure of my life and path in that moment. How does one live an authentic life, one worth living, when you don’t know your whole story, when you aren’t even quite sure who you are or what your place is in the world. How could I know where I was headed if I’d so little idea of where I’d been?

It’s actually quite a long way from sketch beach all the way down to Fort Point and the bridge. I wasn’t really prepared for it, but the body needed to move and so I walked. It’s probably a good thing I walked miles that day. My nervous system calmed with the input of my surroundings and the continuous motion. I became more rooted in the present. I had plenty of time to just be.

Golden Gate panorama

As I neared the point I started to snap pictures. The camera had been an afterthought added to my bag when I was focused on packing my sketch pad and drawing supplies. Now it became a central part of my experience as angles and framing caught my eye – old habits came back unaware to the rest of me. My photographic muscles contracting in a reflexive echo of youth.

Finally I reached the highest point of the old fort under the bridge. Gazing up into the geometric complexities of the underbelly and the sheer enormity of the edifice above me, I knew if humanity could build this span of steel and concrete to connect to disparate shores, it was possible for me to do the same. I could survive, and even thrive. I was sure I could make it back to the life I should have had. It would be an arduous journey, but one I had to make.

Every step since then has been toward the life I never had a chance to live. “The Bridge” is a piece of that story.

Photography, PTSD

Seeing Strongly…

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I’ve yet again been having a difficult time reading for fun. I miss reading. For so long it was my escape, my mental retreat from the world. I always carried a book with me to turn found time into fun time. Now this dearth of pleasure in reading seems to crop up when I’m struggling with memories from the past or other PTSD symptoms underneath the surface. My stack of YA and nonfiction sits untouched on the shelves next to the bed along with compounding magazine subscriptions occupying an ever growing pile of electrons inside my Kindle.

So these last few weeks I’ve attempted to use my newly discovered coping skill of reading about cameras and photography more intentionally when I noticed I’m not able to attend to reading. Why not read and actually learn to improve my craft as I distract from knowing the overwhelming things creeping up on me? I might as well get something out of my coping mechanism.

So there has been been quite a lot of reading photography books instead. I can attend to these at least somewhat. I started with Joe McNally’s “The Hot Shoe Diaries” and then “The Photographer’s Eye” by Michael Freeman. Both were interesting in their own way. Joe’s book was fun to read, Michael’s informative but neither was fulfilling the need for authenticity and perhaps deeper meaning I was seeking.

On a whim I went on a used book buying spree one weekend ordering all of Ansel Adams’ “The Camera”, “The Negative”, and “The Print” in his photography series plus another of examples on the making of forty iconic photos. I’ve long loved and admired Adams’ work so finally reading these books makes sense.

Well… mostly since unfortunately there’s a deeper layer here. My father idolized Ansel, and so his work sometimes disturbs slumbering memories from the depths. It makes for hesitant reading. After trying to read a couple of the Adams books and making minimal progress, I stumbled across “The Art of Photography” by Bruce Barnum and decided perhaps it would better fill my needs of the moment. Bruce seemed to speak to the part of me desiring to find a way back into photography and reading at the same time. I can’t say it has helped jumpstart my reading, but it has definitely helped me focus more on practicing my art.

In “Art”, Edward Weston is credited with describing photographic composition as the “Strongest way of seeing.” While I have always looked for subjects and resulting images which piqued my interest and solicited an emotional response, I’d not thought much about the process past that feeling. Armed with a bit of awe and some resulting intentionality, I set out to see strongly.

After work one evening the following week my wife had an appointment at a slightly unusual building. I decided to take advantage of my free time to walk around and find some images which spoke to me. Months ago I had taken to keeping a small DSLR in my purse, and so I was all set when we arrived. She went in to her appointment and I strolled around with a camera in hand as I like to do.

At first I tried a few perspectives in a courtyard but each time the images fizzled. I didn’t feel anything. That heavy stuck feeling started creeping up inside.

Shadowed walkway

Peeking around a corner, I saw a passage of deep shadows between two buildings crowned by sky. It seemed an escape from where I’d been trapped in the past, from where I starting to stick in the moment. It was an invitation to look up and back into the light.

Pac Man on gate duty

I climbed the stairs and turned, looking back the way I’d come. A change in perspective and continuing to be open had pulled me out of the darkness. Inspecting the gate, I realized the Pac Man of my youth (albeit a bit rusted) had been relegated to gate latch duty. A smile formed.

After a moment of reflection I continued around the building. The sidewalk fronted along a wide avenue whizzing with cars and trucks just feet away. I longed for the quiet shadows of the passage or even the courtyard. Still, it is better to keep going forward. Walking around a Pub on the corner, I found a vantage point with light and color. I stopped and paid attention, noticed what drew me to the scene, the light was layered, the colors contrasted, and that sky!

Around the edges of my perch were a few planters with colorful flowers and ivy drawing my eye in. With some work I managed to capture just what interested me, and not the giant cigarette disposal device almost interwoven into the ivy of the planters.

The tang of wort and sharp citrus of hops filled the air as I walked on. A brewery guarded by towering tanks and an old delivery truck stood in front of me as I down to the back of the building.

Behind the brewery, detritus from replacing the walkway to their drinking patio was stacked haphazardly against a post. Density of texture, color and light jumped at me just waiting to be seen.

Coming back to my starting point, I was confronted by a panalopy of flowers. Clearly they had been there when I began my walk, yet only now was I seeing them. What had changed in the intervening walk so I was now able to see the shock of black-eyed Susans right in front of me?

I had started to inhabit the world around me, to notice, to be in the present. I was seeing strongly just by giving myself an opportunity to do so. I’d spent a pleasant hour almost entirely present, being in the world of light instead of the shadows of my mind. It is a place I intend to inhabit more often.