Enlightenment, The Hard Way

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Today I spend some time with my daughter selecting photos for Snake & Butterfly's new chocolate wrappers.  I love collaborating with her artistically (we share an appreciation of photography and literature, in particular). I'm constantly amazed that my baby, this young woman is in my life, that she's someone I'd choose to be a part of my life even if I didn't birth her, that since the day she was born she's challenged me to open and grow and be more of who I am (often whether I liked it or not).

My photos** are my other babies, along with the navel-gazing words I write and the iPhone cozies I knit and the myriad other crafts I dip my fingers into.  My heart and my soul are contained within, and I do not share these lightly. I recognize that I'm just one of a quadrillion photographer wanna-be's, but I also know that if I stop creating, I stop being who I am. So now these works of mine are going to wrap the delectable food that my daughter creates with her hands, and dear god, that is grace.

I spent the better part of my life believing myself to be without an ounce of creativity or artistic talent. Turns out that being on the wrong end of domestic violence can knock that kind of thinking right out of you. I'm not recommending living with a sociopath as a path to enlightenment, but I do like to make sense out what is otherwise nonsense and this is one of the things I learned: Being creative is standard equipment.  We are born with it, we express it always, although we may not recognize it.  When I frame a shot, judge the light, steady my hand and squeeze the trigger, I am allowing myself to be who am, who I was born to be.

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*Note to self: Write these posts earlier in the day, so that you have some time to put three thoughts together cohesively and maybe, even do some cursory editing. Also, get to bed before 5am.  Blogging is not for sissies.

**Those iPhone pitchures from the other day are not my children; they are just some street urchins I picked up back in the '30's when they were a dime-a-dozen.