September
15 years.
I cannot believe that it has been fifteen years.
The Ruins
a bit of the Emerald Isle in SoChesCo
Gayageum
Fertile Ground
4 years ago… 10 years ago happened
This was from four years ago today… Popped up in my Facebook newsfeed and is worth remembering what I went through, curating a ten year commemorative exhibit (by request) of the biggest event in my life. I definitely got by with a little help from my friends! It was a collaborative effort that included a reading of an award winning off Broadway play and the authentic music of my Kabul-born musician and dear friend. A well-rounded, personal, deeply intimate event.
Here is a link to another small interview / article published about my experience: Delaware Photographer’s images of lower Manhattan on 9/11/01 to be exhibited in downtown Wilmington on the 10th anniversary
Autumnal Equinox
My favorite season of the year is upon us! I picked out some sunny flowers early this morning for the studio today. Our client liked them so much he included them on the set for his shoot. 🌼
9.11.01 – 9.11.14
May we continue to heal from this event and it’s subsequent aftermath, and continue to rise above and flush out hatred from our world, our homes, and our hearts by continuing to choose love in every precious moment.
Heaven is Now
“Heaven is here — you just have to know how to live it. And hell too is here, and you know perfectly well how to live it. It is only a question of changing your perspective, your approach towards life. The earth is beautiful. If you start living its beauty, enjoying its joys you are in paradise. If you condemn everything, then the same earth turns into a hell — only for you. It depends on you where you live, it is a question of your own inner transformation. It is not a change of place, it is a change of inner space. Live joyously, guiltlessly, live totally. And then heaven is no more a metaphysical concept, it is your own experience.”
-Osho
Bailey’s Dairy Farm
Enjoying every moment so far of the second day of Autumn here in Chester County, PA. This is one of those places that breathes life back into me again. These cows always seem to be in perfect contentment! I just love to see them graze.
A breath away from this serenity is an atrocity that is a Toll Bros. housing development. It is one of the (many) great travesties in America “culture” that a land development company can knock down a bunch of trees, fill the acres with uninspired made-to-order houses, and further insult the region by calling this cramped new neighborhood “The Preserves”. “Cut down all the trees and name the streets after them…”
The dairy farm after “The Preserves” helps me believe in humanity again.
Sweet Furry Writer’s Block
Was busy working away on a magazine piece due later this week when my space got infiltrated. Hey! Down in front!
“Who, me?”
12 Years Ago
For me and my family personally, September 11 was a reminder that life is fleeting, impermanent, and uncertain. Therefore, we must make use of every moment and nurture it with affection, tenderness, beauty, creativity, and laughter.
-Deepak Chopra, M.D.
The short story: Today twelve years ago, I became a photographer.
I was working in Washington, DC for the United States Dep’t of Transportation at the time — occasionally I’d be working in our small office located inside of the Pentagon, more often I would be on travel anywhere domestically from Seattle to Miami, LA to Boston. This particular Tuesday I could’ve been on a flight slated for California but hijacked to PA, NY, or VA. I very easily could’ve been sitting in a chair in our office in a wing of the Pentagon.
Instead, I had been assigned to a federal building in lower Manhattan for the week and took the train up with some coworkers from Washington Monday afternoon. I spent a truly carefree evening of September 10th dining and drinking and laughing with a photographer friend of mine in Brooklyn before walking through the World Trade Center plaza on my way to an adjacent hotel for the night.
I was traveling so frequently at the time that my friends and family really had no idea where in the country I was when the news broke- most of them thinking I was at the Pentagon until they finally received word the evening of 9/11/01 that I was in fact in the thick of it in NYC.
Below was my view-from-the-office that morning, the 41st floor of the U.S. Department of Justice, Immigrations and Naturalizations at 26 Federal Plaza on Broadway, a handful of blocks from the World Trade Center. The 2nd plane impacted Tower 1 just a second before this frame was taken. A couple of my coworkers were scheduled to be in our I.R.S. location located inside one of the Twin Towers a couple of days later. I bought all the rolls of Fuji and Kodak the bodega had at ground level after we were evacuated from the building, and, loosely tethered to my coworkers, lived the events as they unfolded around us in a mixture of naked-eye shock and through the viewfinder of my Nikon.
I have had a compulsion to document, archive, appreciate and be fully alive in this precious present ever since.
Auspicious Beginnings
Today is Ganesh’s birthday! Hindus celebrate the birthday of Lord Ganesh for Auspicious Beginnings. This particular likeness lives in the foyer of my boyfriend’s studio. He found it in a sea port town on the west coast of India while traveling. I find almost anything elephant-related to be auspicious so I like to acknowledge the birthday.
HuffPost article about the 11-day festival
Up II
Wherever you go, go with all your heart. –Confucius
