Day #5: Treasures Of Life

Day 5 and it is the first Monday of the year: a new page, clean slate, fresh start.   Already I know I have narrowed my focus too small for this project.  Today was not filled with beauty.  I need to remember the balance and not get freaked out and force it.  Last night I heard favorite cousins of mine have split.  (Makes me really sad, sympathetic, but sad.)  Today I heard an old friend of mine is dying.   I can’t figure out whether hearing from me after 40 years would be fun, create a tiny smile, or be a bummer.  I certainly don’t want to annoy him at this stage of the game.  We made each other laugh a lot when we were 15 years old.  I remember sitting and talking in my parent’s living room one day, skipping school, just the two of us and feeling so grown up for doing it.  Kids are really crazy.   Anyway, the news pinched my heart, another thing to stab at it, another flick at the grief button. 

 

So my picture today is a still life.   It is of treasures given to me by people I love.  I set up the tripod in the kitchen while I cooked lentil soup and tried to set up a sweet display of treasures.  There’s a broken robin’s egg in there and sea glass and shells, my  new Christmas scarf, a piece of drift wood, a piece of money plant, a cobalt blue tiny bottle, a plant, and an elephant dish, a tiny elephant dish.   I have a lot of tiny treasures in this house.  Matter of fact, if I don’t bury myself alive with books or photographs, it will be with tiny little sweet offerings. I am sure people come in here and believe I might be a crazy old lady before my time.  I’m not; I just can’t get rid of things people give me.  I have things in this house that the father of my daughter gave me in 1967, things I cherish, not because they represent Andy, but they are forever things in my world, such as an elephant bronze incense holder that sits in my bathroom.  These things all record history, they all tell a story and I am obsessed with the story.  That is why I photograph my world; each picture represents a part of my life, a potential story for the teller. 

I am by nature an oral historian.  I collect and document stories of all kinds.  I just haven’t figured out a way to share it all, yet.   I’m working on it, thus this blog, but I have not completed the task. 

Today I did not find beauty out in my world, but I did find some peace, I did make some good soup and I am warm and those things all count for a lot.