I’m meant for someplace else.

I don’t know how to explain it to you other than, it’s there, that someplace else, when I close my eyes.
It's stuck to the back of my eyelids.
Sometimes I see glimpses of it through brown eyelashes
if the light’s just right.

About loosing my nerve....

I’ve tried to keep my nerve all day. But I am loosing it now. As lights go off all over the house, all over the neighborhood, all over the universe, I feel what today was. It settles, darkly ,inside of my gut, inside of my heart. It aches, and it pounds and I have lost my nerve. I don’t think it takes much to loose it. A change in lighting, a slight shift in breathing , a faster pace of a heart beat and it is easily sent propelling up and out of your throat and poof, it’s gone. Just like that. Your former nerve is just another tragedy in the atmosphere. Without it, I cry. And damn-it, I’ve tried hard all day not to cry. I fell like I cried enough yesterday, quietly onto my brother's back passenger truck window as we drove to dinner, later softly into my jacket on the way home, and then gut wrenchingly into you shirt when I went to bed. It’s just that, I don’t think there’s any stopping it when you loose your nerve like that, in the dark. Sometimes, your throat just betrays you. Sometimes the light betrays you. And sometimes, it’s just your heart.

I try to think about where you have gone. The best I can figure is that you crawled into one of those black holes you were so fond of. There you are on the event horizon and then you go. You don’t look back, just forward into that point of no return. I read once, that while you can’t see a black hole, it can be observed by the way it interacts with other matter. And since I can't see you, but I can feel you, that must be where you are. I am the other matter. We all are the other matter and you orbit us. I think that’s where you are, but I don’t know. Sometimes, you see, I see you in things around me. I see you in flowers, sunflowers always. I see in on a certain couch, under a certain blanket watching movies. I see you at Giant Springs walking there beside the river. I feel you as the wind blow through my curls. I see you always on the back of my eyelids.
You are everywhere and nowhere I can put my finger on.

I have waited on this day for months so, as I’ve wrote before, that I can understand what years without you are like. This day is here though, and I have lost my nerve for it. Instead, I want to go back 372 days and tell you that I love you and then maybe you would have stayed. I want to go back 380 days and get on a plane. It seems, I loose my nerve a lot.

So you're there where ever that may be and I’m here, where ever this is. And I hope you can hear me when I say thank you for loving me. Thank you for loving me when I was just a girl at a concert. For loving me when I was just a girl in black and white, When I was just a girl in crazy fonts and flashing cursers. Thank you for loving me when I was just a girl on a path, with curly hair and a foxy camera. Thank you for loving me when I was just a girl who was broken. Thank you for loving me from the tip of that one hair that always sticks up to the tip of those toes that you didn’t think were to bad(although, not as “nice as yours.”) Thank you for loving me when I was just a girl, just a nobody on a green porch swing on a May morning, swinging into the morning light, ready for the day. Thank you for kissing me in the rain just because if felt like the right thing to do. Thank you for the hours of words. Thank you for all the new people you brought me and all those Waitt’s were worth it. Thank you for the lessons both flora and fauna…..and foto. Thank you, simply, for loving me, even if love is rarely simple. I figure I’ll always feel like we were cheated of time, but I’ll never figure that I went through this life unloved. And I mean loved in that big unexplainable, honest to goodness, real, unconditional way.

I love you, you see and I miss you. Still. Always.

Everyone knows the yellow ones are the best

I plunged my chubby fingers into a pile of yellow leaves. They rolled around in my hand damp and fragile. I pulled them to my face and took in that smell of left over summer. I just stood there, sniffing leaves. You know how everyone has a favorite colored M&M; how everyone swears they taste different? Well, leaves are like that, and the yellow ones smell the best. Some how, I know this isn’t the craziest thing I’ve ever done. It’s not the craziest thing I’ll ever do. What’s crazy is that I do these things and I write them down so the whole world can know that I stand outside on October mornings and inhale the scent of fallen and fading leaves.

Anyway, I stood there with this yellow, molding leaf in my red, chapped hand and I thought about the seasons. I know that the seasons are often used as a metaphor for the different periods in life(birth, youth, adulthood, death etc) and yet all I could do this morning is think about them and compare them to the ways I’ve dealt with death and grieving. It’s winter and it’s cold and jarring; a direct shock to your system that threatens to keep you frozen. When winter comes, the wind blows and it’s foreboding and it brings a sometime unnatural quiet. Then, it’s spring and the moments, the things you thought were long gone start to stir in you and everything starts to look new again. When spring comes the new green grass reminds you that we all go back to the earth, we all filter that grass. When spring comes, sometimes you get reacquainted with life. Then comes summer. It’s warm again, and you get comfortable under the shade of the tree , by the bend of the river. You hear the water rush by . You spend hours outside just reacquainting yourself to the idea of the warmth. You get days with more sunlight, and it keeps the dark at bay. The fall comes and reminds you that these things that once where, aren’t always. Fall comes and you cross your fingers and you hope to take in all the color you can. Fall comes you think you can learn a little form the trees. You hope you can get everything you have to get done before it’s too late and you can spend your days full and lovely and when the moment comes, you go out on those last few days in an explosion of glory. This is when you take stock. This is when you life and learn and you get prepared, you get ready for another winter and you hope you’ve soaked in enough color and enough warmth, enough understanding to make it through another winter.

So, here it is. Fall. My favorite time of year. My favorite time and yet, all I want is for winter to hurry up and get here so snow can blanket and freeze the ground. So winter can get here and the clouds can explode, letting snow cover up the remainder of this crap year that is 2009 in a blanket of white , giving 2010 a clean start. I want winter and this new year to get here so fully understand what year’s without you are like; a new year where I can practice this new forever. A new winter where I can finally see this new me and this old me can marry in some useful and suitable way.

I read this today. I guess I needed it.

I really hate that a magazine made me cry, but alas............


"I miss you now more than ever before. But, I trust that God will open a door and show me how to go on without you to give me some hope and comfort too.

For you were my life and I love you so dear and it breaks my heart to not have you near. But, life goes one and I will too. I just wish it wouldn't go on without you.

All My Love......."

It's been winter all summer long.
That means something, but I don't pretend to know what.
Just trying to formulate a thought before the white line meets the yellow line
&
all caution is thrown to the wind and the battery dies.

O’ you can never say goodbye to her you can never say goodbye Just goodnight

It was a 10:30 dash into the sunset and saying goodbye in the dusk. Not a word was spoken. Not one syllable uttered, but in the silence you could hear it all.
And it’s dark now. One last night in Missoula .
I go out and sit on the concrete steps in the city dark, that dusky orange and murky black brown.

I let down my hair so that the smell of mountain air(the sweetest air I might add) , pine tree, Clarkfork, Blackfoot and Bitterroot River, and Missoula concrete can braid in between each curl, because I know 30 miles outside of the state line, I’ll long to smell it. When I breathe in deep enough sometimes I swear it I can still smell it, but that seems to happen less and less these days.

I watch people wander about the streets and even though I’m bare foot, my feet itch to be with them. I am them. I am Missoula too. I’m always on those steps, on that porch, or in that shop window even when I’m 2,300 miles away.

I look to the church in front of me and I stare at the steeple and I ask where I am supposed to be? I let my eyes pray. The only answer I get tonight comes in the rhythmic flashing of sleepy stop lights burning gold to black, gold to black. Proceed with caution. No definite yes, no definite no.

That courageous part of me says yes.
That yellow bellied coward part of me says, “you’ll never.”
It’s confusing to be part pioneer pilgrim and part ridge runner hillbilly.
I suffer greatly from whiplash.

The courthouse clock tolls midnight and suddenly my goodbye day starts. Time in Montana has a way of blurring but it plays a wicked game of gotcha and catch up when it has too, and for the first time in two weeks I feel it squeeze, I feel it rush past me like a lint ball sucking into a vacuum hose.

The clock strikes twelve with a violent last bell and for a second or two the street grows quite and glows street light, tungsten orange and the only sound I can hear is the quickened blab of my heart against my chest.

"I've been singing these songs about you Montana for so long without ever even knowing it."

Walking the dog in the dark and damp backyard, it hit me. I’ll be driving out to Montana in ten days. Ten days and a couple thousand miles is all that stands between me and some of favorite places and some of my favorite faces. I let their names roll of my tongue :Helena, Great Falls, Garnett, Lolo, Missoula, Whitefish, Glacier, Ninepipes, The Mission Mountains, Amanda, Andrew, Annie, Becky, Brittney, Christy, Carl, Dan, Janice, Lindsey, Megan, Neil, Zola. Each syllable just as juicy and just as sweet as the next. Then I whispered Nic, and I felt heavy. This trip will be bittersweet in ways I don’t even know yet. Six months ago this trip was going to be a reunion, yes, but also a very telling few weeks on if I’d be making my home and my future in that wild west that both haunts me and delights me. A wild west that has the mysterious ability to fill me up, and at the same time leave me homesick for the hot, sticky wet of the green jungle in the heart Appalachian mountains, sweet ice tea, and people that are tied to my heart strings.

I thought about that as Gentry pulled me around the back yard. I have been so wrapped up in the things that were there, that were to come and that in a few seconds just flitted away to the point that I sometimes, don’t notice where I’m walking,where driving, or even what I'm thinking. He pulled me towards the part of the yard that the flood light’s sensor doesn’t read. I gripped his leash tighter as the yard when black dark. I just stood there for a minute, taking in the lack of light around me, but relaxing in knowing that I know this space. I know what’s all around me in the darkness and if I squint just right, I can make out shapes of things that are always there whether it’s light or dark. I looked forward and I began to notice a new light. I can see lightening bugs and I see the faint glow of some neighbors porch light across the tracks. I wonder if that’s what death’s like? All of the sudden you are in this new black dark of a space that was previous lit, and as you adjust to this new darkness, you see light, light that you’ve never noticed before. Is it like the lights going out? Is it that shock of black so sudden and intense that that is all you can focus on for a few seconds, minutes, hours, years? Is it just black until you adjust to the dark and see light in new way, a fresher way? You realize you are still in the place you’ve always known, but it’s just lit different?

I don’t know. Maybe I’ve got it all wrong. Maybe that's just what you leave behind. What who you leave behind sees. Maybe death is just the opposite. A shock of brilliant light. Maybe it’s that magic hour light right before the sun goes down? It’s warm with a light so orange and peachy pink that if you could taste it would be surly be like a sherbet or push up pops. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. I just hope, not matter how it’s lit, it doesn’t hurt. I often wonder what those last couple of days were for Nic. I couldn’t talk to him. I remember how I promised to be there when the time came. I hope he didn’t hurt. I hope he didn’t have time to be mad at me for standing at the end of a phone line rather than at the end of his finger. I have deep regrets. I’d say I could drive to Montana and back again a million times and those miles still would never equal how deep those regrets are inside of me. They flow like a river. They cut and leave behind boulders and stones piled so high, I don’t know if can get over them. Maybe you aren’t supposed to get over them, but just float by them from time to time and acknowledge that they exist, that they are now apart of who you are. These regrets, they are my own Grand Cannon.

I have three weeks and 5,000 miles to think. I have miles and miles of time to just listen. It’s long overdue. I’ve been wondering, who am I now, what have I learned, is my landscape so altered? Who do you become after you loose the man you thought you were going to marry and then shortly after your Uncle and Aunt? I’ve asked this a million times the past few months. When I do, all I hear the echo of the TV, the reverberation of sound waves on the radio, the blinking curser on the computer screen( I know it doesn’t technically have a sound, but some days it seems louder than my answers).

I have days and days in Montana. I’ve learned that I always find myself there. Even this winter when I went to say goodbye to Nic, I met with that stronger version of me that I didn’t even know that I had left behind. I was thankful to see her there. She carried me through. I get to see these people who are in essence, Montana to me. They carry that pioneer sprint in them that I understand. I found myself with them before, I’m depending on that once again. I’ll just be glad to stand in a room, a field, anywhere in proximity with them as we point our camera’s toward the same things. I’m also depending on that substance that’s inside of me that always, always gets through, that always finds away out, away through, away above.

I’ve never once wondered where God was in all of this. I’ve felt him all along and everyday, every last one, I am thankful for the ways he works in my life. I think often if not for photography, I’d never be here in this every exact moment, writing these very exact words. If not for photography, I’d never went to Montana. I’d never met these people who altered me, never seen these glimpses of big sky and up heaved earth that made me feel so small. If not for photography, I don’t know that I’d made it through these past months. I’ve leaned on it and I’ve depended on it. I’m never going to question God’s ways or God’s timing. I’m just glad to know that he knows. He has blessed me over and over and over. I'm glad he gave me a camera and glass and big feelings that I could never get out any other way.

I have great expectations for this trip I guess, but Montana’s big enough to hold all of that. And really, I can’t complain about any of this. These total crap times are what makes the good times good. These crap times are the times you grow. I’ve paused long enough to say ouch. Now I want my Band-Aid damn it. I want miles of road, miles of song, miles of stories, miles of laughs, and miles of big sky.