Tree

Light through Limbs

Evelyn: Swing dance at Zendah. The light behind the swirling skirts and limbs is always fun to watch.

Fading Light

Evelyn: The moon is peeking out from the palms in the evening as I emerge from yoga, feeling a bit more grounded and relaxed. I spend a moment enjoying its light. While in Yoga, the last exercise includes closing our eyes and sinking into the floor, our bodies gently pulsing with the ferver of movement - a moment of rest. I hear Heidi say, "close your eyes, relax..." I am near the window and I catch the wind moving the oak outside. Its leaves are on fire, orange with the fading light of the sun. I hear her repeat, "Close your eeeeyyyyyeeeesssss, relax, take a breath." My eyes won't close as my mind rides the little flittering leaves, waving and dancing, hot and happy. I want to laugh, telling my body to disappear into the floor, while my eyes drink in the dance outside. As the orange fades my eyes finally close, and I am lost in the melody of Heidi's words... relax.

Blossoms & Sunlight

Evelyn: An late afternoon drive, and I am always taken by the sun making itself known despite the clouds and obstructions.

Start of Something Beautiful

Evelyn: I took myself outside today, and started in on a canvas. I haven't painted in months, and the feel of paint under my brush, the long strokes and bright colors, the burbles and hiccups of a tube being coaxed to let just a bit more out... all filled me with a warm hum of self gratification. This piece is headed with me to work, to hang on a wall in a VERY big, WHITE, artless, windowless, florescently lit office. I can hardly wait.

Jive Aces - Dali

Stand Tall

Evelyn: I spent the greater part of my day tied into a deposition in Orlando. It was exhausting, and stressful, and in some ways felt to me like another mark of disrespect. Taking a break to grab a sweater and a piece of cheese to help adjust the fatigue I was feeling, I was taken by the morning sunlight between the moving branches. I was a small serene moment to help me regain my sense of balance, and bring myself out of all the feelings and thoughts that were prone to stomping through my mind throughout the experience.

Fruitfulness of Death and Rebirth

Little Familiarities

Evelyn: We don't have a Christmas tree up. I got rid of the fake one in the process of moving, determined to start some things anew. This year, we head to California and I hesitate to make Christmas visible on this side of the world... yet I enjoy the lights and reflections found on the trees of others... and grateful for the little things that are festive and illuminate the holiday season.

Monica: After over a month of pleading with Michael to please, let's get the wood stove going in our house...finally, he started the fire. We came home to an icebox that couldn't be warmed well enough by our radiant space heaters. Now it feels cozy and warm and smells of wood smoke when I walk outside.

Bits of Red

Monica: It happened this morning while I was in the shower. Michael came in to tell me that he had sad news. "I broke it," he said. I knew immediately what it was. I sighed. "It's okay, sweetheart. I knew this day would come sooner or later. Today was the day." And so it goes. My favorite mug that I've had for 19 years slipped out of Michael's hand as he was placing it on a shelf and came crashing down onto the counter. The top smashed into four perfect pieces. I felt no anger or disappointment or sense of irreparable loss; I have always known that someday I would lose this simple object that I've loved for years. Everything that comes into my life will eventually be gone from it, a fact that I have come to accept without attaching too much grief to it. The flip side of loss is that it creates a space for something new to enter. And although the object (or person, or place) may be physically gone, its essence lives on in my memory of it. I told Michael we will save the mug for a future building project, as we do with all broken bits of beauty. 

Evelyn: The light changes so quickly in the winter. I took a few moments to get some sunshine (not another "smoke break") and was enthralled with the little berries this tree was flashing. I caught a glimpse of a wren jumping between branches, eying us carefully while stealing a few berries for a late afternoon snack. I couldn't quite catch him, but the berries struck a nice pose.

The Journey

Monica: We woke up at 5:00 a.m. to get an early start on a long day of driving, this being day one of a much-needed vacation. We decided to take Highway 20 over to Willits, a road that winds through
densely-forested mountains for 30 miles. As the first light of dawn began to paint the sky pink, we rounded a bend and had a sudden spectacular view of the valley below with an ocean of fog rolling in
and creating islands out of mountain tops.

Evelyn: Busy week, and this seems to be what has kept me the most busy. I haven't been to the beach, and missed lots of sunsets. It gets darker sooner, and the light has slipped away before I get out of work. I miss the flexibility while enjoy the challenges.

Recovery

Monica: I'm loving the sunshine, the relative warmth of the air, the light through the trees, the flowers, and the fact that summer is on its way. I needed a day away from the coast to recover from the constant chill and wearing layers. It was lovely to wear a dress and flip flops and feel the warm sun on my skin.

Evelyn: Recovery - exhausting - critical - soft - uncomfortable - boring.

Patterns

Evelyn: There is a big oak in front of the Enzian Theatre whose arms are heavy and massive, and remind me of the arms of father, supportive and secure. I always take a moment to drink in how that tree looks in the light, and imagine climbing up into it, and just resting there, letting my weight melt into the branches, down into the earth, and melding with the energy of being.

Monica: The days are getting longer and busier, passing at breakneck speed.  A moment with my camera and a patch of pink flowers outside my favorite Thai restaurant where we had a quiet, pleasurable dinner after a long day. 

Spring Green

 
Evelyn: One part of my job that I like - although I don't care for driving all the time, puts me in parts of Orlando I am not readily aware of or familiar with. Emerging from a client's home today, I sat for a bit to enjoy the landscaping of the community. I discovered a family of eager ducklings, busily following directions and moving for cover as I approached. My mom used to raise chickens and ducks in our yard in Boulder, CO and I remember how wonderful it felt to hold their downy fluffy bodies under the heat lamps when they were small. Something about them was soothing... and so, despite the struggle of my lens to keep track of nine scattered ducklings... I snapped away contentedly.

Monica: She couldn't resist an upward shot of the cherry tree in full bloom. I couldn't resist a shot of her on the ground trying to capture it.

Selective Focus

Monica: The days are getting longer and the light has noticeably changed. Gone is that golden winter light that I love so much. I'm not complaining. I love the longer days, the brighter sun, and the slightly warmer weather. Today I caught a patch of sunlight hitting the flowering cherry tree in the middle of the driveway. I decided only to take my Lensbaby on my photo walk today and got some lovely shots. I love how the cherry tree looks like an explosion of blossoms. Within a couple of weeks, these blooms will be gone and the tree will be greening up for summer.

Evelyn: Justin has been having weekly pow-wow's with one of his Rubix's idols. They sit for hours, discussing, analyzing, teaching, blind solving, inventing, breaking down, and solving cubes. I am blown away at the mere fact that they can spend 4+ hours doing this, AND tonight I had to prod them to wrap it up (the mall was closing for the night). The focus and intensity of their discussions, which sound like a foreign language to me - include terms like algorithm, primes, sub-primes, and coded directions - make my head spin. AND I love the level of learning that bounces back and forth at the table, like a ping-pong ball, between a math professor and a complete math-minded teen.

Deflector

Monica: I've been thinking about how certain events in life lead to choices that deflect us away from the course we have charted for ourselves toward other possibilities. Each choice leads us down a new path with its own successes and failures and we will never know where other paths might have led. As I creep closer to 40, I consider the lives I didn't choose: I didn't go to an Ivy League college, marry my first love, get a master's degree, start a family, join the Foreign Service, live in Africa, become an Olympic swimmer, or learn to speak Mandarin fluently. I'm not the person I had imagined I'd become when I was 15, and yet I can say I'm happy with how I've turned out. I feel so much gratitude for the places I've been and the people who have inspired me and the many deflections along the way that have brought me to here, now.


Evelyn: The idea of deflection as a turning from a straight direction touches on the many detours that move through my life, and as I go with the flow I find that I can bend and shift as needed; because sometimes hitting the nail on the head isn't the best thing, and not every problem needs a hammer. Yes, cliche, and yet the more flexible I am, the easier life flows, the fewer disappointments, the greater the gifts.

Peeking Through

Autumn Gold

It's In the Trees