Conversations in the Night

"Beneath the light of the street lamps, conversation was held in hushed and muted tones. Wary eyes darted around to see if they were being watched by any of the inhabitants of the building where they had currently resided for a few months. 

Satisfied that no one was watching, the exchange was made in slow movements so the cameras would not pick them up. Once completed, they both smiled in the darkness. Each had what they wanted. One held a pocket full of money, the other a handful of pills. The transaction was complete and once again they had outwitted "the man" who sat at the top of the hill watching the monitors. 

Ahhh... rehab." ~~

........once you've been a rehab nurse, the mentality always sticks. You always see people trying to get the best of you even if they really aren't. Suspicion becomes the norm and it really never leaves.

The End of All I Know

Well, it's official. Or if it isn't now, it will be very soon. I will be one of those people who woke up with nothing but the clothes on their back and sits shaking their head wondering, how the hell did this happen to me?

On March 28th, the lovely folks who pretend to give a shit and want to help people, also known as the USDA Rural Development began foreclosure on my home. This is the home that my Mother had built for her and myself in 1983. No one but my family has ever lived in this house. All of the memories that linger within these walls belong to me, my children, my Mother and my ex. We have loved this house, been trapped by it, been proud of it. My Mother never dreamed she would have a house like this. It's a modest little brick home. Charming and simple. When she got approved for the loan from the FHA her world was brimming with happiness and possibility. She had her first ever house warming party from her friends at the bank where she worked. I was a teen and clueless as teens are but even I could see how proud she was. She felt like finally after so many years of everything going wrong, being married to a sometimes abusive alcoholic who couldn't keep a job for so many years, finally she had come into a little slice of happiness. 

I went to high school while living here. Got married and "blessed" my Mother with a beautiful blonde haired green eyed granddaughter who made her last years of living as happy as they could be. 

I graduated nursing school while my Mother lived here and gave her another granddaughter to love shortly thereafter.  And then not even a six months later, I became my Mother's nurse when she had her heart attack and went into renal failure. My little family moved in here and took care of my Mother in this little house. We surrounded her with love and made sure that she knew in her final days that we loved her and wanted her and would never have dreamed of tucking her away to be forgotten in a nursing home. 

After she died, only two months after the death of my father from a sudden heart attack, my little family took over the loan on this house and moved in here for good. 

My daughters grew up here. We lived and breathed school and acting and band and cheerleading and happy and sad moments. I found out that my oldest daughter was going to make me a grandmother in the very same room that I told my Mother that she was going to be a grandmother. 

Every bit of my life from the age of 14 until 42 has been lived in these walls. My marriage fell apart here, slowly. And when we finally couldn't breathe new life back into it one more time, we let it go, and he left and I stayed here...in my home...because it is all I've ever known. 

And now, due to some poor choices and some stolen money that I had put back for a rainy day only to find out it is gone...now I am going to lose my little home that I love. 

My youngest daughter and I still live here. We still share our hopes and dreams, although anymore the only hope I have is that somehow someway I will stumble across something of value while I am packing away all of my treasures to be put in storage. I pray and pray and pray to God to send me a financial blessing, to help me get back on my feet. I have no family, no friends with money. No one I can ask for that little loan that helps you get back on your feet when life has robbed you of your dignity. I have nothing. 

All of my job applications are not going through, all of the good Christians I know in my field won't even take the time to answer back when I call about possible jobs. And all of the online "charities"....I never thought I would be considered a charity case...all of them just refer me to someone else...as if chasing my tail for hours at a time before being told it's hopeless is something productive for me to do. 

I am so sorry that I counted on that money that was "there" only to find out when I needed it most that it was long gone. 

I need a miracle. I need a chance. And if I happen to not live through the night, I need to know that my kids will be taken care of by my stupid ex husbands family. The one good thing this has proven to me is that I do...oh so much...want to live to see my grandkids grow up and still have a home for them to come to and play in.
I am not going to be online too much at all. No time to take pictures and do anything except keep beating the pavement and putting in job apps. Yes in a field where they claim you can always get a job, I can't seem to. So don't believe everything you hear. Things are tough all over.
All of my friends, I hope you will pray for me and my kid. She at least has a fiance' she could move in with if we do lose the house. I have no one. It sucks not having family. It sucks having your nest egg stolen. It sucks fighting this fight alone all day every day. When all hope is gone, there ain't much left.

God Beams

I am hoping that God is going to start shining some of His benevolence down on me.
I think if He did it might look like this.

Wandering in the Darkness

Many times in my life, I have felt lost. After my parents died in 1994, only two months and a few days apart, I felt adrift and alone despite having a "supportive"husband and two small children. I was 24 when they died. I was an only child. I was strong beyond my years ...then.  I carried the burden of so many horrible things on my shoulders almost effortlessly...then. I had to do at 24 what I see people of fifty and sixty wailing about. Watch my parents die in front of me...go to the funeral home and buy caskets and plan funerals...bury them... watch as they were separated from me and mine forever when the dirt covered up those caskets. Cry as it rained the first night my Mother stayed beneath the Earth wondering if she was going to get wet...fearing for her even tho nothing in this mortal world could touch her and even if it did, it would only upset dead flesh. Not the Mother I knew...not the woman who loved me and cared for me. Not the one who always had my back. Not the one who made the best birthday meals for me because she genuinely loved me. Not the one whose hugs could erase a thousand mean words. Not the one that actually cared what I thought and how I felt and asked me about it often. But still it hurt me to know that the rain was falling on the Earth she now resided under.


I feel lost now...once again. I am adrift with no real plan or purpose in this world. Sometimes I wonder if I belong here at all. And then I tell myself how lucky I am to have two wonderful children and two wonderful granddaughters. I tell myself that it would be awful to leave this world without meeting the "peanut" my daughter is carrying...the number 3 grandchild. I tell myself that Kourtnei Kay needs me to be her Grammy or "Mimi" as she calls me, because Chance's Mother didn't have the opportunity to live to see her born and be her Grammy. 


But still...some nights... when I hear the hateful words of those who pretended to love me echo in my ears... sometimes I just feel the urge to let go... and to fly up to my Mother and have her hug me again. Yeah...I know it wouldn't happen that way. Hell would be my destination. A front row seat to fire and brimstone. But it doesn't hurt to dream of seeing her once again...of feeling her loving arms wrapped around me... of hearing her say my name and say to me that she loves me. I dream of sitting at the table and watching her drink coffee out of the cup I saved from all those years ago. I dream of talking to her as if no time has passed and that she still is my best friend and still knows my heart as she always did. I dream of showing her all the pictures on my iPad and telling her about all the things that I know she would love that have happened since she left me.
And maybe most of all... I want to tell her about my sorrows, and how he hurt me and have her wrap her arms around me and tell me it's okay and that I never really needed him and that everything will be alright.


I remember the day that she begged him to take care of me and he swore that he would. But he was a liar... and a thief and a bastard. And I have nothing to show for 25 years but scars on my heart and two daughters that I believe hung the moon. 


So I'm alone in the forest at midnight... and danger is everywhere. Will I find my way out? I guess only time will tell. 

Photography Blogging?

I see a lot of hype out there about whether photographers should have a blog or not. I obviously do have one or you would not be reading this. However, according to an article I read today, I am doing everything completely wrong. Imagine my surprise at that since I've always been perfect. (That was laced with sarcasm...that is my primary mode of communication.)


Anyway, the article today stated that while it's fine for us photographers to "showcase" our work via our blog, it suggests that you, our avid readers, want more. You want photography tips, you want how to's, you want to know how we set up the shot that we took that you like so much. Inquiring minds want to know, it seems. 


Well, I don't consider myself a pro up there with the likes of Trey Ratcliff, Lotus Carroll, Mike Shaw, and the like. I would LOVE to be as talented and creative and completely wonderful as they are since they are a few of my photographic heroes, but I'm limited. Not so much limited in my ability to take good photographs or should I say make good photographs, but rather in my geographic location. I'm pretty sure if I was jetsetting all over the globe like Trey I could make some pretty fine photographs of those areas, but I am not famous, nor do I have any corporate sponsorship, nor any money to travel on so that I could take those fantastic images. In fact, I barely still have a house over my head, but that is fodder for a different blog. 


My point here is this, we cannot all take or make images that live up to that grandeur. There's nothing wrong with us. We shouldn't want to plummet off a cliff every time we have an idea about an image that we set out to take that in the end doesn't quite come up to par in our eyes. What we should be doing is asking ourselves to look at our work objectively, to evaluate what goal we had in mind (if any) when we took the shot, to determine if we are conveying the message that we wanted, be it simple or very complex. But even more basic than that, remove our emotion from the piece and look at it as if it were the work of a stranger. Assess it for the rule of thirds, for items that stand out that we didn't see when we took it, things that detract from the central idea of the photograph.

Take for instance the above image I took many years ago. I stopped at a roadside park in rural North Texas, got out my camera, stretched out on my belly in my nursing uniform on the cool wet grass and snapped this shot. 


Even when I got it home and processed it I was gleefully happy at my capture. I was, that is, until that nagging little tall weed sticking out of the center began to taunt and mock me. How could I have not noticed it? And the more I looked at it, the more annoying it became. Ridiculous little weed, standing there all defiant and proud above my beautiful little Indian Paintbrush. 


Of course, in the days of film, to put it nicely, I would have been screwed. But not now. Not in this modern day and age with so many wonderful digital darkroom tools available. Lament that fact all you want film people, I don't care! I love my digital darkroom!


So I fixed it. Just now, in fact. For the purpose of entertaining my readers. You're welcome. :-) LOL.

So you see, if we all look at our own work as if we have one of the greats examining it, perhaps we will learn to see things better the first time around. Ultimately, it's all about evolving and learning and seeing the world in a new way. At least it is to me. 


And that's how I see it..."through my lens..."

Yesterday's Dream Life

Sometimes I wonder when I see places like this who lived there long ago. Were they overjoyed at building their "dream home" on the prarie? How many children grew up there? Did the wife and Mother cook and clean and chase the children while the Daddy was out working the cows or mending fences? When the day was done did they sit around a table and eat fried chicken or pork chops and good ol' fashioned mashed potatoes and drink sweet iced tea? Were they happy back in those days before television and the internet? I like to think they were.
I like to think they worked a hard days work and lived a simple life and enjoyed their days on this earth. I like to imagine stair stepped children with long curls and little boys in overalls playing in the mud, gathering eggs as part of their chores, finding frogs and turtles down by the creek. Maybe they had a little dog who ran beside them all of their days and slept in their bed with them at night.
Such nostalgic thoughts run through my head when I see places such as this. So ...I just wonder. :-)

Out of the Ordinary

I posted this shot recently on Facebook and asked folks where in the world they thought it was.
My daughter, not realizing I had taken it, voiced her first thought as Asia. I thought that was pretty interesting. It does look a little different from most of the shots I take.
For those of you who don't know me on Facebook and therefore know the answer, what do you think? Does it look Asian? Do you know where it is?