Today 1/23/15

Almost a year...

In bocca al lupo.  m (no v)

Today 1/2/15

I'm changing from "This Morning" to "Today" since I don't always want to shoot in the morning. I want to shoot whatever strikes me as telling whatever story I need to convey that day without time constraint.  A lot of what I look at is in my home because home is now a new frontier for me.  These photos are a photographic diary of my life after v.  I'm still, after ten months today, trying to find my way around my life.  I am happy and devastated almost every moment of the day.  I miss him with every breath I take but am easily distracted by delights.  I have always been blessed with amazing friendships and a belief in magic.

In bocca al lupo.  m (no v)

This Morning 11/30/14

In bocca al lupo.  m (no v)

My Family and Home Life

I've spent a few days working on the upcoming My Dog Spot Photography web site.  I have such a headache!  I am amazed at all the new things I need to learn and even more amazed that I learn any of it.  What is the best of all that comes out of this is the amount of support I'm getting from my friends and associates.

So much has happened in my life since I decided on the title of this blog, or more to the point, the sub-title of this blog: a home and family life, and not necessarily blood ties.  It's good I added that.  At the time it was because v and I had such a small family: we were the two of us and r, his beautiful daughter, in Portland, Oregon.  Now it is just r and I and that extended family of non-blood ties.  Home life is me and my two cats and the succession of possums that come by in the evening for a small snack in reward for keeping the garden organic and snail free.

Home life is my circle of friends; a friend who would come by a few evenings a week to help break the new and crushing silence that had become so rare in this house since v moved in those years ago. With her help I've eased into the rhythm of my own movement and the sound of my thoughts.  It is my kind and thoughtful neighbor dropping by to see how I am and to share his own small business adventures and woes (please remember Fog's End Distillery's Monterey Rye and California Moonshine!). Another neighbor who has taken the time to attend to my apple trees. It is the daily emails with the reconnected life-long friend now in Georgia, the morning texts from my oldest friend still in Southern California, and the wonderful letters from a dear, dear friend in Pennsylvania who also lost her husband way too early--another gentle, loving, and passionate Italian... lucky us! My weekly connection to the aquarium and my new, but no less dear friends, who have become a part of that non-blood family. Home life is my two cats, one sweet and one crabby (there always has to be a balance).

And now home life is about re-inventing myself and trying to succeed with a new endeavor.  Fingers crossed!

In bocca al lupo.  m (no v)

Happy Birthday...belated

So last week was his birthday and it's been seven months since he's been gone and it seems more impossible to believe than all the months before.  He was such a presence, a unique, and a beautiful man.  It's hard to believe that such a force is no longer present within our lives. He was a loving, a passionate, a gentle, and a fearless man.  We met on the set of the play Zorba and he had a soul, a spirit, that outshone even that namesake...and that's just how I felt when I was angry with him.  At first sight you might have thought "what a tiny fellow" but it would have been the last time you thought of him as small.  He was one of those little Italian men that could move mountains effortlessly.  He was loud when he was happy and louder when he was not.  He cried openly, without shame, he fought city hall (and won).  He had an encyclopedic knowledge of history, geography, religion, and politics following the threads of current events to their origins in ancient Rome or Athens or the sands of the Holy Land.  Where I don't follow any events local, national, or international, he devoured his New York Times, listened to the BBC and NPR.  He was an artist and a draftsman. There really wasn't much he couldn't do. He was my courage, my very best friend, and the love of my life.

In bocca al lupo.  m & v

Summer Afternoon

 "Summer afternoon-summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language"~ Henry James

The latest Fine Arts...

...and baseball on the radio

                               ...and missing v with all my heart...

In bocca al lupo.  m (no v)

Kitchen Conversations

Just more playing at the table.

I have had two of the most soul-satisfying conversations with old friends this evening. Just talking about love, loss, creativity, and the lives we live.

In bocca al lupo.  m(no v)

Written History

v left behind many written records of his life...

In bocca al lupo.  m (no v)

Onward Garden

The garden is still attended, though the initial input was negligible with v so ill, but there are onions and peas and spinach and chard and beans on the way.  The herbs are thankfully flourishing: tarragon, marjoram, thyme, basil, sage, chives, and (not my favorite) rosemary.

I look at the name of this blog: Domesticity: a noun: home and family life.  I am a family of one with a satellite in Portland, Or. Having lived so many years with a voluble and joyfully passionate Italian man, the house is so silent, still, and heavy. Italian phrases aren't shouted across rooms to bounce from ceiling to floor to wall and only outpaced by the man himself.  A happy place this was...though trust me, when it got stormy the categories could terrify the most redoubtable storm chasers. We always managed to fall in love all over again.

In bocca al lupo.  m (no v)

Still Life

Summer still life.

Summer reading.

And listening to baseball on the radio.

At least it sounds idyllic.

In bocca al lupo.  m (no v)

The Second Wave

This loss grows. It does not diminish.  As one memory fades another rises to take its place.  A review down the years.  The memories come in like the tide.

Remembering moments and then that kick of "never again"...

In bocca al lupo.  m (no v)

Journaling

Journaling, our original blogging, is that lovely way of putting our thoughts on paper, or at least in writing.  Blogs, of course, become more public.  For me it is an open letter to the world. Lately, I haven't been saying much, but I try to keep up with some photography and my thoughts as much as I can.  However, sometimes things are too personal to broadcast, or there are ideas and thoughts that haven't fully matured enough to share. I also must admit that there are times I just miss my own handwriting. So these thoughts go into a book I can carry along with me. I even write letters still! Not often, but I just have to do it to see ink flow across a page and saying what I'm feeling to be read while being held in a hand.  Writing is now a sensual exercise.

After he died I discovered that v had been a journal-er.  He began as a very young man writing his feelings and experiences down in books.  They are now letters to me, re-telling his life to me whenever I want to pick one up and read his words.  Most of the stories are the ones he would tell me when we first met, or when we would sit at the table with a candle and a bottle of wine sharing our life stories with each other.  A gift to me that he started decades before we met and which is now priceless.

For me I write those un-formed thoughts and ideas in order to mold them into a more solid reality.  My current plans and designs become a written blueprint to follow and to remind me when I lose my focus.

I also write letters to v.  They are a comfort when the silence is too much.

A recent article in the New York Times (here) discusses the importance of handwriting. It makes for very interesting reading.  Please take a moment to read it.

In bocca al lupo.  m (no v)

Working in the Workshop

The walk to work:

Creating, exploring, retreating, and never forgetting...

In bocca al lupo.  m (no v)

Good Kitty

What started as decorations to hang from the ceiling in my father's room when he had dementia became favorite toys of my cat.  She somehow found several of them and busies herself carrying them from room to room.  I sometimes would come home from work and find them carefully arranged at the front door to greet me as I arrived.  While v was ill she would line them up next to his side of the bed.  We considered them cat charms by then.  One morning, recently, I found one placed on my chest as I awoke.  I took it as a kind of blessing, or cheering up gift.

We have many forms of friends, and angels come in many guises.

In bocca al lupo.  m (no v)

Lavender Harvest

Lavender harvest time.

Plenty of time for a second bloom.  It always looks better at this stage instead of left to blow out.  I don't take it all at once anyway, too heartbreaking to remove such a display.

It might be therapeutic, but being in the garden without v is so so hard.  

What I'm finding that helps the most is just walking miles and miles...

In bocca al lupo.  m (no v)

Shades of Grey and Black

Well, there it is.  Sometimes the lows don't lift.

In bocca al lupo.  m (no v)

Breezes

It doesn't always work

Then I take a nap

And sometimes the color comes back.  

In bocca al lupo. m (no v)

Tsunami

It comes up from behind like a tsunami.  It's a wonder I don't drown.

In bocca al lupo. m (no v)

A Celebration of Life

 

My life closed twice before its close-

It yet remains to see

If Immortality unveil

A third event to me

So huge, so hopeless to conceive

As these that twice befell.

Parting is all we know of heaven, 

And all we need of hell.

                                                                                    -Emily Dickinson

and

Because I could not stop for Death-

He kindly stopped for me-

The Carriage held but just Ourselves-

And Immortality.

We slowly drove-He knew no haste

And I had put away 

My labor and my leisure too, 

For His Civility-

We passed the School, where Children strove

At Recess-in the Ring-

We passed the Fields of Gazing Grain-

We passed the Setting Sun-

Or rather-He passed Us-

The Dews drew quivering and chill-

For only Gossamer, my Gown-

My Tippet-only Tulle-

We paused before a House that seemed

A Swelling of the Ground-

The Roof was scarcely visible-

The Cornice-in the Ground

Since then-'tis Centuries-and yet

Feels shorter than the Day

I first surmised the Horses' Heads

Were toward Eternity-

                 

                                                                                   -Emily Dickinson

Last night was the Celebration of Life for v, my beautiful man.  I am overwhelmed with the turnout.  Above are two of the readings I chose to formalize the occasion, as well as a reading of the 23rd Psalm (a new interpretation of that psalm).

The readings were followed by an amazing hour of people stepping up to speak of what v meant to them, of their fondest memories, and their grief in his passing.  If only the dead can hear what we say of them after they have left us.  He would have been as tearful as many of us and so very, very honored.  He was a loved man and has left many a hole in lives that won't be filled.

In honor of v, actor, painter, carpenter, waiter, artist, teacher, cherished friend, beloved father, adored husband. 

A brave and courageous man.

In bocca al lupo.  m (no v)

Loves Lost

How I'd love to say I'm just back from Paris, but I'm afraid this shot is a few years old and it's film.  I'd bought the film in a hurry and wasn't aware that it was black and white until after I got home.  Serendipity!  

My French is very  limited.  I can greet proprietors with the proper time of day, bon jour or bon soir, I can order an espresso (or double if extravagant), and I can buy ten tickets for a screaming ride on the Metro. And, of course, I can say thank you and a form of "your welcome".

I found Paris by accident since I'd never in my life ever had any desire to go there until a friend asked me to join her on a trip.  Well, I fell in love. Every break I had for the following year and a half I was in Paris wandering, drinking espresso, experiencing the seasons, falling in love with the people who were incredibly patient and kind.  I was something of a mute sister. 

The last trip I'd planned for Paris would have been in October of '05, but something extraordinary happened that took me away from that place where I may well have remained...I met v, and I married him, and I never looked back 'til now...now that it is all looking back...Paris would understand.

In bocca al lupo.  m (no v)