the light in my childhood bedroom i might could stay here if i wasn't trying so hard to leave and i'd've let the murmur of anxious birds in my chest carry me far away from the ache of these walls a long time ago if my heart didn't know the tug of this home to be a reflex. it is a strange thing to spend so much time talking about the importance of being able to stay and thrive in your home community and to know you are not ready to do that work. there is an unsettling in living in a place you don't call yourself back to, like how i live in knoxville, tn, but i'm from boone, nc. there is something that isn't quite comfort in knowing that loving this home requires distance and there is an inevitability in being inextricably bound to it. my body is a muscle memory for the love of this place and for the leaving of it.
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there's no mountain-top removal mining in the state of tennessee, but god damn these new topographics.
ash wednesday valentine: remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return. i figure this means that loving must be nothing short of a revolution. we get to do this on our terms and you know, i think this call to repent ain't the same as hating ourselves. more like an invitation to shed the counter-revolutionary systems and behaviors that do not serve us in the long run, to feel light enough to be able share the load again. remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return. i figure this means that this revolutionary love don't come easy and sometimes our hearts are gonna have to break open, unfurl, and unfold to let all this in. remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return. revolutionary love can happen on our time and furthermore i think this call for discipline ain't the same as punishment. more like an invitation to empty ourselves of these rigid expectations for how and when love is supposed to happen, to make space for a soft kind-of loving- not without boundaries- the kind that is malleable and firm.
i think it is the way the light blushes from the belly of them hills feels like a soft knock to the breast bone, that makes it so hard to leave. all the time it's took to remember how to slow down long enough to be returned to, measured through a season of short days and long nights.
2017 came 'round to ask how much grief can your heart take? do you know your boundaries? do you know the feeling of being hollowed? are you angry enough yet? do you know all the ways in which your heart can break? i'll show you. 2017 stayed a little longer to ask if you know your heart is a muscle? are you aware that just like most muscles it can be both strengthened and strained? have you thought about all the directions in which you'll grow? do you know that singing in community carries farther than a shout without straining your voice? do you know that digging your toes into the dirt will save your life? i'll show you.
2018 coming 'round this time like a reckoning, asking are you ready to keep going? do you know what being accountable to yourself and others looks like? show me. 2015, the year of being in motion, the year that was on fast forward, the year of solitude, the year of discovery, the year that actually had fifty-three calendar weeks (one more week to be late writing a blog post about). The heart-tugging thing about having a home that transcends geographical coordinates is that the boundaries of home are always shifting, shrinking, stretching. 2015, the year I packed away all my belongings, the year I lived in a tent under the stars of Southeast Kentucky, the year I haggled and bought a car on my own, the year I drove that car across the country. Turns out that even when the boundaries of your home are variable some points are constant. 2015, the year of missing everyone always, the year I spent mostly on my own, the year I made more photographs, the year I wrote, the year I was not afraid of my own voice.
2015, the year whose end coincided with the end of my time in the Pacific Northwest and I went to bed at 11:00pm on New Year's Eve so I wouldn't get sick. 2016, the year that didn't start out with me being sick, the year I left Bellingham, the year I am returning to the mountains. The amazing thing about the human heart is the distance it's strings can be tugged between two points without tearing. There are something like 3000 miles between Jon and Jessica's home and the Blue Ridge Mountains. 2016, the year I will actively focus on my physical health, the year I will not be in constant pain, the year I will continue to find strength in my voice, the year I will continue to write this blog (but not weekly more like monthly). Thank's y'all.
Funny how life comes 'round sometimes. Twenty-one years ago I was a weird little four year-old wearing a wedding dress, my shoes on the wrong feet, and squirting mustard into my mouth in Jon Durham's first 3-6 class at Mountain Pathways Montessori School. Twenty-one years later I am a weird twenty-five year old thinking about how problematic it is to make child-size wedding dresses, I don't even really like mustard that much anymore, and I am talking to a group of smart, inquisitive young people about cameras and making pictures in Jon's 9-12 class at Samish Woods Montessori School. Funny how life comes 'round like it's supposed to on account of every thing that fell between that classroom on Howards Creek road where Jon taught me how to read and to fly-fish and this classroom in Bellingham where I am teaching Jon's students about how a polaroid works.
You can take me out of the mountains, but you can't take the mountains out of me... Yeah, so it turns out that is an inoperable thing. Turns out those ranges can't be carved out of me without removing my lungs, then my liver, then my heart in that order. Turns out knowing the direction of home so deeply I don't need a map is mostly a good thing, but some days the ache for those hills fills me up so steadily that it spills out of me and I almost cry when my dad tells me over the phone how many stars he can see from his porch. Turns out you can't die from homesickness, or even get that sick from it and despite all the mountains in me there is still space for moments that feel like home here. Home here fits like friends that are more like family, like breakfast with Jonah, like snapping green beans and singing loudly when nobody is home, like late night baked macaroni and cheese and beer and sitting on the kitchen table instead of at the table. Home here pulls like early mornings with Ashlon before anyone wakes up, like the history we carry, like all the words that won't pass between us, yes home here pulls like a trip to Powells in Portland where I plan my future library. Home here sounds like records in the morning with Anis, like community square dances, and like late night radio between Everett and Bellingham when the sky finally clears enough for me to the stars.
Snapshots of stillness in a week when the world seemed to agitate and ache on the edge. I made photographs that do not reflect my anxious heart, only the convenient comfort of quiet. But right now, when women cannot receive healthcare without fear for their lives, when right wing politics is normalizing bigoted and hateful speech that makes room for violent behavior, when people of color actually have to convince their fellow citizens that their lives matter, when no one in congress will do a goddamn thing about gun control even though there have been more mass shootings in the US than days in the year, when politicians continue to value short term capital gains over longterm livability on this planet... That is all the quiet is... convenient. My friend Sarah Kellogg who feels the ache of the world with her entire heart, she said it most eloquently and compassionately after last week's shooting at planned parenthood, "IT IS NOT ENOUGH FOR YOU PERSONALLY TO "NOT BE RACIST" OR "NOT BE SEXIST". That does not make you an ally. YOU NEED TO SPEAK UP. All the time, never stop."
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