journal 04: summer
August 27th, 2023
Summer is always an interesting season for me.
It burns hot and runs fast. The days are long and filled with possibility and the short nights bring little relief to that familiar feeling of desire. It’s a season that annually knocks me off balance and before I know it, I have stayed in the sun too long, drank too many glasses of wine and wondered where it all went.
Every summer I try to remember that desire is to be enjoyed. I try to make room for this longing under the length of my tanned skin, cooling it off every so often with a swim, an ice cream, a nap in the shade. But without fail every year, I give in to this desire completely and summer becomes the season in which I, like Icarus, fly too close to the sun.
I am trying to remember that this very human thing burns within me and it means I hope, I yearn. I am trying to welcome it. I am trying to appreciate it. I am trying to feel it without demanding more from it. Without expecting relief. Without expecting the heat to break.
June 2nd, 2023
Siting outside with the sun above me, writing over shadows on paper. The leaves dance with the breeze and my words do not hold them in place. The reflections still sway, another art form in itself. Writing these thoughts of mine over a thousand flecks of light and dark.
I want to be loved by someone who makes it feel easy.
June 3rd, 2023
It was a good shoot today. They were generous with each other. Kind. At ease and yet so completely active in their affection. Intentional in their praise. The gift of what I do, or one of them, is bearing witness to love like this. For those who doubt its existence, I have a front row seat. The loneliness that has settled in recently, the desire to be touched. Today gives me hope.
When I am around these families, I suppose I feel envy. But not in the way that feels dark, desperate, or lacking. Instead, this brings the reminder that great love is out there. It brings a sense of fullness and some relief. It is unmistakable in its warmth. Envy in this way can and should be inspiring. It reminds you what you truly value in this life, what your heart calls to. I am so excited for them, for their baby to be born into such love. And I am so excited to find it myself and to be around it, not just for the couple hours of a shoot. But for a lifetime. For someone to look at me and see light.
It seems like one of the greatest things we can do is share our love so that others may feel it.
July 10th, 2023
An ex-boyfriend told me how I moved through life with ease. A former boss described me as unflappable on the company website. Well-meaning clients have remarked on the seamless transition of photography from my hobby to my entire career. And as a little kid, of course, I was the joy to have in class, the old soul, the child wise beyond her years.
These are all beautiful compliments but in my heart I know that any perceived ease is actually a series of intentional choices full of effort and that the people who hold it all together themselves often had no other choice. To choose gratitude and to see beauty every day is a practice in itself. To keep choosing life above all no matter what.
It feels lonely to never be seen needing.
July 12th, 2023
I received a message yesterday from a client who I have worked with since their first newborn baby. They are about to have their third girl and will want me to take photos. This is the gift, the passion. This stopping of time, but also bridging of time. This very human need to remember. We even want to remember things that haven’t happened yet. To hold onto them perhaps and then to experience them again and again.
We look at photos of ourselves from times that our brains can’t even recall- there I was in my sister’s arms in the hospital where I was born. I don’t remember it, but there I was. Proof. This story-telling of a life full of moments we both remember and do not remember. These photos, these beautiful things that outsmart and outlast memory, and how clever we humans are at finding ways around our own infallibilities.
August 8th, 2023
So far August is a lot cooler than July. In the breezes. In the sweaters worn in early mornings. In the quiet hinting of fall.
August 16th, 2023
My longing has always scared me a little. Does everyone yearn like this or is it just me? Insatiable at times. Or so it has felt. Or so I have been told to feel.
His fear empties him. Courage in love brings abundance.
August 23rd, 2023
I saw a shooting star last week. The exact moment I looked up at the sky. Not star-gazing, just perfect timing. I wished for what I always wish for and I am superstitious enough to not write it here, even in my own journal. But I’m thinking it. I’m feeling it.
I am sick and it is raining and the weather recently has made us all think of fall. Only one more week of August. One more week of summer that I am forced to take more slowly than all the ones before. A blessing in disguise.
I am not sure what I learned this summer, if anything. It never feels like a season of introspection for me. It moves too fast. I disconnect from myself in the heat, in the unrelenting pace.
But after this summer and all of its indulgences and unbalanced schedules and late nights, I feel more at home in my dreams. Almost like the very heat of summer burned strong enough for me to realize they are not too big. I want and I want and I want more. And it is okay to be seen wanting more. My desire simply shows me where I have more room to grow. My courage takes me there. And on a hot summer night, a single shooting star falls through the sky like a prayer to make sure it all comes true.