When I was in college, I fell in love with the movie Sabrina, first with the 1995 remake starring Julia Ormond and Harrison Ford, and then with the Audrey Hepburn original. I watched them both repeatedly and for a time could quote them with ease…
Read More“Hey Cindy! Dinner’s ready! Do you want to eat at the table or do you need to eat at your desk again?"
It was November of 2014 and I was a week out from shooting my last wedding of the season. It was the first year that my business broke six figures and everything was finally falling into place. Except that it wasn’t…
Read MoreJustin and Geoff had gone on a long run/hike for the day, leaving my introverted self some much needed alone time. I headed out with my journal and my camera and a dog-eared copy of a book I was reading for the fourth time, no specific destination in mind…
Read MoreWe have landed, officially.
After a crappy hiccup last week that left us scrambling to find a place to live very last minute (it was a total mess, you guys, but all is well now), we got into a short-term rental on Saturday and Justin began his new contract here on Monday. I think it’s only been in the last 24 hours that I have been able to take a deep breath and look around me, begin to think past the immediate, to get some sense of our life here for the next three months…
Read MoreYou guys.
I have so much to share, so much to say. I can’t wait. But today is just for a few announcements and updates, so bear with me…
Read MoreWe are talking when Justin halts mid-sentence for a moment and then says it’s stopped raining, pointing at the roof of the truck cap. I pause and listen. Sure enough, the drilling of raindrops that has been ever present since last night has stopped. We smile at each other and I turn to wipe the film of condensation from the window closest to me and peer out. I start laughing.
“That’s because it’s snowing instead!”
We open the back window wide and look out at a world turning white before our very eyes…
Read MoreWe reached Alaska last night.
It was raining and grey as we passed through customs at the border and we pulled over not too long after to boil water for tea and make something warm to eat under the watchful eyes of the boreal forest. We pulled into the Fairbanks Walmart parking lot in the 10pm gloaming and rolled into the back of the truck, falling asleep to the sounds of city life.
Our journey so far has been marked by long days of driving since leaving Seattle ten days ago and life has been a whirlwind since leaving California. But we expected this, planned for it, braced for it. We set our sights on the Brooks Range before it froze solid and knew we’d have to fly past places we yearned to stop if we wanted to make it in time.
There have been the hiccups of any good adventure…
Read MoreTwo years ago, at this very moment, Justin and I were sitting on the steps to the front deck of our home. We’d spent the last two weeks or so in an insane flurry of activity, choosing which of our belongings would come with us or be let go, making Kippee (though we didn’t know her name yet) into a livable home, preparing to make a monumental shift toward a different life…
Read MoreI arrived home late last night from a good long visit with a dear friend on the other side of the country. I like to pause occasionally and recall what a miracle it is that it is possible to wake up in coastal North Carolina and go to bed that same night in coastal California and that this kind of speedy travel across thousands of miles is considered routine at this point in human history. Miracle.
As I woke here in my own bed this morning, Kippee rocking a bit as Tess plodded over to drink water from her bowl, it came home to me that we are closing out our time in California…
Read MoreSome days the driving feels long. The highway stretches out before us and the view blurs as unspecified agriculture and isolated gas stations and the occasional state welcome sign fly past our windows.
These are good days for audiobooks and long conversations about crazy ideas and…
Read MoreI came across this passage in my reading this week, written by priest, theologian, writer, and activist Matthew Fox:
“I propose that we can fall in love several times a day for the rest of our lives…We could fall in love with a star, of which there are 200 billion in our galaxy alone. Or a species of wildflower... Or a species of bird, of tree, of plant. Or with another human being- preferably one different from ourselves…We could fall in love with music, poetry, painting, dance. If we fell in love with one of Mozart’s works each week, we would have seven years of joy. How could we ever be bored?”
These words keep singing in my head, resonant with such incredible truth. In a single succinct paragraph, this man slices right to the heart of living a full, rich, meaningful, and wondrous life. Curiosity manifested as love, as wonder, as awe. To look out upon the unknown and instead of fear, we fall in love. How singularly beautiful is that…
Read MoreIt’s Sunday morning as I write this. Justin left for work in the wee hours and I have been holed up in this bed ever since, reading and writing and generally avoiding the stack of work I planned last night for “tomorrow” (you know, when it seemed like “tomorrow” would magically have way more hours in it and I would, of course, have boundless energy and be magically able to do ALL THE THINGS)…
Read MoreWhen I was in sixth grade, my health class had a guest speaker who spoke about STDs. The lecture included a section about AIDS, which was still relatively “new” at that time and was still shrouded in mystery and bad information and was still annihilating people in droves. He spoke about transmission and facts versus rumor, and then made a statement that stuck with me for how absurd I believed it to be at that time. He said, “The statistics suggest that at least half of you will be affected by AIDS within the next two years”…
I looked at them for a long time. I just couldn’t get enough.
It was late in the day and we were alone on Signal Hill, our truck the only vehicle at the trailhead. As we hiked toward the hill, it looked initially as though we’d only be able to see them from afar, that we’d have to use our binoculars to get a sense of the texture, of the grit of symbol carved into stone. But the trail continued around, winding its way up the mound until we stood close enough to reach out our hands and run them across each line and curve. We didn’t touch them, of course, but the proximity was a siren call, the desire to lay my hands on the stone and feel the ancient symbols breathtaking in its intensity…
I have been talking a whole lot lately about curiosity as our ultimate weapon against the fear and paralyzing overwhelm of change. While fear is trying to make us hide in the doorways and play it safe, curiosity peeks its head around the corner and whispers, “oooh…now THAT might be interesting…” and gives us the little nudge we need to take our first tiny steps.
But this idea doesn’t really mean anything in the abstract, does it? We can know that curiosity is a tool that can serve us and we can believe it can make our life better and a whole lot more interesting, but how do we take it from concept to reality? How do we actually apply it?
What does curiosity look like on the ground- in our real lives on a daily basis?
I am writing this morning from under my fluffy comforter, nestled into my bed, Tessie snoring beside me.
We arrived here in Saratoga on Saturday and have been running around doing the 647,000 things big and small required to settle into a new life…
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