At the town dump (excuse me, recycling station), I met “Ralphie” genial Yellow Lab waiting in a truck for his human, I love taking photos of men who love their dogs, it reveals a side of men we do not see often enough. There is a lot of love in this photo.
We came back from a visit to western New York State to find that gloomy fog has descended again on Bedlam Farm. I’ll be writing about the trip shortly but I stopped to see if I could find some beauty in the rainy and foggy winter pasture. Two barns up the road offered themselves to me. There is beauty everywhere if you look for it.
I’ve come to see family as an insoluble reality of life, something by which I’ve been shaped, to which I am bound, but can never quite figure out or resolve. My sister invited me to come see her – she lives five hours away in a remote town in western upstate New York an hour or so from the Finger Lakes, I haven’t seen her in nearly a decade. I last visited her with Rose, we came to round up some sheep that had run off and lived in the woods for years. Jane is the person in my family I have always been closest to, yet closeness in my family is a particular idea, perhaps not the commonplace one.
When your family is fractured, you often grow up trying to sort the world out by yourself, my sister and I have both done that, there is no one left, really, apart from my brother, and the three of us are not much in touch, we haven’t all been together since my wedding to Maria, and that was very briefly. I am not sure we will all ever be together again. I used to think we would come together again, but as we all get older, I am learning to accept life and what it offers. It is what it is.
I don’t talk with my sister that often, but when we do, it is as if we speak every day. We get one another, she and I are the only real witnesses to our early lives together, the only two who saw and understand what happened, and that is as powerful a bond as one can have. My sister is smart, funny, strong. She has made her own choices in life I have made mine, she lives with six large dogs she loves dearly, they are her family now, she often tells me. I am eager to meet her dogs. I have no demands, requests or expectations from the visit, I’m just happy to see her and have her spend some time with Maria, the two of them will get along very well.
She invited me to bring my dogs to see her, but I think not, six dogs in one house is enough and I prefer to travel without dogs when I can, it is good for them, good for me. I used to think of my dogs as my family, I guess Maria changed that, it is not what I want, although I understand and respect the choice. It is not what I ever wanted, I wanted to share my life with a human being I could love, and my dogs have evolved into what I feel is a rightful place for them and for me.
My sister asked if I was nervous coming to see her, I am not, I am excited to come and see her, I love her and think about her often. She is living the life she chose and living it well, I am proud of her. She was a great help to me in my dark days at Bedlam Farm, she appeared out of nowhere and was there to steady me and help me stand. That, I suppose, is the wonder and mystery of family, there is something about them that is unique to life, even when it seems a puzzle that can never be sorted out.
I’m going for one night, be back tomorrow.
My windowsill gallery is the first thing I see in the morning, the sun rises over the barn just behind it, I can tell from the windows – we don’t have storm windows yet – just how cold it is, where the sun is, what kind of a day it will be. This morning I saw a small burst of sunlight, then subsumed by the clouds. I saw that Maria had moved things around, a stone from a necklace, an old blue bottle, a rock from the path, she is a Pagan, she makes her own Stonehenge all of the time, I don’t know what it means, only how it feels.
Our landscape, in and out of the farmhouse, is always changing. A year or so ago, I was scraping these windows, the idea that a cat might be sitting there never once occurred to me, but life is series of landscapes that never change, why should my living room be any different. Changing landscapes are a gift to any photographer. Tomorrow I head out to central New York State to see my sister for the first time in some years, I am looking forward to it. I’m bringing some dinner to cook, shrimp and scallops on angel hair past with pesto, cheese, garlic and tomatoes.
