Search Results for: Chasing the light

 Somebody asked me last night why Kinney Road was so important to me. It’s an emotional place for me. I cracked up on Kinney Road one night, a near breakdown. I fell in love on Kinney Road. I reconnected with my sister on a car phone from Kinney Road. I came there every night for months during the darkest time of my life, Izzy always with me,  and as the light returns, it’s only right that I go back. Farmers chased me on Kinney Road, and people wave at me, yell at me there as I step out into the road in the dark, fool that I am.
  I became a photographer on Kinney Road. Every time I take a photo, the landscape and the light are different. Artists, I am told, often get obsessive, going back to the same place, time and again. I never cry, but I almost cry on Kinney Road when I stop and take photos (I have nearly been run over many times on Kinney Road). I guess that’s why I go back there.

  January 19, 2009 – These have been long dark days for many people. They fear for their jobs and incomes, worry about the future, and some are struggling through a hard, unsparing winter. Like others, I have also gone through painful changes in my own life, and yet have rarely been more hopeful.
  For me, a hard winter means a sweet Spring. There are creative challenges everywhere – my writing, photos, friendships, search for peace and meaning. I am not a political person, yet I am lifted up by the energy and change in the air, and I loved the feeling of the inaugural concert yesterday. I felt quite proud to be living in America, and it was a strange sensation, yet familiar.
  I love the new notions of simplicity, meaning, and sensibility in the air. I am looking at windmills and solar panels, buying milk in glass bottles, giving up purchasing things that come in packaging that cannot easily be recycled. For the first time in years, there is change that I want to be part of.
  One thing that gives me special joy is seeing how so many people are seizing the moment to reconsider their lives, and liberate their creative spirits. My friend Ray Smith is a joy. As happened with me and my photography during a challenging time, Ray’s innate artistry is exploding, and I relish going over to see it. He has just embraced a new style of painting called “Tonalism,” which uses colors and strokes that are suggestive, not so literal. In the lovely landscape above, he plans to take out the fisherman, because it is more detailed, and out of sync, he thinks, with the rest of the painting.
  While visiting I took photos of his wife Joanne’s impressive sheep and wool ribbons and awards. Joanne does nothing that she does not do well.
  Ray is a landscape architect, but he is also an artist, and these times have freed his powerful and creative energy. I look forward to this year. Bedlam Farm is going green, and so am I. I want to challenge myself by returning to fiction and by going to another level photographically. I am gaining much ground in my lifelong battle with fear. I am much less into panic and more into solutions, plans and creativity. Ray Smith is an inspiration to me. He is sending a powerful signal to the world that when fear does not govern our lives and decisions, we can live our lives and truly be fulfilled.
  A woman from Germany e-mailed me this morning that the website has brought her light in the long dark days of winter. That is just how I feel about Ray Smith’s emerging art, and about what is beginning to happening in the world around me. It is true that light follows shadow, and that one cannot live without the other.
  Ray embodies the notion of creation. Create, create, create. Learn more, and then create some more.

  With the change in Daylight Savings Time, Izzy and I are chasing sunsets again in Washington County, N.Y. We visited my friend Becky MacLachlan this afternoon, then head for Warnick Road, just up the hill and stopped to shoot this rapidly fading but crisp sky.

   I also was e-mailed this quote from Anne Frank:

  “We can’t control our destiny, but we can control who we become.”

October 19, 2008 – The cold is approaching, there is frost and hard ice on the water troughs. The grass has stopped growing. We found a source of hay today, and it will be here by the end of the week, and that is a satisfying feeling, although also an expensive one. Because of the gas prices rocketing up, hay is way up this year, but it will be good to know it is in the barns, stored safely and that is the sign that we are truly ready for winter. Another book talk tomorrow, then a couple of days to work on my next book, then off to Texas, and the book tour will be over.
  I am eager for winter, my favorite time, a calm time to write and write and think about my photos. I am eager to get to work on a spiritual life with less fear, more real peace. I’m still not certain what that is. It was about a year ago that my first serious bout with depression struck, and I have come far.
  Last year I was riding around every night with Izzy chasing sunsets. After the book tour, I hope for a period of quiet, and productive work.

Kinney Road

February 15, 2008 – Izzy, Lenore and I went to the County Public Health building so that Izzy could suck up to the health workers who will vote on his nomination for Shining Star County Health Employee of the month. Lenore provided cuddling for good measure, in support of Izzy, whose head will swell to unmanageable proportions, as if it weren’t bad enough to see him surrounded by doting women. A number of his admirers keep cookies for him, and this stunned and delighted Lenore, for whom food and attention together equals joy beyond measure.
  On the way home, we chased the sunset, and came up with some good stuff, which I will post tonight. My camera is going to Albany tomorrow for some maintenance, and I will be shorn of my picture taking for a few days, but I think I have stored up enough to get me through Monday, when the camera ought to be ready. For the first time in memory, there is no snow in the forecast. Poor Paula says it might actually be warm, and she monitors the weather like the NSA watching spies. Hope for a quiet weekend of writing, walking, and..well, no photo taking.