this week's photos {6/23/13}

"For me, the camera is a sketchbook, an instrument of intuition and spontaneity, the master of the instant which, in visual terms, questions and decides simultaneously."  Henri Cartier-Bresson

I love the gut-trust and freedom in this quote. So much of creating art is getting comfortable with hunches, chasing down the glimmers in your subconscious. Ideas seem monumental in their initial spark, but doubt soon creeps in. If you want to create something, work through that doubt. Embrace imperfections. Keep sketching. The underside of the tapestry is a tangle of knotted threads--art that makes it out into the world often seems effortless, and most of the time no one sees the hobbled, cobbled patchwork, the scaffolding.  

These are not my best photos, though they aren't by far my worst. They are rough outlines, feelings, tiny breaking buds of ideas. They are experiments. They are sketches.

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living photographs {6/19/13}

Light is a live thing. Dancing particles and waves, it rises and falls like the tide. It runs through your fingers like water. It laughs. 

You know how that kid from American Beauty thought a plastic bag in the wind was the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen? Well, I think it's this: 

Uploaded by 30KASC on 2013-06-19.

Uploaded by 30KASC on 2013-06-19.

Uploaded by 30KASC on 2013-06-19.

Uploaded by 30KASC on 2013-06-19.

this week's photos {6/16/13}

Paint on bricks, art all around you. 

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life in an instant {6/9/13}

This past year my friend Annette Gendler introduced me to the work of Susannah Conway: a writer/photographer with a soft spot for Polaroids. And no, these ain't your mama's Polaroids--by which I mean they aren't the blinding-flash-overexposed family portraits from the 80s that my brother and I lined up on the piano, watching our ghostly green faces swim into focus. These are dreamy, artful photographs, with a softness that can't be replicated in any other medium. 

After reading Conway's books This I Know and Instant Love , I hopped online and found myself a crusty old SX-70 Polaroid camera and some film from The Impossible Project. I haven't looked back since.

Why Polaroid? Aside from the dreamy quality, I find myself drawn to the tangibility. There are myriad benefits to digital photography, but at the end of the day I like holding something in my hand. I also like how shooting instant film forces me to slow down. There are only 8 exposures in a pack, and that shit isn't cheap. Unlike the unlimited (by comparison) range of a digital camera, where I can blast off like a machine gun and fix the mistakes with editing software, instant demands that I ground myself in the moment fully and really think about what I want to shoot. What do I see? Why is it special? How do I want to frame it? After several months (and more wasted film than I want to admit), I am still getting used to this. But I'm beginning to discover that less is more. That I need to be patient, to wait for the shots that demand to be taken. And--much like in life--to forgive myself for, and learn from, the mistakes.

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worth a thousand words {6/3/13}

I've mentioned before that I have another blog, one dedicated solely to my photography. For a while now I've been wanting to streamline to a single blog. You know, for my sanity. The problem was that my photography and my writing felt like separate things.  ​Did my photos have a home alongside musings about grief, suicide, and mental illness? Then I remembered: I was grieving the first time I picked up a camera. Less than three months after my brother's death, it was a shield between me and the world, an acceptable reason to be a step removed. I raised it to my eye and the viewfinder cropped life into manageable pieces. Pieces I could capture and pin down.  Make permanent. 

With the push of a button I could stop time. 

Which was the thing I wanted second most. What I most wanted was to turn back time, to go back three months and stop my brother from hanging himself  

Despite his diagnosis of bipolar disorder, despite the attempt he’d survived during his senior year in high school, I hadn’t seen it coming. I hadn’t noticed how depression had crept into the corners of his life and spread, working its way into every crack, until there was nothing left for him but darkness. I was living hundreds of miles away.  I wasn’t there.  I didn’t see.

I picked up a camera three months after his death, looking for something to hold onto. Hoping to learn how to open my eyes.

I have experienced a lot in my life. Over the past fifteen years I have moved across the country twice, earned two college degrees, traveled to the other side of the world, and grieved the loss of all my grandparents. I am a daughter, a sister, a wife, an aunt. I have suffered from depression and anxiety. I have dealt with infertility. I have survived a serious illness. All of these things, and more, have included risks and rewards, joy and pain, failure and achievement. The Sufi poet Rumi wrote, “Very little grows on jagged rock. Be ground. Be crumbled, so wildflowers will come up where you are.” All of my trials and adventures, once I learned to pay attention to them, have served to crumble me.   

My brother’s suicide was not my first experience with loss or grief, but it was the first time I became aware of the crumbling. Moreover, it was the first time I realized that I needed—that I wanted—to be broken down. I wanted to be soft and yielding. I wanted to make wildflowers.

In the first years after my brother’s death, I knew only that I wanted to create: love, life, art. I took pictures, I wrote, I tried to have children. In the decade since then, I have realized that the act of creation is part of my crumbling as well. It enables me to get outside myself. More importantly, it has proven to be the path to connection—to myself, to others, and to something larger and unknowable. The collective undercurrent of all existence. 

Photography, for me, is no longer a way to stop time. It’s a way to settle into it, to become grounded in the present. It’s a way to share my experience, to participate in the larger narrative—to be a thread in the tapestry of life.

I have learned how to open my eyes. I have also learned that I will continue to open them over and over again. That I will spend the rest of my life learning how to see. 

And so I am making a space here for my pictures. My wildflowers.

defacebooking: an experiment {5/30/13}

You may have noticed that I've been quiet lately, Internet-wise. This is in part because I continue to focus my energy on physical rehabilitation. But there is another reason. In the past five years social networking has become de rigueur. It started innocently enough with blogging, LiveJournal, MySpace. Facebook swallowed them all whole, but that seemed okay because it was about 'staying connected.' Then Instagram, Google Plus, Four Square, Twitter. Now it's a bunch of shit I haven't even heard of (Vine?), in addition to the old standbys. If you look up from your phone, you'll see that everyone else is...looking at their phones.  ​

Clearly I'm not a Luddite--anyone who wants to have a career as a writer can't afford to be. But I've noticed more and more the uncomfortable itch that comes over me when I sit at my kitchen table without my computer. I wanted to understand where that itch comes from. I wanted to sit with it.​

So for the past few days I have been. And wow. WOW.

For me, social networking ​started out as a way to 'stay connected.' It was a novelty to check in with friends I hadn't seen or heard from since high school. My current friends posts are always smart, funny, and interesting. I'm not sure when the change occurred, when status updates and tweets took the edge off lonely moments. When I started squeezing my life into 140 character chunks. When I began needing people to like, to follow, to comment, to reply.

What I didn't realize until I sat without it, was how much I've been using Facebook as a distraction, an escape from the present moment. 

During meditation, thoughts and feelings arise. We acknowledge them, we sit with them, and we let them go.​ This is supposed to help us do the same while we are not meditating. The more we realize the transitory nature of thoughts and feelings, the more peace we will cultivate in our lives. This is especially necessary for me as someone who experiences depression and anxiety. The problem with social networking is that it's all about tightening your grasp. Every little thought, observation, or experience becomes fodder. Becomes relevant. This is speaking just to speak. This is the opposite of mindfulness.

This isn't to say that mindful social networking isn't possible. It is. There are people doing it. Some of them are in my newsfeed. I'm just not one of them. Yet.​

For now I'm going to continue my experiment. I'm going to sit at my kitchen table sans computer. When status updates pop into my thoughts I'm going acknowledge them, sit with them, and then continue washing dishes, or folding laundry, or reading a book.​ I'm going to try and get back to breathing. I'm going to pet my dog. I'm going to look at my face in the mirror, smile, and say "Welcome back."

like a baby deer {5/18/13}

I know it's been a while since I've posted: rehabbing this hip has been a full time job. I'm happy to report that some (slow) progress has been made. I am currently down to one crutch. 

These past three months have been so much more painful, fear and despair-filled than I anticipated. Because I was injured for so long I lost an enormous amount of strength. I've funneled all of my time and energy into rebuilding my body, and as such there hasn't been much focus on my heart or my head. I don't have any wisdom to share with you yet, beyond the fact that our first steps after any trauma--physical, mental, or spiritual--are shaky and uncertain. In the meantime, this quote from Louise Erdrich says the rest: ​

"Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won't either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could."

kelley, the woman {4/12/13}

I have a confession to make: I have another blog. 

I started it in the fall of 2011. At the time I was extremely ill. I'd lost over twenty percent of my body weight and no one knew what was wrong with me. I spent most of my time on the Internet, trying to self diagnose, and running from one doctor to the next in search of answers. My obsession with my health kept me in a state of constant panic, and with no end in sight I plunged into a deep depression. ​

I didn't have a therapist at the time, so I went to see one recommended by a friend. She dropped some wisdom on me that helped save my life. She said I needed to separate Kelley the woman from Kelley the patient. And so www.kelleythewoman.tumblr.com was born.  

I resolved to post a photograph every day for as long as I needed to. And I succeeded. It helped me to remember that my life was about much more than my illness, and it gave my body the space it needed to heal. (I had gastroparesis, which is now, thankfully, under control.)​

Why am I telling you this? Because I recently had hip surgery, and the recovery has been much slower and much more painful than anticipated. Once again, I found myself growing obsessed with the state of my health, and falling into depression. Kelley the patient was choking the life out of Kelley the woman. I've decided to resurrect my old blog, in the hopes that I will regain some perspective.​

It occurs to me ​that the advice that therapist gave me stretches well beyond those recovering from illness or injury. All of us--especially those of us prone to anxiety or depression--run the risk of narrowing our lives and losing perspective. Problems demand attention. Uncomfortable situations are, well, uncomfortable. People want everything to be pleasant and easy, and we burn a lot of focus and energy trying to make them that way. And there isn't anything wrong with that--we're human. But when focus turns to tunnel vision, and all the other layers of life go dark, we need to step back and reassess.  We need to reclaim our personhood. 

It's important to remember that we don't do this alone. I always forget that, and spend weeks trying to fix everything myself before I reach out and ask for help. It's scary to take that step. It's scary to admit that everything isn't okay. But once I do, I instantly start to feel better--because in that action I am widening the circle, taking those first steps out of the tunnel.​

Come with me, if you would like. Tell me about your tunnels, and your guiding lights.​

don't panic {3/28/13}

I know I haven't written in a while, but I have a good reason. Four weeks ago I had hip surgery, and I've spent the last month focused on my body. Healing takes a lot of energy--both physical and mental--and I haven't had much spare brain power. Plus rehabbing is really, really boring. Seriously.

This week, however, has been a little more exciting. First off: I got my stitches out. The scars are actually quite beautiful--delicate pink dashes and dots, like the story of my pain in morse code. If I can figure out a way to photograph them without getting too scandalous, I'll post a picture.

Secondly, I started coming off crutches. ​Having been prohibited from engaging my hip flexor for three weeks, I've basically had to learn to walk again. The first few days were surreal: my rhythm was totally off. But I gradually began to trust my body more, putting more and more weight on my leg, easing into the bending of my stiff joint. On Tuesday I took my first steps without any crutches. On Wednesday morning I walked the length of the house.

On Wednesday afternoon, I was back on both crutches.​

This is just how it goes sometimes, I know. The old cliche: two steps forward, one step back. Don't panic​, I told myself. 

And then I panicked. ​

This is one of the problems with having a history of anxiety and depression. The more we practice a behavior, the more often we engage a set of responses, the deeper they become engrained. Over time, depression becomes a neural pattern. So to does anxiety. The more we panic, the more we panic. 

The good news is that ​we can change. Of course it takes practice and patience. Both of which suck. But it gets easier--I think. I hope? Well, it must, because here I am, 24 hours later, not panicking. 

Or panicking less, anyway.​

I'm finding, and have been throughout this month of recovery, that awareness helps most of all. If I can acknowledge my anxiety for what it is--a feeling, just a feeling--it doesn't last quite as long. I can give the fear and frustration ​space, like a child crying out a tantrum, and then I can validate them. You are right​, I can say. This is hard. Life is hard. ​And then the anxious, fearful thoughts quiet down, and I can hear the rational, steady voice that has been there all along. ​

Maybe the more I practice, the faster the rational voice will come. Maybe panic won't always be my first response. Maybe it will. For now, at least, I am not panicking about panic. And for now that is enough. ​

not fixing it: a guest post by kathryn lucatelli {3/11/13}

Kelley’s blog post Say It Loud got me thinking.

WHY DON’T WE WANT TO LISTEN TO OTHER PEOPLE’S PAIN?

We believe we have some responsibility to fix it. We want to save our friend from this awful thing they are experiencing, real or imagined. But we know we can’t save them. Heck, we can’t even think of the right thing to say to them. This thing they’re sharing is too big; it’s too complicated; it’s beyond us to fix; and even if we did have an inspired idea of how to fix it, the person confiding in us is probably in no condition to take to heart our brilliant suggestion.

Also, fear is contagious. We sense that and worry about it. What if I start freaking out? How can I help you if I start drowning? So we often back away to avoid the whole mess.

But what if it isn’t our job to fix someone else? What if we don’t have to find the perfect thing to say? What if our only job in the face of someone else’s pain is to be a witness while staying in a good energy space ourselves?

I heard a paramedic say that in an emergency the first priority does not go to the person on the brink of death. The first priority is for the paramedic to check in with herself to make sure that she is alright. The second is to make sure the other members of her team are alright. The third priority is the person in danger.

THE STRONGEST NERVOUS SYSTEM WINS

Last week I participated in a workshop on Somatic Experiencing. The presenter talked about how the strongest nervous system in the room wins. Not the more enlightened, the strongest. We are like radar dishes picking up signals from one another. We’re designed to be responsive to one another. If the person freaking out has the strongest pull, you’ll both go there.

You’ve experienced it: someone next to you is really anxious and you start to feel anxious too. Ever watch American Idol tryouts? After being steeped in a crowd of performance anxiety for a whole day, it’s all Idol hopefuls can do not to pass out when they finally stand in front of the judges.

FIND YOUR DEEP CALM CENTER AND STAY THERE. THOSE WHO ARE FREAKED OUT WILL BE CALMED BY YOUR ENERGY.

Calm spreads too, but it takes more consciousness to hold. Have you ever been really anxious and gravitated to the calmest person in the room, her very presence a lifeline to your panicked soul?

To listen to someone else’s pain and remain calm, we have to ground ourselves in something deeper.  We have to stay within Love’s presence. Love is whatever makes you feel expansive, free, safe, able to see beauty or feel gratitude.

When we feel we are in the presence of Love, our own nervous system calms down. The field of Interpersonal Neurobiology is beginning to help us understand this dynamic better: that human beings mirror neuronal patterns of activation in one another’s presence. So when someone in pain and panic is around someone who is consciously holding a deeply state of calm, his own nervous systems begins to mirror that calm state as well.

When someone in crisis experiences a calmer nervous system, they have a better chance of hearing the quiet, still voice inside of them that tells them the next step. It’s that voice that lets them know all is well. Not you. Your job as listener is to keep your own energy grounded so another person can find rest within it. As Hafiz—clearly practiced in this—writes, “Troubled, then stay with me, for I am not.”

HERE’S HOW TO DO THAT:

Here are some things you can do to go into a deep still place before and while witnessing someone else’s pain. These techniques help you build resources within yourself that make it easier to keep returning to a calm, grounded state.

1.     Deep Ocean meditation. Imagine your essence-self diving beneath the rocky waves and tumult and plunging deep into the ocean. Nothing can hurt you. As you go deeper and deeper, it gets calmer and calmer and calmer. Blue whales descend 3,000 feet where the water is so still they can call to each other over miles. Use your imagination to descend to that calm still place and stay there as you listen.

2.     Cook’s Hook Up. Intertwining yourself in this pretzel position puts you in a balanced whole brain state that is deeply calming. Give it a try right now.

        1. Cross one ankle over the other. 
        2. Extend both arms in front of you, hands back to back. 
        3. Cross one hand over the other at wrist and clasp fingers together, interlocked. 
        4. Tuck clasped hands under and up, and rest them comfortably on your chest. 
        5. Inhale slowly by nose, tongue on the roof of your mouth. Exhale through your        mouth, relaxing your tongue down.       
​        6. Hold this pose, gently, and continue slow, deep breathing for a minute or two.

3.     Remind yourself you don’t have to fix it. Your first priority is to check in with yourself and calm your own nervous system down. You witness someone else’s pain from that place of Love, and by so doing, welcome them to join you there.  What’s something kind and loving you can tell yourself to bring you to your deep calm center?

4.     Find a place on your body that feels neutral or even good. Take a vacation there. Bring your full awareness to that spot. What does it feel like? Is it cool, warm? Really inhabit that spot with all of your attention. Notice what happens.

NOPE, IT’S NOT EASY

Everyday there are things big and small that threaten to freak the hell out of all of us. It takes a lot of practice to return to a calm state. But it’s really the best way to support yourself and others.  The more experience you have being in a calm state, the easier it becomes to return to it in the face of someone else’s pain, as well as in your own.

HOW HEALING HAPPENS WITHOUT YOU MEANING IT TO:

The paradox is that when a space is opened for someone to name and share their pain, it begins to heal without you fixing it. When connection is made, neither of you feel so alone. People are afraid that their pain will separate them from others because no one will understand them. Your witnessing presence is a gift.

WARNING: THIS MAY BE SUPER DIFFERENT FROM HOW YOU’VE REACTED TO OTHER’S PAIN IN THE PAST AND IT MAY WEIRD PEOPLE OUTAT FIRST. STAY WITH IT.

This may be a very different way of responding to someone else’s pain if what support has looked like in the past is mutual commiseration. Bonding over our wounds has become normalized and expected, and when you stop doing it people may think there’s something wrong with you or that you don’t love them any more. Don’t panic. Listen to their story in a way that says, “I know the truth of who you are. Your pain is separating you from that truth. I’m connected to the love that you are. Because I love you so much I will simply hold a space for you while you experience this terrible pain. And in witnessing the pain, it will be eased.”

FULL CIRCLE

When we more frequently occupy a space of calm in our own beings we understand the power of that place of vulnerability inside ourselves. We become more open to witness our own pain as it arises and are able to open a space to listen to others’.

Kathryn Lucatelli is a Centering Facilitator who helps people reconnect to their center, discover their own truth and live from a place of joy and connection. Sound good? Holla at her: kathryn@lucatelli.org