Okay, I've been given a green light by my friends that I just have to be me, even if that means straying from whatever fantasy I might have about normal and hey, with a blog name like "No Safe Distance" who was I trying to kid, anyway?
I've been gone for a while, that's true. I'm coming back though.
Did you miss me, babies?
I missed you.
Oh what a lot I have to tell you. Some here, some elsewhere, some now, some for later, some probably for much later, some publicly, some for maybe just one other person that I haven't even met yet over absinthe as I lie on my death bed because I'm going to go out all hip and dramatic like that.
So, where to start, where to start...
I know, how about my photos?
I've been really having a fun time seeing my photos escape my computer and get into frames and on canvases. You can see a bunch of them here. And I've found some great marriages between my photos and ways to use them for causes I believe in like revitalizing my hometown.
But as I was busy making nice with my camera, taking it for all those long walks I promised it would have some day, I discovered a...well, let's call it a 'quirky little niche'.
I get enthralled by dead things.
And I guess I have to consider that may always have been the case. I do remember having a lot of funerals for fish along the lagoon I grew up on. You can't grow up in a natural area and not have a lot of life and death around you.
I still remember my very first funeral, my great grandmother. I think I was in second grade. She was buried in a Greek Orthodox church so it was all chanting and heavy incense and big crusty bread and wine for communion, not those anorexic wafers the Catholics serve. I was too young for communion, of course, but I remember the basket of those big hunks of honest bread. It was all so full of mystery and I found it comforting.
Fast forward to me in Catholic school with my prayer book and rosary and a whole bunch of hymns in my head from weekly Mass and I pretty much had what I needed to be a Funeral Director for whatever animal I might find in need of my services in the dunes or along the shores of the lagoon.
And then a lot of things happened in my life and a lot of people I loved died and then there I was with my camera walking along a mostly deserted Lake Michigan beach.

And there were dead butterflies everywhere. And coho salmon. Even a squirrel once. And seagulls. And some other things that I don't even know what they had been.
And they were beautiful to me.
I mean really beautiful.
It was like being in a mini sculpture park.
And so I started taking photos.
And you know how I am when I'm taking photos. I practically crawl into my subject.

And that is what found me one fine morning, in a ratty tank top and 25 (30?) year old camo pants with my hair tangled up in a scrunchy, lens to snout with a dead salmon. (Photo not taken of me that day, but you get the idea. Feast your eyes on the awesomeness. I know. Right?)
And here is the salmon:
Oh, can we please have a closer look? Pleeeease????
Why, yes, kittens, you can. Mama loves you...

And that is when I realized there were a few people gathered a matter of yards from me. Women with tripods and three beautiful, ethnically diverse, perfectly dressed children. They were models doing a photo shoot. They followed direction perfectly.
These were not kids on the beach. I grew up a kid on the beach. This is not what kids on the beach look like.
It was all I could do to stop myself from running by and kicking water on them. I'll bet you a nickle they never had anyone teach them how to skip rocks. I'll bet you a whole dollar they never poked a stick into a dead fish just to check it out.
They were absolutely beautiful children. But they weren't natural children.
And maybe that's it.
And that's why I love writing, because I learn so much from my fingers when I do.
I love what is natural. I love what is mysterious.
I have watched many parents taking photos of their kids out and about. I've seen how frustrated they get when their adorable toddlers refuse to pose for them among the tulips because they would rather pull the petals off the flowers, or pick up the ant from the blade of grass. Parents don't want photos of their kids exploring mysteries.
I think that is tragic. Absolutely tragic. There is nothing more beautiful to me than a child discovering ants for the first time, or flowers, or a dead spider for that matter. That openness and curiosity is beautiful. Curiosity is the opposite of fear. It's a way to fall in love.
But when it comes to curiosity about death, I have yet to see a parent that didn't yell in horror, "Icky!!!! Don't touch that!" Why can't we just be with all of it? (I agree you may not want to touch it, but why not be gentle about it? Hold the hand back but encourage the looking...talk about it...wonder at what happened...what happened before...what happened after...)
Did he finally get to that place he had dreamt of when he reached the other side?

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