rampage of appreciation before mexico

i'm so grateful to be leaving so early for oaxaca tomorrow morning to celebrate dia de los muertos and photograph the wedding of alex and jan, dear friends/neighbors/students.  i'm so grateful to wagtime (the most amazing pet store owned by such lovers of animals) for having me back for the fourth year to take really fun photographs of people with their pets.  i'm so grateful that i get to bring in poncho this year and photograph my own dog as well.  i'm so grateful for warm socks and spicy green curry soup and calming ayurvedic oil massage (abhyanga) and all the things that help me feel cozy as our weather in dc grows colder.  i'm so grateful for my awesome little garden plot that could and for my cold-resistant the kale, chard and spinach plants that are fueling my diet.  i'm grateful a beautifully sunlight walk with poncho this afternoon in rock creek park.  i'm so so so grateful for the support of friends and family as i go through a really big transition right now (more on this later) and for life, aways there, offering something new around each corner. 

sweetness within the pause

 at the dc aquatic gardens, which are lush and uncrowded and remind me of the life that goes on no matter how we think we are shutting things down. 

Sweetness

By Stephen Dunn

Just when it has seemed I couldn’t bear   

   one more friend   

waking with a tumor, one more maniac   

with a perfect reason, often a sweetness   

   has come   

and changed nothing in the world   

except the way I stumbled through it,   

   for a while lost   

in the ignorance of loving   

someone or something, the world shrunk   

   to mouth-size,   

hand-size, and never seeming small.   

I acknowledge there is no sweetness   

   that doesn’t leave a stain,   

no sweetness that’s ever sufficiently sweet ....   

Tonight a friend called to say his lover   

   was killed in a car   

he was driving. His voice was low   

and guttural, he repeated what he needed   

   to repeat, and I repeated   

the one or two words we have for such grief   

until we were speaking only in tones.   

   Often a sweetness comes   

as if on loan, stays just long enough   

to make sense of what it means to be alive,   

   then returns to its dark   

source. As for me, I don’t care   

where it’s been, or what bitter road   

   it’s traveled   

to come so far, to taste so good.