"...and i said, 'oh-you should have seen me, a couple a years ago'..."

There are places and times in life when all the themes, all the moments that we're all living day in and day out, day in and day out converge. When these (places and times) are recognized, it's less like a mix and more like a collision.

I don't know what possessed me on December 31, 2008 to agree to the challenge of taking a photograph everyday. I don't know what clicked inside my brain that made me say, "I have the drive, will power and stamina to do this."

I think at the time I thought it wasn't going to be that big of a deal.

So what's what? You snap a photo everyday and move on with your life. You upload them to facebook and make a little album. It's significant to you and to the people who challenged you to it.

In it's barest bones of skeletal bliss, that's all picture of the day is. I snap a photo everyday. I have successfully uploaded to five small albums on facebook. It is important to me and maybe less important to the people who challenged me to it.

But in a rare moment of personal confession, I can honestly say that to me, it is more than that. Picture of the day has become a very big deal.

I don't know if it's the thousands of random photos I now have, the changing of computers, three software programs or the stigma of being the 'girl who always has her camera' that has gotten to me.

Or maybe it's the collision.

Picture of the Day is where my entire life has collided this year. Not only do I have a visual record of something that happened everyday for the last 304 days, I have had to see something worth documenting everyday for the last 304 days. And in that, every facet of my life has become fair game to the internet and the mecca of web-based social network. (Don't make the point here that I didn't ever have to post them to the internet. It's done now.)

I'll say now I feel like everyone should (maybe) have to try this exercise once in their life. Committing to do something everyday for a year is no easy feat. I know this now. Because it's never what you think it is. It's the flippant, 'ok I'll do it' that turns into the, 'when I get six months into this and it's not all that fun anymore- can I force myself to go on?'

They say New Year's resolutions never last, and I've been running that one over in my head a lot the last couple of weeks as my resolve has slowly dissolved into a strong sense of 'going-through-the-motions.' I will see the end of this one. 61 days left- what's left to lose?

All this to say that I was sitting here tonight thinking about what it means to keep a record of what happens to you on a day to day basis. This year of my life has been an interesting one to document. It's been incredibly unpredictable. It's been a collision of everything I am, was, were, could be and thought I'd be. Strange to see it from a third perspective that is still your own.

(I may make mountains out of molehills, but the unexamined life is a life half-lived.)

The moral of the story (As I find myself completely and utterly unable to publish at this url without one. I will fix that later.) is simpler than I expected. It is the challenge, I think, that is making this whole thing so worth while. And that small sense of accomplishment that I will hold true to this one commitment if it is the last thing I do.

And when all the things that I see everyday have finally converged into that final album- I will brush the dust off my 35mm and give it a hug.

So maybe that's the moral of the story.

"...these are the songs that we sing..."

Imagine this:

It’s an unseasonably hot day. That would be the first thing you notice. Next would be that since the sun went down, the bugs have backed off of your epidermis and made for whatever hell-hole they originate from. You’re grateful for that reprieve.

It’s been a long day, but not necessarily a rough day. You’re nearing the edge of tired that your body confirms as a day well spent. Meaning, in briefer terms, you got everything done.

You’re sitting towards the back of a crowded room, enjoying the people around you in that collected silence that anticipates who will take the floor next. You breathe in it because you can. Its headiness is bracketed by one word: family.

An old man gets up in front of all the tables, taking his time and grasping the microphone with his right hand. After a short introduction and a longer pause, he raises his arms, “I’d like you to know that we’re responsible for starting this clan,” he says loudly. “And we couldn’t be prouder.”

****

I cannot say or guess at this season in my life. So much has changed that I feel like I poke a stick at embers and flames ignite. There are wellsprings in corners of these halls I never imagined.

From where I sat on Friday night, bookended by my cousins, I saw something unfold that I would have never thought possible: I saw legacy. And I saw it begin.

It’s hard to say how it feels to watch one brother claim a someone as his own and now I call her sister. There is less to express how it feels when the second goes and does the same. From where I sat watching my grandfather on Friday night, I didn’t need the words. I just needed to be there. And enjoy the moment.

Bigger Brother is married. He has extended his hand and had it accepted. And here we are, on the other side of Saturday.

The family I have always known, the one that included Soccer Mom, SuperHero Dad, Biggest Brother, Bigger Brother, Little Brother and me, has grown by three in the last four years. Take that in. I now have two sisters and a nephew all wrapped up in the mix.

This is how we increase ourselves. By taking others in.

In love’s thunder show this weekend, I was tipped over by the embrace of sacrifice and what it means to give. In loving and doing we are getting and giving all at the same time.

I was touched, again this weekend, by what it means to give of oneself. I’ve seen wedding after wedding lately and they eventually all leave me with one thing: there’s a lot of sacrifice in love. There’s a lot of dying in living.

It’s a lesson learned inch by inch.

You take thankfulness where you can get it. You also get it sometimes where you least expect it. I am thankful for the legacy that made me. And that had never sounded quite as right as just now when I wrote it.

And so, in the offering of hands and acceptance—to Jimmy and Audrey.

"...if you could see me, whoever i am..."

I have started this post any number of different ways the last few times that I've found myself with an inclination to blog. I though about redressing the basics issue that I started a couple weeks ago or talking about music and an experience I had with the notes and numbers the other day. I thought about just giving out a story from my often absurd and haywire life.

As sometimes happens to me, I am lost on the ability to choose.

Charleston has settled itself into a cool rhythm that I'm crossing my fingers and hoping warms by next Saturday. Bigger Brother is getting married and for his sake, and my own selfish reservations about bare arms and legs, I hope for warmer temperatures.

It's safe to say that Charleston never really gets cold. Which is nice for some people and others it isn't. If your blood has thinned out to water, like mine, you sometimes feel that the Caribbean and the norther parts of Australia got it right. Which sometimes makes me wonder about my possibility of survival in New York City. And all other places that turn normal conversation into a string of onomatopoeias.

I sat yesterday in one of my favorite places in this area letting this Holy City (as it has been called) take my heart away. It does that in a very specific way that involves blue, green and storm clouds gathering. Those moments that used to live on opposite hands of the time clock are coming closer and closer together now. As a good friend has said to me several times over the last few months, "Look at this. How can you look at this and not love it here?"

What I'm saying is that there's a benefit to loving where you are, when you are. My rampant inability to often make decisions has turned into one thing: a rampant inability to make decisions.

Milton said that the mind can make a hell out of heaven and a heaven out of hell. Is it that powerful? Yes and no, but I feel that there is the power to make the best of the worst. All things considered.

I get obsessed with the weather because it doesn't have anything to do with me. And yet, its beauty goes unchallenged among many of the earth's other spectacles. I get obsessed with music because something in it makes more sense than I do. There is a freedom there that I have only experienced between thunderheads, sweeping mountains views and the drop of a minor fifth to a minor third.

If you came out to see me today, you'd see a fish out of water. Or a bee without a hive. Or some other animal analogy that I can't even fathom. I am so far out of my comfort zone most days that making due is the only due.

But, all that to say, all of this to say- all these scrolling words that drop like my thoughts down the barrel of wherever unsolicited advice goes- when everything you thought you owned turns out to be an extended rental agreement, you'll find yourself so much happier flat on your face than you ever were on your feet.

Take the risk of counting it all for loss.

"peer over the edge- can you see me?"

Lauren said something the other day that gave me pause. Moving her hands and canvassing the neighborhoods that make up the little-seen infrastructure of Clemson, she said, “I create towards the basics.”

She was talking about her artwork—a talent about Lauren that I admire and often don’t comprehend. About how she thinks of a painting or a pot or a photograph.

But here I was stuck on one thing: the basics.

I went to Clemson this weekend for a wedding and a stolen four days of ‘girl time’ with the women who have carried and blessed me over the last four years. And everyday, while we walked and talked, I felt a little deeper in. (Or filled a little deeper in.)

There was something really special about those walks. I’ll say that first.

When you’re a place like Clemson, the world feels really small. There’s hardly a moment on any given day that you feel nameless, lost in a crowd. It’s a town of friends. That’s the best way to describe it. (The cynic in me leans towards the phrase ‘fish-bowl life,’ but you get the idea.)

There’s an up and a down side to that mentality—as there is with all things. When nothing is unfamiliar, it lends itself to complacency and inaction. A person (me, namely) can get really caught up in the feeling of home.

A good friend once pointed out that all animated children’s films these days revolve the journey home. We’re teaching our children something in all of this. Or maybe, we’re yearning for something that we wish to leave to them.

More on that in a minute.

When Lauren said basics, my mind reeled. As this season of my life continues to unfold, I realize how complicated life has become in a very short amount of time. Getting from point A to point B is a cacophony of engines, stoplights, power cords, phone calls and swiping transactions. My time should only be worth the dollar amount attached to each hour.

The funny thing is, I don’t get paid much anymore. My hours are worth how I can spend them fruitfully and not monetarily. I can’t buy into buying because I have no means to do so.

It limits how far out you can go. That’s for sure.

But it also makes you wonder: what happened to the basics? There was a time I still remember where nothing much mattered outside of food on the table and a place to lay my head. Now, my e-mail comes to my cell phone. What does that say about me?

Maybe it’s growing up. And, to the complicated-ness of life, that one things claims a lot of its repercussions. Meaning: as you grow, responsibility breeds complication. But I get the feeling that’s not all of it. We’re breeding complication out of complication—not just out of responsibility.

Have we all gotten so disconnected from each other that we’re encouraging our own children to find ‘home?’ A blanket statement, I know and a harsh one, but it still gives me pause.

Honestly, what are ‘the basics’ now? I’ll hang apostrophes there because I feel like they’ve become insubstantial. It’s not just food and water and shelter anymore—man needs a grid to survive. Needs a series of interconnected products and numbers that can be accessed at any given moment in order to proceed.

Talk about mass complication.

You might see me wander down this thought road more and more over the coming weeks, because it’s becoming a subject that dominates my mind.

In a country where we are raised to believe that anything is possible and everything not only is but should be available, there seems to be a real disconnect between the basic reality of life and the projected reality of everything else. (It’s in question whether those two things are even mutually specific anymore or not.)

How complicated have we become? I wonder. How superficially complicated.

At this present moment, in my room in a city that nurses summer and fights winter, I offer no solutions, just an observation.

An observation for your Monday night.