I scanned through pictures of mammals and amphibians and explained to my seven year-old that we aren't the same as monkeys even though we both have opposable thumbs, I read a chapter of "One Hundred Dresses" to a very whiny, very unamused and unappreciative four year-old daughter, and then went to the kitchen to check my e-mail and stalk random people on Facebook who I haven't seen in years. While looking at an old friend's pictures and listening to a C.D. my sister gave me the day before I moved to Italy, entitled "The Saddest Day of my Life," I decided something creative must be regergitated in a way that would allow me to see on paper or a screen or in a 4 x 6 image, the passion that flickers inside me, between wiping a two year old's butt and breaking up fights over whose room the new guinea pig will sleep in tonight.
And thus I reached for my camera, scurried around my apartment to find my card reader, slipped the card in and shoved it all into the computer in order to make sense of the images I see in my head that must in some way, be captured with my camera. If I don't see in flesh these things in my heart, I fear they will fade or drift away, like an old friend... an image... a friendship once so bright and vivid that now only holds a shell of memories and silent laughter.
I'm remembering one of those friends even now. I can see her laughing but the sound has been silenced by time and new memories, ones both beautiful and heart-wrenching...
But not even pictures or words can express one's soul. It's all just an attempt to beckon something to come forth...to make sense of the beautiful mess that lay before us here in this strange and yet familiar planet. I wonder if God felt that way before He spoke it all... and I wonder how He felt (not what He SAID, for "and it was good" are just words desperately trying to convey this deep emotion that FATHER GOD FELT) when He stood back and looked at it all. Not even the best cinematographer can tuck that feeling in his gut and make it appear on a big screen. The Father's expression of His emotions came in the form of long shadows cast across mountains at sunset... of waterfalls flowing from endless heights...of the body of a woman... the crest of the ocean. How amazing that his creatures get their inspiration from the very medium of art, namely Creation, that Father God sculpted with His mind.
That's neat.
