I heart California
{Four girlfriends in the studio, taken by Christine’s fabulous other half}
There’s so much I could share I honestly don’t know where to start, so I’ll ease myself in gently with a few photographs first. My body clock is upside down, I’m on a post-holiday come-down, and missing my girls so bad (there were so many girl-sandwiches and kisses… sigh). I had an amazing time, shared with three incredible women I am so proud to call my friends. I’m in love with them all; I’m in love with California (fires and all!); I’m in love with the promise of my future… more soon.
{beach bunnies captured by the very sexy Mr Boho}
Out of the office
It’s long past midnight and I should be in bed. I’ve packed my suitcase, finished off any work I had to do, emptied the fridge and watered the plants. Now I’m doing the most important task of all: I’m burning music playlists onto CDs in preparation for the drive tomorrow…
..the drive from Los Angeles to San Diego…
I’m off to California for ten days of monkey business, inspiration and love. I have a fully-loaded camera (well, three cameras actually, and lots of film) and arms itching to cuddle my girls. I think we’re going to have a blast – expect a full report when I get back :-)
Asking the right questions
‘Your task is not to seek love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.’ ~ Rumi
I’ve written about my dreams before, how they are so supersized and operatic that I wake exhausted in the morning. I cannot remember a time when this wasn’t the case. Lately I’ve discovered that if I put a question forward before I go to sleep my subconscious will start working on the answers – it’s been quite shocking really. It turns out you don’t lie in your dreams – if you have something to say, or a regret to deal with, it happens dream-side. We really do hold all the answers inside us – we simply need to practice listening out for them.
To aid this I’ve been rereading Dawna Markova’s book, I Will Not Die an Unlived Life, and finding gems that speak to me. In one chapter she describes how one day, overwhelmed with the questions in her life, she took a piece of paper and a pen and wrote them all down, one to one hundred. She didn’t think too hard about them, she simply wrote from her heart:
“What was important was that they were questions that were true for me… I kept going, deeper and darker, until it felt as if the questions were right at the axis of my existence and exploring them could shift my entire gravitational field.”
Inspired, I picked up my pen and gave a voice to all the questions that have been whirling around me, the hows, the whys, the whats and the whens. The ‘can I?’s and ‘will I?s and all the dusty worries that have been hiding for so long. Starting at number one with the obvious – What are my questions? – the questions came fast and easily, as one sparked another, and another, and before I knew it I was at one hundred.
The next morning, as suggested by Markova, I read back through the list and highlighted the ones that particularly jumped out at me, the questions that seemed to sum up what it is I’m dealing with right now, and what it is I need to heal the most. By sitting with the right questions i can begin to look for the answers, dredging up the wisdom i carry in the worldy corners of my self. It was incredibly illuminating, and I think i’ll be using the 100-question exercise often as a tool to bring more clarity into my world. It all helps…
Lucky
When I’m on a shoot with a client I expend a lot of energy, a whole day’s worth squashed down into a single hour of running around with my camera, checking exposure and focus and the direction of the light and is everyone comfortable and oh-what’s-happening-over-there. By the time I get back to my desk I can’t remember what I’ve shot, and there’s always that niggling in my stomach that maybe – god forbid – they are all complete crap. That this is the one shoot where the magic didn’t happen and I’ve failed miserably.
Luckily that didn’t happen yesterday. As I edited the photographs and put together the gallery for my client I found myself narrating a story as each picture followed the next. A story about a mum and a dad and two little boys, playing on the beach with buckets and spades, and love. It’s always such an honour to take portraits, for a stranger to let you capture them in that vulnerable place that we all visit when the camera is thrust in our face.
I really love my new job :-)
Because I had no words
It was his birthday on Saturday, and unlike the previous year I did not want to commemorate it in any particular way, just simply to be quiet with my thoughts and memories. There are two significant dates for each person: the day they were born and the day they die. I know both of his dates and it makes me lose my words every time I remember the phone call that told me he was gone. My healing path has been very thorough and even though I still ache for him, I also acknowledge how this rebuilt me is bigger and better than the me of the past. Why I couldn't have both – the new me and the old him – is something I'll never understand. I'm still very loyal to him, something even my doctor has questioned. When discussing treatment for the debilitating PMS i've been cursed with, the Pill came up. 'How often are you having sex?" my doctor asked, the doctor who'd seen me at my worst when I first moved to this town, the doctor who knows the story of the last two and a half years. 'Er, i'm not' i said. The doctor sat back in his chair in surprise. "Why not? You're young, it's been long enough now.' How do you know? I thought. 'I'm just not ready,' I said.
This encounter has brought up lots of different thoughts for me, the most revealing being the nature of time. Yes, it has been two and a half years, but for me it feels like a lot less. I can't remember much about the first year, the days all pushed together and covered in a grey haze. It's only in the last twelve months that I've really started to tackle the internal stuff that needed to be taken out, aired, refolded and rehung. It takes time, it's exhausting and it never seems to end.
I have no idea when i'll be ready to have sex again, let alone fall in love. It's not at the top of my to-do list, despite my doctor's urging. I like being on my own – I like it a bit too much truth be told. It's very easy for a broken heart to heal so completely it becomes impenetrable, for it to protect itself with walls and barriers so that it never ever has to be broken again. I know i'll be ready when I'm ready, that it will happen when it happens. I just wish I didn't have to be made to feel like there was something wrong with me for wanting to be a little cautious before I jump back on the merry-go-round.
