lightness of being a woman.

Taken with a 50mm lens, at f/1.8, the focus here is on the bouquet of dried roses, with the body of a woman in the blur. The image speaks of the process of aging, of staying vital and beautiful as the years mount. There is such pressure on women to look a certain way, to conform to a certain standard of beauty. And even though we age, the arbitrary standard never does. It is always young and firm, bouncy and round, supple and sinuous.

Unlike a good wine, with humans, aging is complicated. We continue to get better in certain ways, and yet we decline in others. There is a give and take that occurs. What we gain in wisdom, we lose in elasticity. I had a friend who was in her 90's and she said that when she randomly caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror, she wondered for a second who that old woman was, the one looking back at her. When asked how old she felt on the inside, she said, "I feel about 25, maybe 30." And then she smiled, and I could see her as the ten year old girl she had once been. Her eyes still had that twinkle, that spark, even though her face bore the marks of the passing of the years. There was a lightness in her spirit.

My friend was a lot like this bouquet of flowers. When I look at them, they are dried, wrinkled, crispy, and yet I see beauty there in the creases, evidence of having lived. I see perfection in their imperfections. I keep them around because of the memories associated with them. They remind me of one of the happiest occasions of my life. I see beyond the dessication.

There are other photos in this series, which I will be sharing and writing about soon. Please stay tuned for more.

Until next time...

Anne

Water..... at its best it is a giver and sustainer of life; at its worst a destroyer of all in its path. In the womb we are cradled and cushioned by amniotic waters, lulled to sleep by the gentle roll and slosh as our mothers walk through their days, while eagerly awaiting our emergence from their wombs so that they might take us into their arms and whisper words of love into our tiny ears. When we leave the warmth of that watery embrace, what a shock it is to our tiny, newborn systems. We long for warmth and protection, for that place of diffuse light and shadow and softness. This new world is bright and cold, and filled with hard edges.

And to this day when I long for solace, when the hard edges of the world threaten my tender spots, when the cold seeps into my bones and I am unable to shake it, I retreat to my bathtub. Submerged in heated waters, during those moments of fragility and vulnerability, I am renewed, comforted, cleansed, healed.

I seek out water in my travels and in my daily life, the sea side, the lake near my former home, the river's edge near my new home, even the tiny creeks that are flush after a heavy rain. The sound of flowing, rolling, rushing, falling water is like a hymn sung by the universe. It strikes a universal chord in us. Perhaps it harkens back to those early moments in the sloshing womb.

Water has a powerfully pernicious side too. It has the ability to lash out at the landscape with a vengeance, wiping it clean and drawing everything in its path out to sea as it retreats. It has the ability to rise and to rise and claim what it wants for itself. And sometimes it has the ability to swallow whole everything within its reach.

As with human beings, all these contradictions are contained at once. We hold our gentleness, our tenderness and our compassion next to our anger, our resentment and our fear. These images shown here, part of my series entitled "The Source." They illustrate the gentle, hypnotic abilities of calm, still waters. They are an homage to the life-sustaining side of water and a subtle nod to the other dangerous, nefarious side.

Wishing you calm waters and smooth sailing as you venture forward on the seas of autumn.

Until next time...

Anne