Pink daisies, Nikon Coolpix 4500 

The Small Things

I’ve always been a fan of the small things. I love to photograph the smallness, the tiny details that we don?t usually notice. I am the one who gets irritatingly close to your face with the camera to photograph the tiny blond hairs that come off of your cheek.

Small things, like the tiny fingernails of my friends’ newborn baby hanging over the edge of the sling. Small like that one line of age on my left cheek I am riveted by in photos. A small sign of age.

Small things like the small shift of sadness in my mother?s voice when I ask her, But mom, really, how are you?? and she says, Oh, fine.

These are the small things that add up to a life. They are small things, and yet, strung together like beads on a necklace, they can create something sad or strange or beautiful. A life.

There’s a guy who wrote a book called Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff, and It’s All Small Stuff. But is it really?

I learned how to cross country ski this year. I was nervous, took about 20 excruciating minutes to get my skis on and went painfully slow for the first hour. On the way back, I hit a downhill stretch that was amazing. I was grooving, flowing, literally in the grooves in the snow feeling high, like I was the greatest skier who ever lived.

Until I saw a curve in the distance.

Logic and physics would dictate that I would simply stay in the grooves and follow the curve, but my fear questioned whether I would keep going straight, jump the grooves and go flying to my death off a cliff.

So in a moment of panic, I jumped the grooves myself and dove into the snow, just to be sure that in a pinch, there was a way out. A skier stopped and asked if I was okay, if I needed help. No, I did it on purpose, I explained, just wanted to make sure I could. Puzzled, he skied away

Do I do this in my life? See a curve in the distance, leap out of the groove, and fall on my face just to know that I can? What if I trusted that the grooves would carry me safely along, just like the skiers ahead of me and behind me?

Is this a small thing?

andrea in ikea, nikon coolpix 4500

I know, i know. I keep mentioning the mirror project. It’s just SO good.

Michael Bernard Loggins, Nikon Coolpix 4500

I’m afraid. Afraid of what we’re doing to the world, afraid of the bombs, afraid to listen to the radio and hear anymore bad news.

I thought it was brilliant that this week, when fear is at its height for so many, that the radio show This American Life featured Michael Bernard Loggins and his book, Fears of Your Life, A Whole Brand New One.

Michael is a student at Creativity Explored in San Francisco, an art center for adults with developmental disabilities, and a place where I have been volunteering for about 4 years. The art that comes out of there is extraordinary, free, unusual, and beautiful.

Several years ago, Michael made a list of all of his fears (138 of them) which was made into a zine. The list is poignant, deep, and full of poetry.

Michael mentions me, in the sweetest of ways, as one of his fears.

Give a listen.

(Note: If you want to skip over a sad story at the beginning of the episode, Michael’s piece begins 34 minutes into the show.)

Another note: When Michael inscribed his book for me he wrote, I love you Andrea. You are my special friend. You are #2.

Yellow Flowers, Canon EOS

I’m new to this whole blogging thing. I’ve been a closet blogger for years, a shadow blogger if you will, visiting other people’s journals each day, wishing I had my own, dreaming of my new life as blogger girl, and also wondering what the heck I would even say.

I took a writing class led by Laurie Wagner to begin exercising my writing muscle. It helped. I felt my confidence growing, my imagination stretching, and my hand moving more gracefully. I was getting in shape for my big day. The day I would have my very own web log.

Well, the day finally came. And like most big days, they aren’t always what you expect. Sasha built me this exquisite page, sifted through the tool movabletype and finally emailed me and said, Blog away!

And then I sat for the entire weekend (it was gorgeous and sunny outside) staring at my computer screen, with nothing to say, thinking I had already failed in advance because I wasn’t really a writer and what I was doing this for anyway?

During one of these mind numbing stare-a-thons with my computer, my friend Susan called and I admitted that I had created this journal and what was I even going to write about? and would anyone even read it? and how much do I actually want to share? and will my parents be reading this?

I just have no idea what to say, I told her.

She told me to start there, to write about the not knowing. And so I am.

I have nothing to say on my web log.

Yet.