| Thursday, April 30, 2020 | | Life In The Time Of CoronaVirus | I started my writing career as a journalist, reporting on mostly government news in a weekly paper. April, 1980. How can it be 40 years ago already?? Occasionally I had the chance to write a feature story, and by the time I left the paper to become Dare’s public information officer late in 1982, I had even penned a couple of editorials (reporters were not allowed opinions). But the majority of my reporting life was strictly reporting. I covered Dare County and the Town of Manteo, with an emphasis on government budgeting and land use/growth management planning. So I guess I shouldn’t be surprised by thinking up all the headlines that could illustrate a journalistic photo essay about These Times.
But those passing 40 years have wrought their changes in more than my stamina or skin tone (though not in my hair color, so I still look reasonably like myself in this era of no salon visits). I can amuse myself by conceptualizing a storyline, or seeing the global images that will inevitably find their way into the 2020 Look-back Look-Books. But none of that makes my heart sing. It only makes my heart break.
What makes my heart sing, my stubborn, sometimes falsetto (but not false), sometimes contralto (but not contrary) heart sing is the beauty of this world. And the nightly news, bad as it is, still gives us glimpses of that beauty in the caring of some of us for all of us. I find my heart’s symphony closer to home, in a natural world that still turns and revolves around the sun, that still boasts breeding birds and nesting birds and baby birds, hushed moonsets and thunderous wave sets.
With the shop closed, I have had more opportunity to walk an empty beach and photograph than I normally would this time of year. I recharge in solitude. Morning journaling, art journaling at night, walking with my lens held up to the eye of my heart, these practices ground me, settle me, fill me up. They are my oxygen. But as I told a friend earlier today, the oxygen cannot stay long within the body. Its energy turns. It must be released, given out, given away, given back. Kept too long, hoarded, it turns poisonous, the carbon dioxide suffocating. We were meant to breathe, in and out. We were made to receive in order to give, and to give in order to create the space within to receive again, and again, and yet always again. We were made to thrive in community. No wonder I feel as though I am suffocating, in this enforced necessary—but so unnatural—isolation.
Jefferson Airplane’s song “Today” speaks power to my truth:
To be any more than all I am would be a lie
I’m so full of love I could burst apart and start to cry
Please, please listen to me
It’s taken so long to come true
And it’s all for you…
|
click for larger image | Osprey arrive home mid-March and begin rebuilding their nests. I've celebrated this for decades. But until this year, never saw the heart pattern on any Osprey's head. Love prevails. |
| 
click for larger image | This might be my favorite Osprey image this year. And a contender for all time fave. The reunited couple. |
| | 
click for larger image | On this particular afternoon, the Pelicans were gliding between wave sets breaking very close to shore. |
| 
click for larger image | A lifetime experience--the chance to watch a parent Bald Eagle bring supper to two hungry eaglets. I stayed at the nest four hours one afternoon to wait for this exact moment. |
| 
click for larger image | "Wolf" seems to be accompanying me this year, especially with no denning foxes to watch. See the "wolf face" in the Nags Head Woods tree reflections? |
| 
click for larger image | The wave wash patterns at sunrise on Easter morning reminded me of the labyrinth at my church, All Saints Episcopal. |
| 
click for larger image | March came in like a lamb but went out like a lion. The big winds in late March and on April 1 created beautiful sand sculptures. |
| 
click for larger image | The Swallowtails always find the blooming thistle at Alligator River. I literally asked the butterfly for this image--coming up over the edge of the thistle lit by a late afternoon sun, and it obliged. |
| 
click for larger image | I went out late at night for a star-studded sky over the sea, but turned around in order to make this image: a setting crescent moon over the Sound. |
|
posted by eturek at 9:48 PM |
Comments [1] |
|
|