Moon in Coahoma County

It’s Tuesday - again - and right now I’m thinking about the monotony of life. The glorious, beautiful opportunities we have for repetition. This chance we all have to get back at it and try again, and
the difficulty of actually doing so.

I had a good visit with a friend recently. She asked me about these weekly posts, and in doing so she complemented the work. I appreciated her kind words. Then she added, “but sometimes I can tell you mail it in”. I probably appreciated that comment even more.

She wasn’t wrong. Sometimes I reach a point where my day has zipped past. It is filled with various things from work to rest. I’ve given myself a deadline of posting a new image each Tuesday, and i want to stick to that promise. This is not an exercise in creativity, it is an exercise in trust. I trust that if I maintain this routine, good will come of it. There will be some bad stuff sprinkled in there too, and that, I’ve learned, is the process of creating. It is also the process of being.

So tonight I will be. I will share what I can, how I can, and that will be ok. next week may be the same, or it may not. I’ll find out as the next deadline approaches, just like all of you.

This is an image I made a few years ago as I drove north on Highway 61 just before daybreak. I make most of my photos that way; wandering, not looking for anything specific but open to what may emerge, and hopeful that something will. When it does, I notice, and my photographs become a reminder to me that at least in the instant the image was made, I was present, and I noticed what was in front of me. It’s a lofty ambition to do that constantly, but a worthwhile one, I think.

So I will leave this short essay at peace with what it is, and with the poem I wrote on the morning I noticed this beautiful moonlight cast across the Mississippi Delta landscape:

Light over the land
Amber glow to guide the way.
Dark below the sky