Dancing With Monsters

The Rolling Exhibition

http://www.therollingexhibition.com/gallery.php

http://www.therollingexhibition.com/gallery.php

Captured: America in Color from 1939-1943 – Plog Photo Blog

Captured: America in Color from 1939-1943 – Plog Photo Blog

http://blogs.denverpost.com/captured/...

These images, by photographers of the Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information, are some of the only color photographs taken of the effects of the Depression on America’s rural and small town populations. The photographs are the property of the Library of Congress and were included in a 2006 exhibit Bound for Glory: America in Color.

NY Times Magazine - The New York Times

NY Times Magazine - The New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/indexes/2010/0...

Laura Linney is quite inspiring for many reasons. Most of all being courageous and curious and grateful while aging. Thanks Laura.

A Global Graveyard for Dead Computers in Ghana - Slide Show - NYTimes.com

A Global Graveyard for Dead Computers in Ghana - Slide Show - NYTimes.com

http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2010...

In Agbogbloshie, a slum in Accra, the 
capital of Ghana, adults and children tear away at computers from abroad 
to get at the precious metals inside. Left, David Akore, 18, and other foragers.Credit: Pieter Hugo for The New York Times

There is blasphemy in the post... lightening may strike

I spent some time wandering around Colonial Cemetery in Savannah this morning. I have always like cemeteries. The quiet and the certain end of things always makes me feel more grounded and settled. When I was in younger (in Conway, SC) I didn't have many folks who were in them so I'd walk around and visit other people's people. At 15 I had a boyfriend whose grandfather died who I had never met. We only dated for a few months but I went to his grandpa's gravesite for years afterward just so I could feel some connection to a dead person as I wandered around. I'd go and sit and cry, talk about my life and feel good knowing no one alive could hear me yet feel relieved that he did exist once.
Lord help me - how melodramatic can a teenager be?! (did I mention I went to rehab at 16...?)
Of course, here I am, 39 years old, wandering around a graveyard, feeling even more connected to all of the dead people in it because my dad just died.
I did not, however, stop to chat with anyone. Alive or dead.
I think people suck right now.
So I took pictures of the trees instead.
But make no mistake.
The graveyard feels much more like walking into a comfy room now that more of my people's bones and ashes are in them year after year.
And here is what I thought about the magnificent trees.
With trees like that, hanging over the dead - who needs to believe in heaven?
It is all right here.
In the hot, humid, sticky, complicated, fucked up south.
Home.

Amazing photo from Aaron Huey

clipped from aaronhuey.com

Women in Tajikistan

Check out the great photos of women in Tajikistan by photographer Mashid Mohadjerin and the stories about what is going on in their world...

photo by Mashid Mohadjerin

http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/04/16/in-tajikistan-women-fill-a-void/

Help, I've fallen and I don't want to get up

I love to see how creative women can be poking fun at the ideas of family, fairy tales, and romantic love. If I am a fallen princess, I'll just stay down.
Here is Jasmine from the Walt Disney fairy tale... you must take a look at all of the photos!
Thanks Diane Goldstein!

Photo by Diane Goldstein

http://www.fallenprincesses.com/

In case you were wondering

where I have been since my dad died March 7th and what the trip has been like I decided to take  a moment to see if I could tell you. There are a few things that I have found in the journey of grief so far that are pretty profound. I'll share them with you.

The anger.
I am familiar with being angry. Of course. I am alive and kicking in this world so I have been angry a time or two but this anger feels much more undirected. I am not angry at my dad, or god, or those of us that are still alive. It is a much more general feeling than that I am very angry at You. With the capital Y. Yes the general you. It is why I had to excuse myself from Facebook for a minute (or two or three). My threshold for idiotic questions and comments is gone. So rather than respond and spew all over people who don't really matter or deserve it, I decided to bow out and just let the anger pass through like a visitor I know has a reason for being there (she is a partner to the grief) so I'll deal for now. I can try to limit the damage in the mean time. But it is pretty overwhelming. I had no idea how angry I'd be.

The loneliness.
This is just one of those things that no matter how much I have complained that people are not there for me or that people don't know how to let me just be a wreck without trying to fix me - the bottom line is I have to go through this myself. Which makes me feel incredibly lonely and incredibly adult. More so than any other time in my life when I have dealt with death firsthand - my abortion and my dog Buddha. I don't have to be a martyr or be alone or be an ass (when I can help it) but it is something that I have to process in my own way.Not one of my fabulous crew unpaid (friends and family) or paid (basically the shrinks) can do anything about that. So I gotta cut'em some slack.

Being uncomfortable in my skin. All of the time.
I remember when I first got sober. Um. 23 years ago in 1987 after my junior prom in high school. But never mind about that. The point is. I spent a lot of time in my first years of sobriety uncomfortable and wanting to escape above and beyond the normal teen angst. I am here again. I thought grief was going to be much sharper. It has sharp moments to be sure but  it is mostly a veil of discomfort laid out over my whole being. It is disconnected from the thoughts I have about my father's death, dying and memories I have of him from life. And, yet, I know it has everything to do with RayRay no longer being alive. I miss being able to call him. I cry at least once a day.

I notice men of certain age and fathers.
Where were all of these men before? It took my father dying for this group of men to pop out of the human race at me. I see them everywhere. I hear men on the subway talk about being 57-67 years of age and I think of my dad. I see men on the street walking with their daughters. And sometimes it stops me and I have to cry out loud, right there, where ever I am. I want to run over to them and hug them. But I stop myself. I do realize this is wildly inappropriate. Other times I can just smile and feel so happy for them and for me. I also notice the elderly men and think to myself, my dad will never be that old....

I saw suffering stop.
For the first time in my life I saw suffering end. I have been around alot of suffering people all of my life. In my family, my friends, in the work I do, I have just gotten used to it. And I have seen suffering subside and ebb and flow like it does. But until I watched my father die, I had never seen it stop. I was blown away. I don't know if he felt peace. I don't pretend to know what he felt. No one does.(and if you think you do, please refrain from talking to me about it for now) Watching that intense suffering stop has put a grounding under my feet I did not have before. A belief in the process of dying and death. That it is real. That it is supposed to be there. And that it, while hard and ugly and not easy really, is part of this thing called life.And I feel honored to have been a part of my father's death process. I will be forever changed because of it. I saw it. I saw how love can help someone die how they want to. And I saw how love, in spite of complicated relationships, can be the thing anchors a process like dying. (My stepmom, my sister and my brother are such amazing people you just don't even know. I'll write more on that later.)

So in case you were wondering how I am doing, I am grieving.
Madly, intensely, presently grieving.
Not any more or less than I am supposed to be.
And humbled by every fucking thing about it.

It is the quiet now

That seems to be so loud. It was indeed "it". My father died on March 7 at 4 a.m. My sister, brother, stepmother and I coached him through his final hours of suffering until he was able to die. There were no words of asking him to let go or telling him everything was going to be alright. We walked with him while his drugged body gasped for air trying to find just the right position for failing lungs to get oxygen. Morphine and ativan took care of his pain and anxiety but there is nothing you can do about a body needing to breathe. Not when you want to die like he did. So we helped him. It as if we were helping him birth himself out of this life and into... what, I do not know. That is not my business. What was my business what helping my father die. And we did.