Wait - Galway Kinnell

Wait, for now.

Distrust everything if you have to.
But trust the hours. Haven’t they
carried you everywhere, up to now?
Personal events will become interesting again.
Hair will become interesting.
Pain will become interesting.
Buds that open out of season will become interesting.
Second-hand gloves will become lovely again;
their memories are what give them
the need for other hands. The desolation
of lovers is the same: that enormous emptiness
carved out of such tiny beings as we are
asks to be filled; the need
for the new love is faithfulness to the old.

Wait.
Don’t go too early.
You’re tired. But everyone’s tired.
But no one is tired enough.
Only wait a little and listen:
music of hair,
music of pain,
music of looms weaving our loves again.
Be there to hear it, it will be the only time,
most of all to hear your whole existence,
rehearsed by the sorrows, play itself into total exhaustion.

Photos by Heidi Utz

Tammy 2

Tatt2 Tammy

I first met Tatt2 Tammy in the 1990s on the road between Cerrillos and Madrid, NM, where she'd created a large outsider art installation called Tiny Town. Her creations from found objects included lots of bones and sometimes roadkill, plus a number of dioramas--scenes from her life and psyche. When I took the above photo, she was in a happy place, having found love with the cowboy to her left, and was all too pleased to let me and Maggie roam around and take photos on her property. But in late 2008, her landlord locked her out and she burned everything on the property. Tiny Town was, sadly, history.

Happy birthday to my mom

Babushka 1

From Chernobyl Exclusion Zone series, March 2014

Detroit - Belle Isle

On an early June day, Ellen sent me here, to her favorite place, where she and Trixie had spent many hours in this urban oasis of nature. My first day out and the whole city lie before me--with its sadness and pain and broken dreams, the very black & white horrors of all it had endured. I wanted to see what her eyes had seen and feel what her heart had felt.

But this moment felt innocent and kind of Technicolor...And as children bustled nearby at their school picnic, I felt a sense of youthfulness & possibility & joy at a dream realized.

Open-hearted.

For those instants, all of Detroit shone...

Detroit - Heidelberg Project

Very glad I got to see this open-air, neighborhood art project--30 years in the making--before it got dismantled.

I was happy Ellen sent me over to Heidelberg Street, as it made me think a lot about art and God and Detroit and time and the strength of a single person's vision. And...polka dots. It made me think about polka dots.