Lily at the Edge of the Known World

Donna and Lily on a walk next to a mature forest at Lake Wilderness

There’s a lot I could say about my motivations for photography, but one essential ingredient is that I tend to photograph surprises. The surprise of a new or elegant or subtly plumed bird, the shock of things that won’t repeat for a thousand years, something that surprises me or wakes me up, and so on. (But I have no interest in the obvious surprises. I am attracted to the ordinary surprise, the things that slip by you if you don’t look closely enough.)

Friends have asked for pictures of Lily, but I have to confess: it’s hard to take photos of her. There is a profound difference between, on the one hand: Lily the dog-being who licks my face, who stretches elegantly upon waking, who teases me with her toy when she senses I am sad; and on the other hand: the necessity to see her life force captured in a photograph, is profound. There is an immense gulf between those two things. I could give you her cuteness in a picture, but how could I show you how she makes me feel?

But words work; it lightens my soul to articulate love. Above is just a walk, just a woman and her dog (for all my infatuation with her, she is clearly Donna’s dog); above is light and darkness, the everyday and the imagination, visible and invisible forces of life. And: it’s just a picture. I throw up my hands; I cannot take photographs, but I can love what I see, and make a picture of it. That’s really all I know how to do, when you get down to the fundamentals.

— based on a FB post to a friend tonight