The time between posts always feels ancient to me. The days of posting everyday, heck even two or three times a week are long gone with the days I spent at home learning with the kids. What I miss most about that time is the sap-like slowness that oozed from the of heart of long, hot Florida days. Yet, I would be amiss to say that I pine for those days again. Abundance flourishes now as it did then and I still find awe in the rocky foothills of my daily landscape. I still find awe in my sprouting children with their easy laughter and love for life. My camera knows—I know, the tiny secrets that lie in the ugly cracks of time and age, the secrets that burst forth with every bloom and every bird shouting “Love it now or lose it forever!!!!”

Someone long ago and on their knees planted these gorgeous red tulips in the front left corner of our yard. My daughter and I have been watching the hearty, leggy leaves reach from their hibernating depths for life and sun. To see them bloom also gave birth to the kind of maternal instinct that only Mother Earth can provide. We have been enjoying those blooms for over a week now, watching them shine and unfold in all their red glory. But we arrived home yesterday to find them mutilated, each one with their beautiful red heads gone–decapitated from their gorgeous, green necks, leaving only arms to flail in the wind. My daughter began to cry, heart aching, as any mother would to find their fledglings stunted and stolen from the time they deserved. Deer? Probably. And life goes on…

A quick tangent, a quick story to leave you with.

There once was an olive green couch that sat by the side of a charming, country-ish road. It is a winding road lined with sweeping views of the foothills and black cows grazing across fields with beautiful barns, sleepy farms and 100 year old houses. It is just the kind of road one would want to plod along at a leisurely pace before happening upon a lonely couch. An aged and once well-loved loveseat it was, beat-up with dingy cushions, tossed to the side with all its stained memory. Strangely enough, the couch rested on the front lawn of a little white house between an equally abandoned schoolhouse and a set of unemployed train tracks with its criss crossed RR sign still posted. It was a very short stretch of vacated life at the end of that country road.

I travel this road every day but this was the first I had ever seen the couch. As my car creeped behind several cars towards the turnlight, I grabbed my cameraphone, took a shot and put it on Instagram, writing “An invitation is how I see it”, because an empty, lonely couch on the side of a charming country road is exactly how I see it. And thinking it would end there as most Instagram shots do, I received a message on that photo asking “Did you?”. And so I thought, “why not?”

So I grabbed a good friend who grabbed her cameras and tripod, and along with my camera, polaroids and some props, we headed back to that country road and to the olive green couch.

For the next hour or so on a windy day and in uncut grass in front of a small, empty, white house, my friend and I played. We moved the couch under the tree, wore hats and modeled ridiculously, feeling self-conscious yet free at the same time. Cars and cyclists drove and rode by, we didn’t care. An old-timer who I think lived next door, jogged by too, smiling at us, we smiled back. We resuscitated that couch, breathing life into spontaneity, breathing life into ourselves. To follow a whim and let the wind tell us where to go, this is what the couch invited us to do, and so we did.

Cheers and love
xoxox

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