I’ve got a story to tell and it begins in the dark, just as the sky cracks open at the edge of the world. It begins as the golden light pierces the darkness and the trumpet calls of wild geese ring out across the valley in concert with the abbey bells. It begins when as the first shades of lavender and rose gold tint the sky. It begins when vibrations from the abbey bells travel up from the souls of my feet into my heart, finally shaking loose the parts of me tied too tightly to worldly concerns and things I cannot change.
My story is called Morning at Merton’s Abbey and is told through a series of photographs taken at Our Lady of the Abbey of Gethsemani monestary founded by an order of Trappists monks 172 years ago in Kentucky. Gethsemani was also the home of Thomas Merton, its most famous monk. It’s easy to understand why Merton was so inspired by this place. The light, the air at Gethsemani has an ephemeral, otherworldly quality.
For a number of years I’ve traveled a little over an hour (but a world away) from my home to stand alone an the top of a knob at Gethsemani to greet the dawn and capture this light.
Over the course of a year, inspired by Thomas Merton and searching for proof of goodness and compassion in the world, I stood at the corner at Fourth and Muhammad Ali in downtown Louisville looking for the sun. These portraits are a record of the people I met on that corner, each one of them “shining like the sun”. The portraits are accompanied by an except of the conversations we had during our brief encounters. The book can be ordered HERE.
I’ve been to Paris three times, and each time the city of love and light worked its magic.
The first time, I was a 20 year old college student. I arrived alone on train from Switzerland with a backpack and an address for a dorm room in La Défense written on a scrap of paper. I carried with me a stash of very good Swiss chocolate and the faint echo of the last words my mother said to me before I got on the plane for Europe: “Never go anywhere alone. Ever.” Famous last words! And for the record, I also ditched the full size iron she insisted I carry in my back pack because, “No daughter of hers was going to wander around Europe wearing wrinkled clothes!” To her credit, in spite of her fears and missgivings, she let me go when it was my time and for that I’ll always be grateful.
I spent a month taking an art history class at the Louvre, and the remaining hours of each day drinking coffee in cafes, riding the metro, and wandering cathedrals, museums, and the wide boulevards of Paris mostly by myself. I learned how to keep my own company and enjoy it, and learned that most things would work themselves out. It was transformative.
The second time I arrived in Paris with my best friend, Suzanne. we both had young children. I was a mother of two children under the age of four years old and during our time in Paris it was as if a fairy Godmother had waved her wand and turned me into Cinderella. I wore nice clothes, which at that time in my life meant clothes without stains. We lingered over coffee and croissants at breakfast and had interesting conversations. In the fairytale life, Suzanne and I ate chocolate and strawberries at the top of the Eiffel Tower, and walked the entire length off the Champs-Élysées a sunny spring day. It was a far cry from my life as a director of a social service program, mother of two wild little boys, and a 100 year old house in a constant state of chaos created by children and never-ending construction projects.
We made this trip to attend my—my husband and I couldn’t afford for us both to go, so he generously stayed home with the kids. For the first time in a very long time, I could hear my own thoughts form in my head and I had the brain space to remember them. Once again, my time in Paris was transformative, and offered some perspective that I one day my sons would be grown and life would not be so chaotic.
The third and the last time I went to Paris was six weeks after my father died. Friends, if at all possible, marry the kind of life partner who offers you Paris when your heart is broken. After a difficult couple of years watching my father decline with a fatal brain tumor, the beauty of Paris helped to transform grief into peace.
We took a nonstop flight from Cincinnati and a mere eight hours later arrived in Paris on the first day of May. It was a national holiday, and as we disembarked from the plane, flight attendants handed us tiny bouquets of Lily of the Valley. It was an auspicious start to a magical week.
We had no itinerary, but turned down every alleyway and boulevard that looked interesting, which meant we were constantly lost and also saw the most beautiful sights. It rained some, but Paris in the rain at night becomes a giant kaleidoscope, a city of mirrors reflecting the city of light. It was May, so the flowers of Paris were in full bloom; frangrant roses in the gardens of the Musee Rodin, lavender wisteria climbed up wrought iron balconies, and lush pink ice-cream cone shaped blooms hung low from Chestnut trees. We drank red wine and had picnics at Parc Monceau. In the mornings, David biked the cobbles on the Champs-Élysées and I ran along the Seine.
I had time to indulge in my favorite pastime of people watching, and unlike at home I aimed my gaze and camera more frequently at people than landscapes. David never complained about the 1000’s of times I stopped to take photographs. On the metro, and on the streets, I reveled in the astounding beauty of Parisians: The chic business woman, young lovers oblivious of the other passengers, a Sorbonne student with his disheveled clothes and tousled hair lost in thought, a group of tough looking young men with kind eyes that belied their piercings and tattoos, a mother holding tightly to her child’s hand, the tourist with her Louis Vuitton shopping bags, and an elderly woman with faded red hair who looked like she could be the Queen of France, if France still had a Queen. They were all there, and all their stories were there for imagining.
Standing at the top of Notre Dame, I found my self agreeing with Victor Hugo’s description, “All Paris was spread out at his feet, with her thousand turrets, her undulating horizon, her river winding under the bridges, her stream of people flowing to and fro in the streets; with the cloud of smoke rising from her many chimneys; with her chain of crested roofs pressing in ever tightening coils round about Notre Dame.”
The photographs are from my last trip to Paris, but I hope not my final trip.
We spend our summers on the Ohio River, and in the spring and fall we love to paddle our canoe on Kentucky’s many beautiful creeks and smaller rivers. They are a source of endless beauty and inspiration. Below are the words of Harlan Hubbard, my favorite river man, who expresses more eloquently than I can the pull of the river.
“The river extends this power drawing all things with it even to the imagination of those who live on its banks, who can long watch the ceaseless lapping of a river’s current without conceiving a desire to set himself adrift and, like driftwood which glides past, float with the clear stream to the final ocean?”
“The river is a world in itself, separated from the country through which it flows by invisible walls. the seasons are not the same as those of a country inland. The river air is softer, a little misty always,…”
“It might be said the river flowing by is the present time, upriver is the past, and downstream lies the future.”
~ Harlan Hubbard
Between heaven and earth, poetry is everywhere.
As I looked through my photographs following a trip to Rome and the Amalfi Coast (including Positano, Sorrento, Ravello, Naples, and a dozen little fishing villages in-between) a story began to reveal itself to me. It seemed as if I had unknowingly captured through my lens a timeless story of crime and passion. I put all pieces of the story together in my photographic version of an Italian Opera.
Setting: An Italian Fishing Village
ACT I
The Cast of Characters
The Crime
The Escape
ACT II
The Despair
The Rumors
The Informant
ACT III
The Confession
The Punishment
The Chorus
Like the center of a solar system, the sunflower field hums along, circled by its planets, the winged, whirring creatures of the sky: birds, bees, and butterflies. Standing in the center of it is like looking into the sun; I'm blinded by a shimmering light.
For a city girl, who am I kidding—a girl raised in a Brady Bunch version of the 1970’s suburbs, I feel a surprising reverence for barns. Barns feel like church to me, as holy as the most ornate cathedrals. To my eyes, light filtered through cracks in a barn wall is more beautiful than light streamed through stained glass. Barns are places where prayers are offered daily, where new life is consecrated and death witnessed. Barns are where we put down our work and celebrations are held—weddings, dances, and making music. Every drop of water is holy and grain is life in a barn. Barns are places of work, joy, despair, and peace. In college I was lucky enough to spend a entire summer of nights sleeping in a barn perched on the edge of a holler in the mountains of Kentucky. I remember the musical, magical sound of rain on its tin roof. Does a more sacred sound, one that is equally exhilarating and melancholy exist? Kentucky doesn’t have many cathedrals, but we are rich in barns. Here is a collection I’ve gathered from our travels around the state.
Old Taylor Distillery before Castle & Key Restoration #6
