Sometimes I get so caught up in issues close to my heart that I lose my own way.
And really, I know that at any given time, in any given century, there are 'bad things going on'. I would be naive to imagine otherwise. And I do understand that I know very little of the facts of those 'things'. I know I need to understand that an absolute 'truth' doesn't really exist. No situation is black & white.
Perhaps the best is to seek a series of narratives from different sources, accepting that truth is in there somewhere ... in different ways for every soul involved.
I had to find a way back from the sadness that set in after spending days reading of things so bad and so sad that they slipped in under my skin ... like tics perhaps, quietly poisoning my peace of mind and stealing my sense of beauty.
I found my way back tonight. I've been lost in other, rather beautiful, worlds for an hour or more, since discovering Jodi's blog - Practising Simplicity.
She 'introduced' me to Katie and Reuben's - House of Humble. And they led me over to Inked in Colour by Sash.
And finally, I felt like wandering across this after-midnight-silent room, to pick up my beautiful shawl, having this sense of finding my way back to myself some. The Russian tailor made the changes I asked him to make to the shawl and it's quickly becoming this beautiful thing that makes me smile whenever I wear it.
Martin Luther King said that, 'Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.'
I believe this, so strongly, but I also see that I need balance. When I speak out there's a sense of standing some place alone. I want the world's eyes to turn to this topic that seems so important to me but in pursuing that desire to share, to speak out, hurts me.
I grew up watching The Diary of Anne Frank on television. It was screened, at very least, annually. And we studied her story ... more than once, in school.
For a long time, years really, watching that movie I would to hope that someone would speak up for those people trapped in that holocaust. But no one seemed able to so effectively. The excuse used later was, we didn't know. And so it is that periodically I am compelled to share information that asks people to 'see' and to 'know'. To help bring about change. To stop really bad stuff happening.
But the slope is slippery and the deeper I go the further I am from that place, that creative space, where I prefer to be. I love being a photographer, observing and capturing without interfering too much. I love writing ... telling stories the way I imagine them. And I believe, so strongly, in justice for all even as I understand it's impossible.
Periodically I step into the ring and challenge peoples desire to turn away, not to see, not to know.
And afterwards, after the sharing, I have to find a way back to way I prefer life to be. The women I discovered tonight pulled me back onto those paths that involve flowers and fruit trees, beautifully captured, along with so many stories.
It's good to be back from that other, much sadder, much harder place for a while.
