I just finished speaking, on my favorite topic, iPhone photography, to a very enthusiastic crowd of professional Architects, Builders, and Landscape Designers,
at a Cape Cod Outdoor Living Symposium in Falmouth.
After a picture-perfect cocktail hour (Blue Moon beers and Lobsterolls), I’m settling into my crib for the night-an Airstream at Autocamp.
I could get used to this!
Things feel different to me tonight. For lots of reasons.
Like I’m beginning a brand new journey in my orbit around the sun. The view is incredible and goes by so quickly.
Look at that. Amazing. Wow. There goes another one.
More terrestrial, I’m surrounded, as I sit here, next to me, by the words, in book form, of Henry David Thoreau and the melancholy lyrics, playing on Spotify, of Joni Mitchell (“Blue”-one of the greatest albums of all time).
“We are stardust
We are Billion year-old carbon
We are golden
And we’ve got to get ourselves
Back to the garden”
If you had told me, in my wayward and awkward teen years that, at 70 years old, I would be sitting here today, September 17, 2024, 5.30pm, thinking these majestic thoughts of life, love and laughter…I would have said your fucking crazy and out of your mind. Not me. No way. Does anyone have any weed?
But here I sit and muse and ponder…decades later, in absolute awe of the journey.
I’ve lived nine lives, maybe more.
I’ve loved all of them.
I’ve experienced light and darkness, good and evil, unshackled joie de vivre, and anxiety and fear too great to whisper.
My life has not been, by any stretch perfect, but surely and deeply meaningful.
It’s been a hell of a ride.
The biggest loves of my life-Shannon, Emma and Audrey-remain the biggest loves of my life. Thank you.
Today, my grounded but melancholy thoughts turn to unconditional gratefulness and thankfulness.
I’m glad to be alive. Truly. Life is good. Again, not perfect but meaningful.
Not one of us could ask for more.
I’m less sure, today, about life’s mysteries but more content with these unknowns and crooked ways. I’m learning. I’m growing. I’m wondering.
It would be a gross understatement to say photography has completed me.
It has. It does. It will.
Life through the lens has been remarkably buoyant.
I would be lost without her….in my life.
Click.
Jack.
