how i look to the things i do year after year to tell me who i am

thanksgiving bowling with joanie

two enthusiastic bowlers

johnny and joanie

rom, hunting for christmas trees

before

after

the messiah sing-in

and for something entirely different, dave with rom/t-rex arms

of late of note

it's november and the whole world is happening, and that's where i've been.

this won't surprise anyone, but i've been thinking about death. perhaps you'll recall this post, where i remember saying more than i actually did about how the way we think about death is inseparable from the way we think about life. so i'm not calling myself morbid anymore, rather, a student of both sides of the same grand thing.

at my aunt's funeral last week, her family released white doves at the graveside to symbolize the parts of them that are moving on with her spirit. to stand with my pillars in celebration of a glorious life, to watch those fragile solitary birds circle into a flock in the snapcold sky, to feel the flap of desire to go where they're going but know that i'm ground-bound--

sometimes i'm stopped stilled by the texture of experience, how beautiful and complicated and simple and all it is.