lights

With the holidays long over and the rooms stripped of all their festivity, I've been thinking a lot about lights lately. The past few weeks have been the darkest of the winter -- long and cloudy and low. Or maybe they have just seemed darkest, without that extra umph of bright lights scattered over the walls and trees around the house.

I have been skimming through my archives and thinking about how small wads of lights completely transform pictures.

I have been thinking about light while my camera is in the shop and the babies crawl around on the wood floor in the early morning sunshine. The light hits the floor just so, and they chase the stripes and try to grab the shapes.

And since I can't chase them through a lens, I just watch. Or I climb down on the floor with them and put my hand in the light too.

There is something about stepping out from behind the lens, from behind the book and cthe omputer and the phone and the window pane. Life is so much different three steps removed. There is something about getting into the light and air and sounds and smells, about experiencing it all first hand.

I'll be grateful to have my camera back eventually (please, please, please) but in the meantime, there is something to be said for being without.