from behind the lens

tuesday night, 16th of august.  from under the apple tree on candlewood lake, the moonlight falls all around me, nearly as intense as the light from the screen of my laptop as i sit here typing.  what a full summer this has been already, and in many ways i feel this adventure is only beginning.  the above picture was taken before i left norfolk, va for the year.  as i took this shot, i was struck by the photographer seen through his own lens.  one of my favorite writers, annie dillard, wrote a book when she was 26 called a pilgrim at tinker creek.  she talks about lenses, and about how we see.  reading chapter 2 of that book in the spring of 2001 remains today among the most earth-shaking experiences of my 25 year life.  as a child, annie hid her pennies along the sidewalks of pittsburg and delighted herself at the thought of the lucky persons who would find them.  the world is, annie contends, "studded and strewn with pennies cast broadside from a generous hand".  Right now I can see things that i've missed all my life, and it fascinates me to think what pennies i may spy tommorrow that have always been hidden from my eyes. 

someone recently told me that they thought ohio must be a boring state, full of corn and country folk.  i could not disagree more, and i told them so.  ohio is to me long warm summer days, tall corn that glows under the lightning bugs in a cool evening, warm and generous farmers and country families that so easily adopt you into their homes, if only to share a dinner.  the pace here, the unhurried sense, the genuine interest in outsiders and visitors, is a thing of tremendous beauty.  but i know about this place because i have had the chance to see, and to a friend who hasn't seen what you've seen, you can only try to paint them a picture.  if they have the vision, if they can look through your lens, then they get to have the joy of a fresh new world.  "what you see is what you get" (pilgrim, ch.2, by annie dillard)