this is me

it's who I be

my true love is writing. most people don't know that, though. most people see me with a camera clutched in my hands as if I were in downtown Chicago with a purse full of expensive, illegal . . . things . . . but how many people bring a notebook and pencil everywhere they go? my camera is an accessory more compatible with my public life. behind my closed bedroom door, however, my private life is filled with notebooks, and my light is often on until the morning hours as I sprawl on the floor, scribbling desperately in an attempt to get the words out of my head and onto paper.

my second love is photography. for a while, I couldn't understand what attracted me so strongly to this 'hobby'. while visiting a sister in Indiana, I met a photographer who looked like he ought to be behind a tractor wheel, not a camera. bearded, dressed in greasy, torn jeans and a matching plaid shirt, his calloused, stained hands trembled as he talked about his craft. "when we take photos," he said, "we aren't capturing objects. we're not capturing color. do you know what we're capturing? we're capturing light." when he said that, I immediately understood why photography held me so enthralled. I was capturing light.

my love for music trails closely behind photography. some things there simply are no words for. sometimes the pain or the joy is so great that my human vocabulary becomes useless. some things I can only express through the touch of my fingers on the piano keys. there have been nights when I have played until midnight, nights when I cannot sleep until my fingers are stiff from playing nonstop for three hours.

my fourth love is reading. reading the work of people better than me is humbling, and it prods me into spending more sleepless nights glaring at another rebellious pen which has again failed me, and at a page full of angry lines slashed across each wrong word. child prodigies, like Mozart, infuriate me. they live in their fantasy bubbles, their work approaching the divine, having been born with the words or the music inside of them and straining to break free. while I, normal human that I am, strain to pull the fragments of gold or silver from the pig iron mass of my brain.

and in my mad scientist moments, I love to cook up delightful concoctions. this is probably the most rewarding of my many occupations. people drool over my culinary creations, while I hover near with a camera to capture their greedy expressions at sighting my Taste of Home cover-worthy vittles.