happy weekend!

this has felt like the longest week! for you too?

i hope your weekend includes lots of relaxing and doing the things you love to do. i had one of those weekends last weekend and i can't wait to share it with you in pictures next week. here are a couple for now.

interesting combination, isn't it?

do you know about she & him? it's a band with zooey deschanel and a guy named m. ward and they're great. different. check out this song.

while we're listening to beautiful female vocals, here is a brandi carlisle song that is just beautiful. if you don't already know her, you have to get to know her. she's one of those voices you feel in your bones.

i'll see you on monday.

city nights

eastbound view on 45th street

i was struck by the brilliant shade of blue in the sky a couple weeks ago around 5:30 as i walked to the train, so i snapped some pictures, not sure what would become of them, but just to capture the moment. of course i knew that at some point i'd be sharing them with you, my lovely readers.

westbound view on 45th street

and in the few weeks that have passed since then, the world has changed. it's 2010 now, and there have been disastrous events in the world, forever leaving a mark. also, there have been momentous political changes, and everyone's lives have been impacted in some way by these events, and by countless others that occur on a daily basis, large and small, every day of our lives. for us, 2010 has been a little stressful so far, but you know what? i'm convinced things are starting to look up. and isn't that really half the battle, believing it?

eastbound view on 45th street

and as if on cue, the sky when i left my office last night at precisely the same time, told a story that corroborates the idea that a certain heaviness is lifting, and that there is truly light at the end of the tunnel. i hope this january thaw brings with it some relief...for whatever and whomever needs relieving. and i hope you have a wonderful weekend.

westbound on 45th street

this picture of the darker blue sky is kind of blurry, but i'm sort of into it in an artistic way. hmmm...

westbound view on 45th street

nothing but blue skies

i just had to share the ridiculous looking sky we had the other night while heading west on the bqe. can you believe? another reminder that the most amazing sights are there whether we see them or not.

so i guess it pays to look. and to take pictures.

thursday night lights - cloud ribbons

it's been bugging me that i haven't posted our thursday night lights pictures from last week since they were pretty ones. so i'm sharing them now so that i'm caught up. okay, i feel much better now.

i love how on this night, the clouds looked like wrinkles and ribbons in the sky. it's amazing how it's all just light and moisture and air. i never get tired of looking at the sky on nights like this and with the added benefit of the water, it just never gets old.


i also love the reddish glow that seems to fill the space all around us right before dark.

thursday night lights

one of the things i love most about the town we live in (port washington on long island) is that it is on the water. in my experience, many of the towns i find most charming and full of character and culture are in fact, on bodies of water. i'm not exactly sure why, other than that maybe towns like ours are a little off the beaten path - not as convenient to highways and main thoroughfares -- and therefore they draw people that are looking for certain qualities in a town; lots of restaurants and shops, community feeling, attractions and activities. and because the town attracts people like that, that type of town culture and flavor is furthered by its own inhabitants who patronize interesting and local businesses that might not even survive one or two towns over, where people are less town-centric. or something like that.


anyway, mitchell and i decided to implement "thursday night sunsets" this summer, where we go to the town dock and watch the sunset. if schedules don't allow, we do it on friday instead of thursday (like this week), and it's been a really nice thing to know we have each week. it's a little date, a little pause in the middle of a busy week, and something i've been savoring not only the experience of, but the anticipation of as well. i also love the satisfaction of it - when the sun finally goes down, it feels good, like we've seen it through.


it's amazing to see how much the sunsets change in the space of just a few minutes. so i started taking pictures, and am looking forward to seeing (and sharing) how they change as the seasons change. last week, the rain cleared just in time for a beautiful sky that changed from violet and blue to pink and yellow and then again to blues and grays before the rains came again (all these pictures are from one sunset in about 30 minutes!)


i love the idea that we go even in the rain, and just sit in the car and watch- it's like life that way - you still have to show up, and make the best of things, and find beauty even when it rains. it's so important in my life, i'm learning, to have rituals like that. they are restorative and really feed my soul. there's also a rhythm in the idea of doing something every day or every week that i find comforting.


i really relish the idea that we will always do this together - now, in the fall, in a few years, in 20 years. i think about all the conversations we might have on that dock over the next however many years - about work and dreams and fears, about children and parents and friends, and about sorrows and joys we know nothing of at this moment. and i hope and believe that our weekly sunsets together, and other things like it, will contribute to the strength that sees us through sorrows and the wholeness with which we experience life's joys. it reminds me of something my father said at our wedding that i always think about - "when you find that person, it makes the good times twice as good and the bad times half as bad." so comforting and so true. even in the rain.

the view from down here

i'm very into the idea of looking up right now. a few weeks ago, i wrote about my dad's buddhist advice to "look up," meaning to have faith. in addition to that, which i try to do, i've been fixating on looking up in a different way - physically looking directly skyward, and i am consistently amazed at what i see.

it’s an interesting thing to study the sky- it’s a totally different view than the normal horizon-line angle we mostly employ. everything looks bigger and more perfect - the trees, the clouds, the expanse of sky. it must be what babies in strollers see as they lie on their backs and take in the world. i love experiencing that view and breathing deeply as i take it in, taking that moment for just myself.



my favorite is when the clouds gather in thick, billowy masses almost too intense to be real and not digitally enhanced. but they're real. and then the light peeks out from behind, or lines the edges of the clouds in an otherworldly pink or white or yellow glow. it’s seriously breathtaking.

i've been taking pictures of the sky almost everywhere i go, drawing some concerned looks, for sure. but i seriously can't believe how gorgeous it can be, and i can't believe i'm only first discovering this now. i mean, sure, we've all seen our share of sunset pictures with clouds, but this is every night i'm talking about. and all we have to do to see them is look up and watch - in the space of five minutes, the sky changes completely (and that's lots of pictures).

i'm thinking of having large blow-ups printed of two or three of the photos i've taken, probably in sepia as shown below, to hang in our dining room. i love the idea of looking at these each day, and i think the two below have just the right contrast and intensity for large-scale prints. i just love the way they make me feel – almost as much as i love the way the actual sky makes me feel these days, which is at peace and firmly rooted in the sense that the world is a very, very big place. although in uncertain times it can feel like this big world might misplace a few small people like us, this looking up i’ve come to love makes me feel the opposite effect - like the world will take care of us (if we return the favor, of course). it’s a nice feeling.



i guess those buddhists knew what they were talking about when they said "look up."