it’s all ours, it’s the art of self-creation,

Perhaps the hardest thing about the path is that it’s

entirely up to us how far we go, how deep we go,

how authentic we become. No one else can do it

for us—it’s all ours, it’s the art of self-creation, it’s

adult responsibility.  It’s such a private decision we

come back to time and again—Am I willing to do

the work to find and to live my path? Do I have the

faith, courage and persistence I need to keep getting

back up off the ground when things go awry? How

badly do I want an authentic life?  What price am I

willing to pay to create one?   Jeff Brown

 

Am I a willing to do what it takes? Paying the price sometimes feels to high, for the price seems to be my sanity, my voice, my creativity!  For the past year I have been my Mother’s caregiver, not a position I apply for but one that seems to have been dropped in my path. It is my challenge to find the way through what seems darkness of financial, government and state administrations that are riddle of, do this, go here, now go there, fill this out, did you see this person or that, have you appeared for the Doctor, Lawyer, etc?

In the mean time I pull myself into distractions, food via sugar, Facebook via photography sites, which are rewarding and educational creating a time-lapse of heightened senses . A Tumblr account that started out as a porn page but has “evolved” into a more sophisticated high-end on-line pictorial magazine with Art, fashion,  food, coffee, decor, etc. Scattered around is still porn!

Yes I still get out each day to photograph while walking the dogs, each moment a bit of letting go, allowing nature to sooth my wounded darkened soul. I still continue to seek forms of expression with the photography. Joining the Black and White Street Photography.com page has been an eye opening experience. One is which I am challenged each day to “see” differently.

 

it’s all ours, it’s the art of self-creation, it’s

adult responsibility.  It’s such a private decision we

come back to time and again…

Is it? Is the art of self-creation over and over and over again an “adult responsibility”? Right now the art of self creation looks like chaos, feels like a big heaping mess, one that is being trudged through to get to the other side. I have never really been responsible for someone else life. Not for one who can’t make their own choices,  for one who, remembers somethings and forgets most other daily activities. Nothing about feels “authentic” it feels forced.

Am I willing to do

the work to find and to live my path? 

 

For some reason yes I am willing to do the work to live and keep on the path while in the process of caregiving. That is why blogging is so important. It is my voice being shared, it is an expression of who I am at the moment.  Even though the path seems so dark and lonely at times, there are great moments of light, great moments of happiness, I was thinking joy but I believe joy is something else. The work I do to stay on the path is my creativity, making photographs, promoting those photographs, with whatever energy I have. Sometimes I feel like the drunk at the bar who is always talking big and grand about the places and things he is going to do, yet never gets off the bar stool.  Talking dreams, clouds in the sky, imaging this or that, yet the end is the same, talking. Let me tell you that is not the case. The Exhibitions, the artist dates, the promotion may not be as steady as it once was. It still trickles, it still flows.

Each day of endless questions and repeated answers, it’s still filled with beauty all around.

 Do I have the

faith, courage and persistence I need to keep getting

back up off the ground when things go awry?

It seems that I do have the faith, courage and persistence to get back off the ground. Or you wouldn’t being seeing this blog, I wouldn’t be part of a group exhibition that is now hanging at the Galleria in Deptford NJ. I have a photograph at Cafe 12 as part of that group show for the Photographic Society of Philadelphia.  One of my photographs taken a few years ago was just featured in a group on Redbubble.com.

Caregiving, maintenance  of finance and a house with yard didn’t seem to be part of my path yet they are that which informs me of who I am right now. Much of that I struggle with that struggle helps peel the layers of unknowing away.

it’s

entirely up to us how far we go, how deep we go,

how authentic we become.