for a minute

With this new pink moon, some very new notions.

Last night I found myself at a free REI lecture about the Appalachian Trail.  Your usual cast of New York City characters were predictably in attendance. The most boiled down information via Powerpoint.  At the very least I felt further inspired (if not further informed). I have been reading so much about thru hiking these last weeks but actually hearing from someone who did it and fell in love with the experience was good for my soul and helps to solidify a reality that this is something I could actually plan to do. The fact remains that I would need to wait a year to get my act together and sort practical matters. I have never planned something so far in advance and wonder if my momentum will remain. 

In the meantime my wanderlust has been reignited and I found myself, again, returning to a note I wrote to myself weeks ago to investigate Mount Kilimanjaro. Some emails have been sent, I’m already narrowing down preferred routes. Who knows?

These things aren’t free and neither is my time. But it feels so good to have an adventure taking shape in the near or distant future (or both).

Yellowstone National Park, June 1940.

I could waste a day this way. And almost did this way.

(Photograph by Edwin L. Wisherd, National Geographic)

It’s been a tumultuous almost two weeks since the wicked monster moon. Every day that passes I feel I am more able to communicate or at least that I am existing in this world with two feet on the ground.

Here i am. And as these things go, I am thankful to be here, happy to be alive, happy to think about enjoying all the things that life has to offer me. I am waiting patiently for my body brain and heart to catch up with me, but I have optimistic confidence everything will settle in its place.

Because it always does… right?

This was predicted to be a difficult time and it was. And it seems to be a time of great change and shift, not just for me but for everyone around me. I was advised months ago to trust the universe at this time: be graceful in the face of things coming to an end, open to possibility for what’s yet to come.

i am trying to keep myself open, or at least to re-open slowly and see what I see. New thoughts and plans and dreams have been swirling and forming, not coalescing just yet but …soon?

I know that this is what I have right now, this is where I am.

One step at a time.

Go placidly amid the noise and haste,
and remember what peace there may be in silence.
As far as possible without surrender
be on good terms with all persons.
Speak your truth quietly and clearly;
and listen to others,
even the dull and the ignorant;
they too have their story.

Avoid loud and aggressive persons,
they are vexations to the spirit.
If you compare yourself with others,
you may become vain and bitter;
for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.
Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans.

Keep interested in your own career, however humble;
it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.
Exercise caution in your business affairs;
for the world is full of trickery.
But let this not blind you to what virtue there is;
many persons strive for high ideals;
and everywhere life is full of heroism.

Be yourself.
Especially, do not feign affection.
Neither be cynical about love;
for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment
it is as perennial as the grass.

Take kindly the counsel of the years,
gracefully surrendering the things of youth.
Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune.
But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings.
Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.
Beyond a wholesome discipline,
be gentle with yourself.

You are a child of the universe,
no less than the trees and the stars;
you have a right to be here.
And whether or not it is clear to you,
no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.

Therefore be at peace with God,
whatever you conceive Him to be,
and whatever your labors and aspirations,
in the noisy confusion of life keep peace with your soul.

With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams,
it is still a beautiful world.
Be cheerful.
Strive to be happy.

Max Ehrmann, Desiderata, Copyright 1952.

dreaming big.

I took Casper on his first road trip when he was three-months old and by the time he was one we managed to stay out most of each year for the next five years of his life. On the one hand it was the most beautiful way to be together: nestled under down comforters in the back of a van with all our worldly possessions packed in around us; among redwood trees where we would build forts in the hollows and make soup from their needles; finding star fish in the pacific ocean and collecting the many glass jars that might spill insect specimens were our car to hit a sudden bump; climbing rocks in the desert; climbing trees in the forest… It was also the most brutal way to try to be a mother, trapped together alone for months on end while struggling with him to let me make work.

His being penetrated every part of my consciousness and of my working process. It changed what I photographed and how I photographed. The work became less directed and more prayed for, each picture a kind of miracle, a ghost gleaned from somewhere out there in the American landscape and I was forever being pulled back by Casper. I remember yelling at him once in total frustration, “Jeff Wall doesn’t have to make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches in the middle of his photo shoots.” He at age four replied, “Oh yeah, what else does Jeff Wall not have to do?”

Casper grew up on the road. He believed it was normal. He believed other mamas were loading sheet film at McDonald’s. He believed other kids lived in vans and played with rocks as their parents composed scenes. Once he woke up sweetly from a nap in his car seat and said, “Where are we mama? Are we shopping for views?” People often thought we were homeless, sometimes offering food or money. Our migration took a southern route in the winter and a northern route in the summer. While my wanderlust was insatiable, Casper’s tendency was towards routine and predictability.

To accommodate this I created a bubble around our life in the van. I made a play tent for him, sawed off the legs of a card table to set up his toys the same at each new campsite where he spent hours trapped there playing with trains first and Legos later.

Often the moments I photographed him were not the loving moments of a mother gazing at her child but of a prisoner glaring at her guard. Casper feeling the intensity of everything I needed out of a photograph, shied from it, so I learned to bribe and extort photographs from him. His favorite pose was to place his hand in front of his face but he later learned more subtle forms of protest contorting his body inward as I bore down upon him with a scalding lens.

He also eventually rejected the nature boy role I cast for him; preferring the signage along the road (where he learned to read), cars (he drew and memorized car logos) and the strip malls that have homogenized the American roadside landscape (the Denny’s and Walmarts being a special treat from the forests where we camped).

At a primitive skills gathering Casper wanted to bring a glow stick to the campfire. I explained that no one would appreciate it because it was made of plastic and filled with chemicals and because they were trying to do things a natural way. He at age five said, “But they have cars and tents.”

Last year we got off the road and I put Casper into public school. We had reached a point where I was all he had and it could never be enough. The war between parenting and photography became too intense. So this past road trip was our last together.

Driving down some bit of highway I remember wondering (as I often do) if it was all worth it: torturing Casper, his dad and myself in order to make work. Thinking out loud I said, “I don’t know why I do it. I don’t know why I’m a photographer,” and Casper at age six responded, “Mama you are a photographer so you can go on road trips.” As if to say, I forgive you.

Justine Kurland

How We Do Both: Art and Motherhood

(as also featured on feature shoot)