response of sorts to zoe's recent scribble:

death.

it's everywhere around us, especially now
in winter,
in the news,
in our interconnected global community.

trees are dead.
terrorists and innocent people alike are dead.
my great-grandmother in atlanta is dead.

i was looking through some fairly old pictures yesterday, of myself and my family in the years between '86 and '91.
and, tucked in along with those permanent reminders of me facing opposite everyone else at my recital and perpetually scabbed over knees and
cody's toddler mullet and perpetually food-encrusted face, are the (usually) smiling faces of those who have since passed.

we grow silent.

the picture is gingerly placed face down in the growing pile of those-already-looked-at, and we move on.
the pain is still fresh for some, for many, but we continue on to laugh and enjoy the memories made in the making of the photographs.

it's horrible when someone dies, especially suddenly and without warning.
there is no time for preparation on the part of the individual, let alone the family or friends.
but i happens, and we are left to cope.
we have been left to cope.
and we will be left to cope.
but we must move on. absolutely must move on in order to survive.

i look outside my window, in the clearer panes above the screen at bare, branching sticks, naked in the cold, reaching toward the sky in the ever-present question "why?"
"why me? why them? why now? why forever?"
but there, snuggled next to one another, are tiny buds peeking from the maze of death.

spring is coming.

ink :: graphite