Playing / kiss

These are from October. My sister and her daughter. It never felt weird to say that she was expecting a baby, but thinking that she was going to be a mother did. It still surprises me when I phrase it that way to myself.

I find them fascinating in stills — it makes me notice the way they relate to each other, the faint human electricity that you find between people who are really close to each other. The force of their mutual awareness. In their attention, the opening and closing of space between them, their eyes — and they in particular have spent so long in each other's company, with one of them still mostly wordless...

California live oaks

This is the other roll of film from the day we woke up at four a.m. The monastery grounds and the diner.

The day we woke up at four a.m.

We drove to the monastery only to find that the main gate was still closed / Napped in the car in the pre-dawn dark / Had breakfast at a diner lit with the first slanting rays of daylight, where our waitress told us to have as much hot tea as we liked / Listened to a glorious remix of a song we both love / She guessed the combination to the gate by pure luck / We drove up high into the North County hills / And over a speed bump with BUMP OF MINDFULNESS painted on it / Where we met a young Buddhist nun with a laughing face and shaved head who called to us, Good morning, sisters!

Sister and sea, before dinner

Sea air

Last time I was here

It was for a wedding, in January. We spent the first night at my aunt and uncle's house, where my big sister got married summer before last.






As chance would have it, the bride (my brother-in-law's sister), was paired with her groom when she walked at my sister's wedding as a bridesmaid and he as a groomsman—back before they really knew each other. So to return, just before attending their own wedding, to the place where that other young couple had been married—quiet now in the evening light, nary a folding chair to be seen—flavored my memories some extra. The sweetness of chance in the stories we tell.

From the wedding the next day, which took place high up in the San Diego hills:

August, walking on water

See those tiny figures? Look like they're standing on the water? I think it's called paddleboarding. They must have had a beautiful view of the setting sun from out there.

More beach cousins [playlist]

I really loved having all these willing victims around to populate my pictures. I think having a person in it can keep almost any picture from being boring.























And these are the ones Littlest Cousin took:

From where I can hear the breaking waves

You know those movie sequences where the character gets more and more harried and things just keep building up around them, the toddler's crying and the husband's all "HAVE YOU SEEN MY _____?" banging around in the background and that thing on the stove starts to boil over and there's this accelerating lunatic music in the background? And just when it looks like she might be able to get everything under control, the neighbor's dog starts barking. And then you go over and shoot the dog?

Right. My evening = like that.

But now I am with my computer and headphones on and the noise-canceling switch flipped, and I have some pictures from a new roll of film for you.

These are all family membahs, by the way.

Peace.