On Photographs

 I took pictures today as the sun was setting.  Almost every day I take pictures, whatever catches me: rocks, plants, water, light. Tonight, walking the dog, the setting sun took away my breath. No picture I take ever does justice to what I see, but it doesn't discourage me. Even dim reflections bring me back to the moment. 

This is an ordinary thing. Phones with cameras have made photography easier and also, more equitable. Certainly, the opportunity to be unconstrained by the fear of screwing up the shots and wasting film liberated me. As a kid, I saw photography like all visual mediums: only talented people can do it. The rest of us are embarrassing ourselves. 

My parents took pictures. They documented our childhood, up to a point. There was a period with very few pictures, and then later, when my siblings and I were older and leaving home, they began taking pictures of seasonal changes. Pictures of flaming sugar maples in fall, deep snow piles in winter, shining branches that looked like they were coated in glass, after an ice storm. And their cats, so many pictures of the cats. These weren't very good photos, but that didn't seem to matter. My mother put them in albums. 

When my brother and I sold the house in 2004, it was a gut-wrenching project to clean out that house which three generations had lived in. The photographs were everywhere.  At the time, I remember thinking: Why the hell do I have boxes of pictures of the old tree? And all this snow? And these cats? WHY did they take these pictures??? 

Recently, I was having a discussion in a group where we were asked if we had a spiritual practice. Many shared that writing was theirs, and though that's true for me, what I said was that one of mine is taking photographs, usually every day, and looking through them to return to the immediacy of presence.  

When I look through the pictures on my phone, or in albums, or in one of the digital vaults where everything goes -- like heaven after death, it's all in the cloud -- it feels like sacred ritual. Each piece connects to the next. Bead next to bead on a string, like a rosary or Buddhist mala, image after image. Each unique, each part of a whole. 

The visual mantra of life.

This week, for the first time, I imagined my parents looking through all those pictures. Not just taking them and stuffing them away, but taking them out, looking at the storms, the snow, the trees, the cats. Remembering. Reliving. Imagining this, I thought: I understand. As a child, you don't often feel like you can ever get your parents. I was 39 when my mother died. By my age, my mother was already fighting cancer.  Because I've been a parent without either of them alive, I've wondered a lot: how would it have been?  But I won't ever know the answer to that question, so when I make a connection like this, it feels like finding buried treasure.

As I write this, it's 10/31, Halloween. Samhain. Tomorrow is Dia de los Muertos. Is the veil thin? I'd like to believe so. Sometimes when I write, I imagine my parents are with me, over my shoulder. Certainly, they are in my heart. 

So friends: take all the pictures. If it moves you, if you want to remember it, do it. Go back; relive that instant. Life is only instants. You get to choose what to keep and what to savor. 

Peace

                                                                          


 

On Not Being Taken Seriously

I had an experience this week that I am still processing. There are parts of it I can't share but the parts that I can, I realized, connect to a bigger truth: lots of us are not taken seriously.

On Tuesday, a car on the train I use for commuting derailed. I wasn't on it, and in fact, no one was injured, thankfully. It was just another the-MBTA-is-a-broken-down-system event. 

But. But the immediate affect was that trains stopped running and shuttle buses were brought in. It was a rainy day, too. Bonus. I left work early, hoping to avoid some of the worst of what was sure to be commute hell. When I got to the station where the busses began -- Park Street, the hub of all commuting in Boston -- it was worse than I imagined. A sea of people and no buses. Waited, waited , waited. People were stressed and wet, since it was drizzling. 

A tall guy in front me started to yell: Where are the buses?!! where are the goddamn busses? 

To which I -- already pissed off from an earlier conversation in the day, a conversation where I felt passed over for something I knew I could do -- added: Yeah, haven’t you been doing this all day?!

At which point, the tall man turned and yelled at me: Hey lady, calm down! 

Let me repeat that: he then yelled at ME to “calm down “

Think about this for minute. He did it because of course, sexism. I am a short, dumpy middle aged woman so very tall guys can do that. They get to decide who says what. 

Now, you may be saying: Leslie, stop being so sensitive. 

I hope to God you aren't saying that because if you are, then you are part of the problem.

Let me restate the problem: some of us are not taken seriously.  I can only speak to my experience, but as someone who recently discovered she doesn't even reach 5 feet tall anymore (4 ft 11 3/4 inches!), I am often, literally, not seen. Ask me how many times I've gone up to a counter, only to have the cashier speak to the person behind me. (HERE, here. HELLO!!!)  

I could give more examples but here is the thing: I am aware that my needing to already assumes that I am not believed, that I need to justify this truth with enough "evidence". 

There is much eyerolling in the world about the phrase: microaggressions. Even among those who care about it, there are doubts. Why worry about those, they say, when we haven't even eradicated the macro ones?  

I also know that after the last administration, there is deep exhaustion and PTSD. That's real. But here is the thing: being able to step away from compassion is a sign of privilege. If you are saying: This doesn't affect me, then you are using your privilege. 

I woke up this morning thinking about the end goal. I thought about all the times I've not been taken seriously, when I had to defend and argue, how something felt. Now let me be clear here. What I am talking about are the moments when I have stated how I felt. 

When I think about the cry for social justice, how the marginalized --refugees, indigenous people, people of color, trans people, gay people -- have often said how they feel, only to be disbelieved, it breaks my heart. 

In my world, the Unitarian Universalist world, we have 7 Principles, the first of which is: the inherent worth and dignity of all people. ALL people. 

I might be challenged: why do you only care about the feelings of minorities? 

My reply: I don't. I want ALL people to be believed, cherished and certainly: taken seriously. The historic truth is that those in power have used that power to control speech. In this time, I am working to give voice to those who have not always had a voice, and certainly, not felt safe and believed.  This feels important to me and yes, because part of me understands how this feels. I have written about this before. Though I may have my story and my life, if I hear your story, then I can get a glimpse into who you are and what you have known. 

So here was my first thought this morning: How about we assume that when people, especially from marginalized groups, say how something feels, how about we believe them? Rather than doubt their perspective, rather than overanalyze it because it's different from what we thought we knew, how about we just trust that they know themselves well enough to just say how it is??

I know this isn't a novel idea, but when I think about all the contortions I see some good-hearted, like-minded folks I know get into about microagressions, all I can think is: Why can't we just say yes? Why can't we just listen to that truth and let it sit within us? 

And on a personal note, I will add that after my awful commute, I emailed the person who'd I'd felt had not taken me seriously. The person replied to me, apologized, and said that they understood that I had a lot to offer. To me, this is how change in the world happens. To hold the truth, to speak the truth, to listen to the truth, and not deny its existence. 

In Zoom conversation this week with a wonderful friend who lives across the country, a woman who is well over six feet tall, we commented on how virtual conversations leveled the playing field. So many of the assumptions we had experienced when people met us in real life disappeared on Zoom. What clothes we wore, how tall we were, all of it -- meaningless -- and how freeing this was. 

My prayer for all is that we can reach this place, where our hearts lead the way and our stories are heard. 

peace