a star, a star dancing in the night

the other day liz was showing me her photography, and for the most part she was pointing out the flaws and shortcomings in her shots. i knew that she thought better of them than she was letting on, because what i saw was brilliant; how could she have created and captured those shots without knowing it? i saw in her photos what liz saw as she positioned and repositioned her subject, angled and adjusted her camera, and then snapped her talent onto a 4 x 6 piece of paper - a window into her world of thinking. i told liz as much, and for a few minutes sitting on the steps with her creations spread at our feet we felt very much together, present, and connected.

i was thinking a lot today about loneliness, and what it is that, when absent, makes us feel lonely. i don't mean to be drab and dreary; loneliness doesn't necessarily constitute unhappiness. you can be very much happy and simultaneously feel that there are parts of you and what you see that go unnoticed or misunderstood... or worst of all, unvalued. the sort of loneliness i'm talking about is cured not simply by the presence of warm bodies, but by someone seeing exactly what you see, expressing it back to you, and then enjoying it with you. being seen is a wonderful thing, and it doesn't happen enough for any of us unless we are unordinarily fortunate.

sigh... shall i mention the elephant in the room that crowds all my thoughts?

i miss him. why? because i miss seeing and being seen in such a constant and complete way.

well, i tried anyway... the majority of the post has nothing to do with him. so maybe it does, but i didn't mention him until the end. that's something.