In Austin, Texas

It is not all Peace, Love & Understanding:

Photo by Bruce Barone.

If you want distinctive nature, documentary or portrait photography--photography with soul that inspires you to live a more artful and beautiful life, please contact me.

I Am Blessed

A message arrives:

"In browsing through (your photos) this morning,

I've noticed that EVERYTHING you shoot is "beautiful".

Your eye seems to hone in like a laser sight

on the subject, or object,

and capture it's most beautiful available SECOND for posterity. Just amazing.

Truly."

Photo by Bruce Barone.

From my soon to be published book,

"Famous People Famous Places"

with an introduction by Luc Sante.

If you want distinctive nature, documentary or portrait photography--photography with soul that inspires you to live a more artful and beautiful life, please contact me.

Mandola's in Austin, Texas

My son and I 

enjoyed a few great meals here:

Photo by Bruce Barone.

If you want distinctive nature, documentary or portrait photography--photography with soul that inspires you to live a more artful and beautiful life, please contact me.

Sock Monkey

When I was in Austin, Texas

with my son

Susan bought a Sock Monkey

to keep her company.

Sock Monkey in Living Room. Photo by Bruce Barone.

If you want distinctive nature, documentary or portrait photography--photography with soul that inspires you to live a more artful and beautiful life, please contact me.

The Bar at Stubb's

Stubb's. Austen, Texas. Photo by Bruce Barone.

If you want distinctive nature, documentary or portrait photography--photography with soul that inspires you to live a more artful and beautiful life, please contact me

Lucy In Disguise

Don't Dream It---Be It!

Photo by Bruce Barone.

Lucy in Disguise. Austin, Texas.

If you want distinctive nature, documentary or portrait photography--photography with soul that inspires you to live a more artful and beautiful life, please contact me

Top-Notch

Daryl and I enjoyed burgers and fries here:

Photo by Bruce Barone.

Austin, Texas.

If you want distinctive nature, documentary or portrait photography--photography with soul that inspires you to live a more artful and beautiful life, please contact me

At Lustre Pearl

Thursday Night

at

Lustre Pearl.

Margaret with the Hula Hoop. Photo by Bruce Barone.

Go here: http://www.lustrepearlaustin.com/

If you want distinctive nature, documentary or portrait photography--photography with soul that inspires you to live a more artful and beautiful life, please contact me.

NO BULL

Having a great time in Austin, Texas

with my son!

Inside the Driskill Hotel. Photo by Bruce Barone.

Go here: http://www.driskillhotel.com/

If you want distinctive nature, documentary or portrait photography--photography with soul that inspires you to live a more artful and beautiful life, please contact me.



On The Road

Saturday.

Early morning.

A road in Tennessee.

Photo by Bruce Barone

If you want distinctive nature, documentary or portrait photography--photography with soul that inspires you to live a more artful and beautiful life, please contact me.



Where I Am

~

I am

in Austin, Texas

as of this afternoon.

Great  road trip from Massachusetts

with my son Daryl.

Stories and Poems and Photos

to come soon.

Peace and Love be with you!

Bruce

~

 

Beauty Outside Our Front Door

This morning:

Photo by Bruce Barone.

~

If you want distinctive nature, documentary or portrait photography--photography with soul that inspires you to live a more artful and beautiful life, please contact me.

"C" Is For Corn & Color

(I am participating in a "30-Day Writing Challenge."

This challenge, to find one's voice with words, inspired by Ann Evanston.)

Day Four. 


"God is Everywhere." I recently read. And I am in awe of the glory of creation that is right outside my window.

Bruce's Garden. Photo by Bruce Barone.

I am in awe of the sea of corn that grows not far from our home.

Sea of Corn. Photo by Bruce Barone.

Susan and I went for a ride in the car to buy corn. We went to Ray's Family Farm. God IS everywhere and we found God in the flowers and colors.

Photo by Bruce Barone.

Photo by Bruce Barone.

Three women we found busy as bumble bees fluttering at the corn stand ripping husk after husk searching for that perfect earn of corn. This was not polination. This was ruination. If this was my family farm corn stand I think I would put up a sign reading:

RIPPING AND TEARING OF CORN HUSKS

IN NOT ALLOWED

AND WILL BE PUNISHABLE 

BY HAIR TEARING.

THOSE WITHOUT HAIR

WILL SIMPLY BE ASKED TO VACATE

BRUCE' FRIENDLY FAMILY FARM

Susan and I picked our three earns of corn. We picked three ears and we picked them quickly. We picked a melon and some peaches. Green onions and cucumbers. Fresh farm eggs and green peppers and red radishes. And when we paid for our groceries I could not but help notice the three bumble bees still busy at the corn stand, still fluttering, still ripping and tearing in search of a perfect ear of corn. 

We returned home. There was an email for me from an editor of a magazine; a "scout," she said. She said she had seen my garden photographs and was moved by the beauty of the garden and the beauty of the images and asked was I interested in having them published in a regional and/or national shelter publication. I wrote right back and said "Yes."

And I thought of something the author and gardener, Tara Dillard, has often said; how a garden is in many ways a reflection of the color, life, and beauty inside your home. And I thought of our living room which I painted Benjamin Moore "Poppy."

Self Portrait. July 29, 2011.

I thought of our bedroom which I painted Benjamin Moore "Winding Vines."

Nadine resting on our bed. Photo by Bruce Barone.

And I thought of the room I most recently painted, our sitting room. I painted it C2Paint's "Garam Masala." 

Sitting Room. Photo by Bruce Barone.

And I thought how these colors come to life, again, in our gardens.

Zinnias in the garden. Photo by Bruce Barone.

And the corn? We did not cook it this night. We made a pizza. Not the one pictured below but this one pictured does have corn on it!

Self Portrait in Kitchen with Corn, Onion, and Pepper Pizza.

~

If you want distinctive nature, documentary or portrait photography--photography with soul that inspires you to live a more artful and beautiful life, please contact me.

30-Day Writing Challenge; Day Three

I am participating in a "30-Day Writing Challenge." This challenge, to find one's voice with words, inspired by Ann Evanston.)

Day Three:

Susan and I had dinner with the newlyweds last night; my daughter, Danielle, and her husband, Mike.

We had dinner with them at their new garden apartment in West Hartford, Connecticut.

It is a charming and cozy place, one block from the town center, which is chock-full of restaurants, art galleries and stores.

We went for a walk along the brick sidewalks, remarking how beautiful the town was at night.

A Gallery Window. Photo by Bruce Barone.

We walked on looking for a pizza store which when we got there had moved to another location, back in the direction from where out short journey began. It was getting warm and we decided to order out for pizzas. Susan, Danielle and I waited near a large state of Noah Webster while Mike went home to get the car.

Noah Webster. Photo by Bruce Barone.

We all remarked how the wedding, which was only six weeks ago seemed far in the past. I thought of how beautiful Danielle looked that day.

Photo by Bruce Barone.

We watched a video of the wedding ceremony and reception; not all of it, mind you, but bits and pieces of it. I got to see myself walk Danielle down the aisle and see myself delivering my toast. I did not cry during these events that day but watching myself and remembering the joy I felt, I cried softly to myself in Danielle's and Mike's new home.

It seems like it was just yesterday that I was taking Danielle (and sometimes her friends) to New York City. She was 10 or 11 or 12 and I was commuting to New York City a few days a week from Western Massachusetts. I worked for a printing company and my clients included Conde Nast, Reader's Digest, Columbia House and others. I would bring Danielle (and Daryl, too) on my  sales calls and then we would go to the Central Park Zoo, MOMA, and the Museum of Natural History.

I wonder how Danielle might remember these trips. Would she write:

"Once every month, during the school year, September through June, my Dad took me to New York City. After his sales calls we would spend the day at the Museum of Modern Art, eating lunch with his friends from college, or walking. He loved to walk. It didn't matter how far we had to go. We hardly ever took a cab. And no matter how tired I got or how much I complained, he said it was good exercise. It was fun and it was more interesting stopping to look in store windows, and sometimes, going in to buy me a gift, a watch from Swatch, a new t-shirt from Niketown. The two of us would leave Northampton early in the morning to catch the train out of Springfield, me with my knapsack filled with books, a walkman--to keep me quiet; my Dad was always saying 'you ask so many questions,' and after he said it I think he felt bad for telling me to be quiet and he'd start talking to me and asking me questions and before you know it we were in Penn Station. On these trips, they were more like adventures, once we even went to the Bronx Zoo and another time we took a tour of Madison Garden, he'd always call me Baby, Baby all the time He said it was the name of an old song. I was ten and he'd always say you'll always be my baby. Dad, I'm not a baby, I'd say. He'd answer you'll always be my baby. In fact, can't you stop right here today forever and I'll hold you in my eye. And then he'd stop talking, smile, and grow quiet for a few minutes and then he'd look at me as if he'd never see me again and say oh forget it I was just being silly. And then we'd be off, walking through Macy's and north on Broadway and sometimes up Eighth Avenue when he was thinking I needed an education about how other people lived far away from the quiet beauty of Park Avenue or steely early morning silence of Sixth Avenue. As soon as we arrived at the Museum of Modern Art, he'd call his friend, Lucy, who was the director of development at the museum. She'd greet us with hugs and kisses and say you just have to let me show you something. Once, it was art by some French woman; pretty strange stuff, stuffed toy animals on the walls, stuffed cloth replicas of body parts hanging from the ceiling. It was a maze you walked through. I didn't really get it but I kind of liked it. Another time it was what looked like dead animals, made of iron, I think, spinning around on a merry-go-round, scraping on the floor making an awful grinding noise and a room showing a video of a clown repeating the joke repeat and pete were sitting on a wall over and over again, strange, but I liked it and I could see that both Lucy and my Dad thought it was important and from the way they talked, exciting, fun even. Another time it was paintings by DeKooning which I really liked. Dad did you see that, in the painting Dad, do you see that? Dad, where's Lucy? She has an appointment . Why, Dad, with who? Baby, baby you ask so many questions. With an artist. Who, Dad. DeKooning. Oh, baby, baby with a photographer, Nan Goldin. For seconds after my Dad spoke I stood there silently thinking, my mind wandering through the rooms of our house back in Northampton, down the halls, along the walls, looking at the paintings, the poems, the photographs and then there it was a photograph of a teenager with army shoes and army pants slouched in a chair, a photo my Dad bought from this Nan Goldin. My Dad said he met her at a bar. She was a bartender at a place called Tin Pan Alley, an artist. Remembering where I was and what my Dad said I asked if we could meet her. Well, I don't know, let's call Lucy, maybe for a second. He kissed me then, once and then again on my head. Let's go. And then we were off my Dad holding my hand now and telling me about this photographer he knew, well not really knew well but met her years ago when he lived in New York City, well not New York City, but Weehawken. and she came to the apartment for dinner, and he said Cara came too, and Maggie, who owned Tin Pan Alley, and Seth and Rebecca, and it was a good dinner, with good wine and good conversation, he said and it was art and there was beauty in the world here in the house...."


I am not sure Danielle (and Daryl) would remember it quite this was. But I am reminded of what my new friend Kathleen Ellis posted online the other day:

“It is not what you do for your children but what you have taught them to do for themselves that will make them successful human beings.” ~Ann Landers

I think we have taught them well.

Now Danielle is teaching her new dog, Bella, a Mini Goldendoodle, well, too!

"Sit, Bella. Sit." And Bella sits.

Bella. Photo by Bruce Barone.

 ~

 If you want distinctive nature, documentary or portrait photography--photography with soul that inspires you to live a more artful and beautiful life, please contact me.

30-Day Writing Challenge; Day Two

(I am participating in a "30-Day Writing Challenge." This challenge, to find one's voice with words, inspired by Ann Evanston.)

Day Two.

Totem. Rockport, Massachusetts. Photo by Bruce Barone.

All through the night I contemplated the marriage of image and words. And today I continue along this path; meditating on my voice.

I am now reminded of W.G. Sebald's fascinating book, "The Rings of Saturn," in which the text is enhanced by caption-less photographs and illustrations whose relevance is not always immediately apparent. 

I am also reminded of "The Bonnyclabber" by George Chambers  in which he "gave a structure to his book which is independent of traditional literary esthetics. It is a collection of varied writings which has no traditional sequence. The majority don't even have titles. There are blank pages which have nothing to do with the book itself, and neither to the odd illustrations. Paradoxically we can find beauty in some of the book's contents."

I am in need of this quote, right now:

"Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back-- Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth that ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one's favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamed would have come his way. Whatever you can do, or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. Begin it now."  ~Goethe

Life is for living. (See Under: "Life is for Living." Eric Butterworth)

Sunrise at Rockport, Massachusetts. Photo by Bruce Barone.

 

 

Susan and I went to the Westfield Athenaeum Library. We came home with an armful of books and magazines. Books and magazines about living, interior design and cooking. I am reminded now of when my dad passed away; suddenly, recuperating in the hospital after surgery. My dad was a great man. And he loved his family, friends, a good glass of wine, a vodka and cranberry juice, and food--eaten with family and friends.

I went back to my Dad's apartment twenty-one days after my Dad passed away. I went back. I went back to pack the china and glassware, measure the dining room table and hutch, dust and sweep.

The apartment was stale, lifeless and the Jade plant in my Dad's bedroom sagged from forty years of growth, dry in the sun. I stood there and I stared out the window at The George Washington Bridge and the Jade plant stood there, too; stories I knew she would share with me when she was ready to speak--family stories.

The George Washington Bridge. Photo by Bruce Barone.

When I opened the door to my Dad's apartment the photograph I gave him for Father's Day was the first thing I saw--not one of mine but one I bought from a photographer on a street corner in New York City; a photo of Lower Manhattan taken from the Jersey side of the Hudson River, the Twin Towers still standing. When I finally reached my Dad that day on the phone I was never sure if he was crying but he said he stood and he stared out the window and saw the Twin Towers crumble to dust and fall, and he heard the sirens and he waited, waited, and waited for another skyscraper in New York City to be attacked and crumble and fall. We talked everyday for days afterward--a few times every day. I wish I could call him now. "Dad. Hi. It's me."

First I walked from room to room in my Dad's apartment. Bathroom. Bedroom. Guest Room. Living Room. Dining Room. Kitchen. Bedroom. Guest Room. Living Room. Kitchen. Balcony. The apartment was eerily empty of life: much of the furniture had already been taken by relatives, the hundreds of family photographs gone, the kitchen cabinets bare; strangely, the only room with some sense of normality, of life, was my Dad's bedroom (My nephew Craig had not yet come for the bedroom furniture.). I had not yet begun to pack but I was already feeling emotionally drained.

The first thing I packed were the Martini glasses and Red Wine goblets. My Dad, as I said,  appreciated a good drink and a fine wine and I think this was where I should have started and I did. Of course, I would have poured a drink then and there but it was not yet noon and all the wine and liquor had already been divided up among my siblings and I three short weeks ago. Next I packed the china. Place-settings for twelve. White and perfect. Dinner Plates. Soup Bowls. Salad Plates. Coffee cups and saucers. Platters. Bowls. And then I packed the silverware, and the vases, and the candlestick holders. I packed three boxes of glasses, dishes and silverware for my children, Danielle and Daryl.

And then I packed the car and I had room for one or two more items. I went back to my Dad's apartment; 15J in Fort Lee, New Jersey. Funny: six or seven years ago when I was selling printing and commuting to NYC from Western Massachusetts and spending one or two nights a week with my Dad, I went the 17th Floor, Apartment J, opened the door and thought "Oh My God. Dad has totally remodeled his apartment!" One or two seconds later, I realized I was in the wrong apartment, quietly closed the door, and went to Apartment 15J. "Bruce," my Dad said. "You look tired. Put your briefcase and camera down. I'll make you a drink."

And that's the way it was--always. I would arrive at his apartment around seven at night after a day in the city (or he would pick me up at the Ferry Terminal), we would have drinks, watch FoodTV (usually Mario Batali or Sara Moulton), and then go to The Big Red Tomato for dinner (where we were treated like kings; the brother and sister owners, Vincent and Carmella, and the waitstaff knew us very well--we had been eating there at least once a week for five or six years; ah the stories we shared). We would bring a bottle of red and unwind. Father and Son. Sometimes, I would ask a waitress to come outside with me so I could photograph her. Sometimes, I photographed people at their tables. 

I went back for the Jade plant. She had I knew stories to share with me. Like this one:

Recipes. They fall from the cookbooks;

I was just thinking of meatballs; I was
looking through a cookbook of my dad's
and clipped recipes marked recipes in
the book and he had marked "meatballs."
And this his favorite ("Dad," I said, "How
come you never order something else?")
Orecchiette Con Broccoli Di Raba. Or
Broccoli Di Rapa Affogati. They are both
clearly marked in "Naples At Table," a book
he was happy to share one night with me:
"Look," he said, "Arthur Schwartz wrote
this book." Tomorrow I will make
Pasta E Lenticchie. I wonder which of
these he may have made (knowing how
difficult it can be to cook for one--yet
I can hear him say "Tonight
I am making Meatloaf. Tonight I am
making Salmon. Tonight

I am making Meatballs."

Meatballs from Bruce's Kitchen. Photo by Bruce Barone.

~~~

If you want distinctive nature, documentary or portrait photography--photography with soul that inspires you to live a more artful and beautiful life, please contact me.

30-Day Writing Challenge

I am participating in a "30-Day Writing Challenge." This challenge, to find one's voice with words, inspired by Ann Evanston.

I bought a notebook. A Moleskin. I bought the notebook to take on my drive from Boston to Austin, to record in great detail the trip. The town names. The sign posts. The food. The landscape. I am here inspired by both Paul Blackburn ("The Journals") and Gary Snyder ("Mountains and Rivers Without End").

And the book "Continual Lessons, The Journals of Glenway Wescott, 1937-1955," edited by Robert Phelps, a writer/teacher who I studied with at both Manhattanville College and The New School in New York City. From the Introduction by Robert Phelps:

"Well over a century ago, Emerson predicted that "novels will give way, by and by, to diaries or autobiographies--captivating books, if only a man knew...how to record truth truly."

"This volume is perhaps bet described as an attempt to take the sort of book Emerson dreamed of, to use the form, the appearance, of the diary to try to tell one man's "truth truly." The author is Glenway Wescott, for decades a shinning name in American literature, and the text begins in 1937, in the middle of the author's life, "nel mezzo del cammin." Wescott had known precocious prestige as the author of The Grandmothers and Goodbye, Wisconsin, and after nearly a decade abroad, he had returned to his native country to live in New York and on a spacious cattle-breeding ranch in western New Jersey. The result is an intimately personal book, exploring the daily activity of a man who loves the making of literature and the living of life almost equally well and who, like Stendhal, might have given as his profession "Observer of the Human Heart."

I am starting here, on this page, looking for my voice. Years ago, when we, still wrote letters to friends and family, a friend wrote to me: "Bruce, you letters are like poems."


And there were letters, Thousands. Written to my friends and my mom and dad. And there were poems. Written daily. The poems eventually giving way to photographs. I am in need of marriage. The marriage of the word and the photograph.

This history is not, as many people assume,

a tale of slow progress,

leading to greater diversity

of kinds and numbers.

It is, in important respects, a series of plateaus

punctuated by rare and seminal events

that shift systems from one level to another.

From teenage innocence to loss of youth.

Issues for older men and women.

Memories of history. Oral histories

provoked by images -- it is both fact and fiction,

fiction and fact

a few pages later:

With scarcely an interruption,

pharoah succeeded pharoah

and dynasty followed dynasty

for nearly 3,000 years before Christ,

a continuity of government unmatched by any other

people. To appreciate the grandeur of that achievement

one needs to imagine the American republic surviving

until the year 4776.

Therefore the mystic must rise above conceptual thought.

Sudden and complete is the experience;

of this absolute nothing whatever can be postulated

and the objects become one

again -- it is an intuitive realization

and what you behold is your real self.

To affirm or deny is to limit;

to limit is to shut out the light of truth.

It is a wonder

that it is

all connecter

and later:

I need a starting point.

Onward Christian Soldiers

marching on to war

with the cross of Jesus

(we sung this in school in sixth grade).

If I write it all down maybe I'll find out.

On the transmission of mind.

They would toast birthdays and special occasions.

Being the teaching of Zen Master

Huang Po as recorded by the scholar

P'ei Hsiu of the Tang Dynasty.

Enlightenment is a process which occurs

in less time than it takes to blink an eye.

The poems were often lists:

Seven to Eight iron sixteen shirts

Eight Forty Five pick up Daryl and

Bring bike rack and take Daryl

To soccer practice at Nine Fifty

Then buy grass seed, dirt and rug cleaner

And deposit paycheck

Vacumn house from Ten to Eleven

Take garbage to dump at Eleven Twenty

Pick up Daryl at Eleven Thirty

Make lunch

Dog-sit from Twelve to Five

Rake and garden from Twelve to Three

Clip back rose bushes and butterfly

Plants, plant grass seed, fill hole with dirt

Clean bathrooms and do laundry

From Three to Four

Periodically check and write e-mail

Fix stereo antenna when convenient

And call about lawnmowers

And check church schedule (am I

Delegated to do something tomorrow?)

Clean rug in bedroom

Again, where Daisy pooped in her

Loneliness, remember Betsy and Danielle

Arriving home around Nine or Ten

Call radio station in effort to win

Lucinda Williams tickets

Drive Daryl to Shawn's at Five

Workout at Smith from Five Ten to Six

Six to Six Twenty shower

Six Thirty pour a glass of red wine

And relax, read yesterday's New York Times

And Wall Street Journal and today's

Times and Daily Hampshire Gazette

Update website and......

Sometimes stories:

For weeks I have been looking at the curb outside our house that the snowplow ripped from the street wondering how and when to fix it some curbs are so daunting I lean on my shovel and stare past the sticks and limbs I spent hours picking up today some where near me where the roses yet to flower and the butterfly bush clipped to the earth How will I put the curb back I wondered and there walking across the tired wet grass my neighbor Hey Stick Man let's put that curb back together Maybe we should call the DPW I think but it is Good Friday Bruce I am not sure they would be working or getting ready to work you know what I mean Well neighbor let's pretend we work for the DPW and take a break, coffee or beer I know you don't smoke I want to know what I am and who it is that made me that way Oh stop and just move the curb will you please Here hand me that crow bar and he told me how he spent the day walking with Becca his nine-year-old daughter and I knew he was telling me this because it would soon be one of the last times he and she would go walking for so long for so many hours together and I said I am jealous neighbor for the things I see now I wish for history and not these days sometimes as in Spring as today when all is love for these days come then go and I think sometimes they are different years or they are the same as there always is love but not innocence and sometimes sweetness and here let's move the curb back and forth and dig and a little more dirt and rock out and neighbor says if we stand and look all day at the Birch trees we would see the buds open and I wouldlike that to stand here looking up at the blue sky at the buds exploding on the Birch trees here on Birch Lane We are blessed Bruce he says with good children again the curb calls us to move it more to the right and I think we have a fit so we stand and we stare at the curb and neighbor says My brother was a soccer player in college he was built  like you (all of a sudden I am feeling very good about moving the curb and this my neighbor who calls me Stick Man) who knew we would become this he says I never saw myself a stock broker and we laughed when I said I had wanted to teach little children or art history to bigger children there was an Italian girl who came to college and I gave her a tour of all the art galleries on 57th street in new york city Juliana was her name I close my eyes and look at us walking and running from gallery to gallery laughing she is a princess a goddess in the city alive innocent adventurous and he tells me the city was good for him Boston and maybe it would be for our daughters and are you looking at city schools it is too much to think today in the sun near the curb we are unrestrained in college he tells me he wonders what to say to his child his daughter of growing older I say we are blessed with good children and we turn to talk now of Birch Lane who could have said we would end up here in beautiful homes with beautiful wives and beautiful children it is a dead end street lined with sugar maples pine and birch so much now in need of pruning, clipping, raking before the woods fill in we can still see our neighbor but not our neighbor's house was the rock moved so he could get out or so we could get in ah neighbor all that is that matters is beauty love is this life short and unpredictable we live as dust, molecules but what matters today is your story our story so let's go have a beer and tell each other a stories

And sometimes, I simply listened:

I am sitting next to a woman with long blonde hair at the bar at The Four Seasons Restaurant in New York City. I am sitting next to her because it was the last unoccupied bar-stool. I come here because I do not have to talk--except to James, the bartender, who will greet me by name and "Bruce, we haven't seen you in a long time. How are you?" Her phone rings and I can hear her say "fuck" and "fucking" repeatedly during the course of her ten minute conversation. Now, I am still silent, but curious, and I say, turning to face her, "What's the problem?"

"It's my fucking boyfriend," she says. "He won't divorce his wife. I mean, tell me, how much time do you need? How much time should I give him? Six months? It's already been six months. I told him one year. If he doesn't get a divorce in one year I'm out. I love him. I like all the gifts. But fuck. There's a lot of available men in New York City. Shit. I shouldn't be telling you all this. But I'm so fucking mad. He calls me ten, fifteen times a day. 'Where are you?' 'What are you doing?' 'Who are you with?' He's driving me fucking crazy. And how fucking stupid can his wife be? I mean doesn't she smell my perfume on him and his clothes? See my hair all over his clothes? I'm so fukcing mad."

I read a book of poems in the backyard. It was Sunday. I read every poem in the book. I put the book down on our pink table. I went into the garage looking for a vase. A small yellow vase. I wanted to make a garden still life in my garden. I set the small yellow vase on a table in the garden. I cut three zinnias and filled the small yellow vase with the cut flowers. I sat down. I got up and cut two more zinnias and added them to the small yellow vase. I sat down. I was reminded that God created the world in seven days so I cut two more zinnias and added them to the small yellow vase. I sat down and was overcome happiness. I could have cried.

Photo by Bruce Barone.

And yesterday I painted a second coat of Victorian Purple on our outside doors. I painted the two doors to match our Victorian Purple Fence, Pot, and Wheelbarrow (So much depends upon a "pink" wheelbarrow...).

Photo by Bruce Barone.

And then, as in the Bible, I rested:

Self Portrait. August 3, 2011.

And I watched the squirrel eating on the top of our garden ladder:

Photo by Bruce Barone.

I delighted in watching the Yellow Finch in the garden:

Photo by Bruce Barone.

I saw that the Cosmos bloomed:

Photo by Bruce Barone.

My 30 minutes are upon me. There is a knock at the door. It is Susan.

~~~

If you want distinctive nature, documentary or portrait photography--photography with soul that inspires you to live a more artful and beautiful life, please contact me.

Portrait of a Young Woman

Amelia

Photo by Bruce Barone.

If you want distinctive nature, documentary or portrait photography--photography with soul that inspires you to live a more artful and beautiful life, please contact me.

Baby

In Montreal:

Baby in Montreal. Photo by Bruce Barone.

If you want distinctive nature, documentary or portrait photography--photography with soul that inspires you to live a more artful and beautiful life, please contact me.

Two Women of Montreal

~

Dagmara & Vanessa

Photo by Bruce Barone.

of cafe pi

If you want distinctive nature, documentary or portrait photography--photography with soul that inspires you to live a more artful and beautiful life, please contact me.