Pause

Much of my time this month has been devoted to preparing for the imminent delivery of Love's Freeway to the eyes, hands and (I'd love to think) hearts of Jamaica Plain's Centre Street culture. Thanks to Fresh Hair Salon's welcome to local artists via their salon-wide exhibitions, each month featuring a different artist's work, images from Love's Freeway will fill the Salon throughout the month of April. I've a little ways to go before I'll be ready, but I'm pleased with how the show is shaping up. And needless to say, I wholeheartedly invite and welcome you who are in the area to come on by sometime after March 29 and before April 30 to touch and see for yourselves (and maybe take home a piece of the Freeway for your very own!), in a larger and livelier form than is possible in this column, what I've been capturing on the Freeway over the past ten months.

My primary reason for writing tonight, though, is to share these two images with you. I happened upon this "poem" on a walk I took as a break from all the framing and cutting and matting and bio-ing, and such. I was surprised, as I often am when I take photos off the camera and see them full-screen, by their huge voice--their compelling story. It quieted me to look at them. To count the years (which I hadn't done in the cemetery). To contemplate Anne's three decades lived past the passing of her husband, and to imagine an embrace of life so robust that it carried her all the way to 92.

But I am spoiling this, I think, with my words. In fact, I was tempted to post these without any words at all; more than ever--do you feel it?--I feel the images speak for themselves.

What I see here is all love, and I am moved, suffused by that love, as well as grateful for the privilege of bearing witness to it.