Shutter Control

I begin this post with a shout out to Mr. B., who when posed with the challenge of naming my new blog, quickly and creatively suggested not one, but two, titles. I chose Light and Dark because of the play on the art of photography and the nature of the human heart (particularly mine). His other title, Shutter Control, sums up how I feel today.

It's been approximately a month since the break-up, this monumental break-up that took 20 minutes to end a relationship I thought would be important, monumental, and epitomized my vision of love, and has left me struggling to find my feet, to gain back some sense of control after it proverbially tossed me from the top of the tower to land groaning on the ground. I have a vision in my head of the wooden puppet on strings tangled up in a heap on the cold earth. Helping hands picked up the controls and twisted me back into a semblance of a human figure again, but I have had to find my own feet and can't rely on people pulling my strings forever.

I've been crying all day. It's been one of those days - I had to pull it together somewhat at work, but on my trip to Wolf during lunch, the tears started, were quelled, and sprang up again on my way out the door. My mother had to listen to me bawling all the way to Gallatin, where I had to get it together and tutor my girls. She, in her motherly wisdom, said teaching would take over and I would feel better after. She was right. Mr. W., who also had me crying on the phone, suggested when I feel like this, I should take pictures. He told me to just stop the car and shoot something. On the way home, at almost sunset, I did. I pulled the car over and took some dusk shots of a barn, an old farmhouse and a liquor store (I love taking pictures of liquor stores - do I have to ask what that says about me?). I had the FE2 in the car and I'm learning to get in the habit of taking it everywhere. I started to get angry tonight. There's a huge part of me that wants to yell and scream at him and present the mess he created so he will have to look it in the face and see what he's done. It seems that he walked out the door and it's all too easy for him to look away and distract himself with the next shiny object, possibly one much more outwardly shiny than myself (but not inwardly - we know that isn't possible).

Shutter control: a skill to master that facilitates the expression of emotion and beauty. There aren't many things in my world under my control right now. I have a temporary job and am engaged in the nebulous task of searching for a "good job," a car that is still kicking, but who knows for how long, a relationship that has died,  parents who are moving across the planet, finances on the constant brink of collapse - you get the idea - but one thing I can control is the movement of light through a lens to hit a piece of film. That I can do, with increasing finesse.

I dropped off more film at Wolf this afternoon, but my scans are still not back. Tomorrow, I hope.