I have been tinkering with words lately.  Not writing as I am want to do but just turning the words over in my mind and rolling them across my tongue to get the feel of them. While reading a novel or even the newspaper I pick out a word to play with, to study, to analyze.  It’s one way to occupy my mind that requires little from me and keeps me amused briefly. Then I got onto the reader part of my wordpress blog to check the works of others and discovered that a word-of-the-day is provided to get one started to write.  Just what I needed. So, sky.

I was watching the sky while out for a walk just yesterday and thinking how it is constantly changing.  The sky I watched at noon will never be exactly like that ever again.  The clear vibrant blue of a summer day will be clear and blue on many other summer days, but it will not have exactly the same fade from shades of aqua to turquoise beginning so pale it’s almost white on one horizon and blending, bleeding into a royal hue on the opposite.  Those puffy cotton-ball clouds playing against the robins egg blue of late spring mornings will have the shape of 8:28 a.m. on May 27 only that one time for that one moment.  The dark green-gray clouds announcing the approach of a thunderstorm will hold the shape we see only for as long it takes the wind to march them into something else.

Flying from mid-America to New England a couple of months ago I saw the sky from up  in it.  Those puff ball clouds that we make imaginary shapes out of from below look very much like snow when looking down at them rather than up.  Then I could not ignore the fact that there are bumps in the sky.  So deceiving that serene smooth looking blue and white space way above our heads.  Had I not ever flown in a plane I would not have considered how changing and formidable air is.  Wind as I had experienced it on the ground seemed to present itself differently up in the sky.  Stronger and unpredictable for all that it is invisible.  No leaves to stir or flags to straighten out from the wind up here.  It is felt, not seen.

The night sky holds separate wonders from the day.  On cold clear winter nights when the wind has gone to sleep with everyone else and sleep doesn’t like me I wrap up in coat and gloves and walk under the bare trees looking up at stars that seem to be tiny pin holes in black satin letting only the wee small bit of light sneak through from the other side.  I especially like the black night sky when there is snow and light seems to glow from under your feet into the night and then die before it reaches the divide between earth and sky.  Winter’s naked trees form patterns of lace across the face of the moon and clouds, if there are any, seem to have captured the glowing light escaping from the snow below but can only hold it for a moment before the night becomes all shades of gray and black.  I could sit and watch this sky for hours, but the cold chases me back into the house, leaving the sky to deepen into purple before allowing just a touch of light to melt into the east changing the purple to lavender before streaks of pale yellow announce dawn. A dawn similar to many others, but not ever exactly the same as any other.  Each moment of the sky is unique, never to be again.

On Christmas, not this last one but the one before that, my kids and husband gave me a digital camera.  It’s awesome.  It will do many things.  It can be adjusted just about a million different ways to capture all kinds of images.  All I have to do is use the proper settings for the  photo I want.  So I sat down with the manual that came with the camera and begin to study.  I found all the parts listed in a diagram with lines from the names of the parts from those words to the corresponding part on the drawing of the camera.  I managed to charge the battery and find the button to push for taking a picture and remembered that you have to press this half way, pause, then press all the way.  So far so good.

So on a reasonably pleasant winter day I charged up the battery, inserted it into the camera, set it on full automatic and took a walk around the neighbor hood to snap a few photos.  Shot a few trees, a cat, one of the neighborhood kids, a front door, and quiet by accident, my boot.  Back in the house I got out the card reader my daughter showed me how to use and loaded my images to my computer.  A couple of hours and a few cuss words later I actually managed to see my efforts on the screen.  It became painfully obvious that I needed to put in some work to get any good at this at all.

We are fortunate enough to have a community college not too far away and they offer a beginners photography class.  I signed up.  The instructor for this class is an engineer who photographs special occasions  as a side business and has exhibited his work in local galleries.  A very knowledgeable and patient man. He began the first class with a discussion about F-stops (what?) and aperture (I had a small idea what that is) and how to choose and frame an image.  It all made sense while he was saying it and I nodded as I fiddled with the settings as directed (or as near as I could get to as directed).  I left with a bit of a headache and a homework assignment that involved placing an object on a table and shooting it with several variations of settings then down loading the photos to a card to show at the next class.  I did nothing but photography homework for five days and got to the second class with seven pictures of a blue goblet that really were not that different from each other.  Even so, I stayed, determined to become proficient with my camera.

Now you have to understand that there are a couple of handicaps here.  One, engineers make me nervous.  All that precision and planning and using numbers to define everything.  Exact numbers.  Engineers don’t understand winging it, and winging it is my strong suit. I have hated numbers since third grade and use them only as absolutely necessary.  Two, the last time I took a class was belly dancing about twenty years ago and longer than that since I had to actually study anything.  My brain may well have atrophied.

Class number two was all about light.  Flash or not.  Sun or shade. Indoors or out. Reflectors  and slave flashes and background.  We took shoots of each other and the mundane furniture in the room and I felt like I might be coming along.  Then, homework.  Go home and use the manual settings on your camera for a portrait shot, a landscape, and an action shot and print those to show the class.  Well I tried.  The laundry piled up, meals were carry-out or fix your own and the dust bunnies took over the house.  The portrait of my dog was not centered and his eyes were straight from the devil.  The landscape of the lake shore was too busy and the tops of the trees were cut off.  After hanging out at the ballpark for an hour or so I gave up on the action shot.  At this point I was just grateful the class was not for credit.

The class met for six sessions and I attended four.  I could have managed the last two but something else I wanted to do came along, so I ditched class.  Not actually a first for me.  The camera and I have an on and off relationship now. I really like what I am told is micro photography.  Close ups of flowers, birds (really hard to get) odd things I see along the road side like a discarded shoe and sometimes just a leaf.  Sunsets are another favorite and I never get tired of lake scenes. I always thought I wanted to take a lot of pictures of the family get-togethers and outings with friends but I get too involved enjoying myself to stop and take pictures.

Those shots I should have or could have taken have to stay just a memory without being preserved by the camera and I am okay with that now.  I got okay with it recently when I sat down to go through some very old photos of great aunts and uncles that I barely remember. I identified all that I could and made notes for whoever looks at these when I am no longer around to tell the story behind the picture.  I realized that the real memories died with people who held them inside while they lived.  I have a picture of my son holding his sister so carefully on his lap when she was no bigger than a house cat.  I haven’t looked at that picture in a long time because I don’t have to.  It lives in my head to be recalled at will.  When my brain and I are no more the memory will also be no more.  That’s just how it is.  It’s my special memory and you can’t have it.

It’s spring time here in the neighborhood.  The trees are telling it from house to house.  The Bradford pears are transitioning from white blossoms to green leaves, just a shade lighter than the new grass.  Most of the lawns have not been mowed yet, though they will be in dire need of a trim after only a few more days.  The warm green grass has cool tiny spots of purple and pale blue violets scatted all about and those odd purple weeds have popped up in the ditches and along the drives.  Dogwood trees are abundant on our block with one in front of just about every third house.  They burst forth in glorious white flowers a couple of days ago and are now a mass of white petals.  The addition of Red Bud trees here and there make a walk around the block a visual feast.

Children are the most noticeable harbinger of warm weather if only due to the volume of their voices announcing small victories such as a basketball through the hoop or reaching the bottom of the hill on a skate board without a tumble.  I am not sure what number would constitute a gaggle, but what seemed to me to be a gaggle of boys on bicycles came zooming down the hill as I was going up this morning, smiles on their faces and the usual taunts of “You can’t catch me” and “Watch this” tossed from one to another.

Folks that have seldom been seen through the winter are now engaged in serious porch sitting and across the fence visiting.  This winter the dog and I trudged along empty, dark streets almost all alone and unnoticed by anyone.  Today we were greeted by a child, a neighbor or another dog pretty much every few feet.  I can’t decide which I prefer.  Probably depends on where my head is on a given day.  On this day I like it just as it is.

There is much wrong with the world that needs changing; I would if I could.  The biggest and most dangerous problem, that could probably change but most likely won’t, is that there are too many of us.  Humans I mean.  We are procreating ourselves out of existence.  The earth will survive without us, but then who will appreciate it?

It seems obvious to me that there limited resources and we just keep making more humans to use them up without realizing that someday there just won’t be enough to sustain the number of humans on this planet.  There have always been natural ways to control population; wars, famine, disease, genocide, etc. but even though we are killing each other in more and more heinous ways there are still too many people for the earth to sustain.

What to do?  We should be having fewer babies but that is not likely when most believe every child is a gift from a god.  We could die younger to make room for others but I’m not volunteering to go first and I don’t know anyone else who will.

Then again, maybe nature has already started to thin the herd without relying on human beings to take care of it.  Floods and earthquakes take out a fair number of people as do droughts and hurricanes.  In the past war has been temporarily effective by removing large numbers of young males during their most productive years.  Time will tell.  I won’t be around long enough to know how it works out, but it should be interesting for those who survive, or maybe for the next species to occupy this space.

I always remember my mom on her birthday. More and more as time goes by she looks back at me from the mirror.  My mom was a bit of a character, always up for a good time, unfailingly generous and not one to be messed with.  I like to remember her when she was young and healthy, gathering my siblings and cousins into the convertible to drive to the St. Louis Zoo for the day or taking a car load of teenagers to the skating rink.  Ours was a home full of activity and other peoples kids and mom entertained them all.

She taught me grace under pressure and showed me how to make adversity into an adventure.  It was by her example that I learned to stand up for myself and to let go of the small stuff.  And, to be silly now and then because a big belly laugh is good for you.