LJ Idol - Week 26 - Moments of Devastating Beauty
I hired a brilliant photographer for my wedding. Before she settled in Sedona, Arizona to take photos of brides and babies, Pamela Duffy was a photojournalist. Published in Life and The Village Voice, I discovered a series of photos she shot of Mother Teresa ministering to Muslim refugees in Tangra. Was it simply the fierce Indian sun that caused her rosaried countenance to glow as if lit from within? It seemed miraculous, yet Pamela captured the beatific woman with nothing more than the lens of a camera.
For a price, such an artist could take pictures of me, and I could be a miracle too.
The wedding was amazing. A party of ten, standing mere feet from the edge of a red rock cliff, overlooking the blue-sky panorama of an Arizona spring. I told my mother I would be married in nature because I wanted God to be present. And He was there, everywhere; in the renewing touch of the cool spring breeze, in the rustling of the tenacious cliff pines and in the timeless foundation of the warm red rocks beneath our feet.
Our wedding photos were amazing too. Perfect natural light, deep human emotion and a talented photographer combined to make the documentary of my marriage magical.
And yet, as wonderful as those pictures were, the most memorable moments of my marriage, of my entire life, are rarely caught on film. Life is what happens between the photographs, in the moments when your camera is turned off, or forgotten in the car.
There are some things too miraculous to even dream of capturing on film, like my childhood memory of twilit woods filled with fireflies, a thousand lightening bugs bumped from the air by a gentle summer rain. En masse, they took refuge in the trees, blinking merrily. To my eyes it looked like a thousand Japanese lanterns flickering in the branches.
As a child, life is full of everyday magic. A sparkling chunk of quartz, just pavement for the driveway, is a treasure. An inch worm on a flower is cause for exclamation and a tree full of fireflies leaves us speechless. When does life, with its disappointments and frustrations, worries and preoccupations, steal from us the wonder of the small things?
We grow up, for better or for worse, and it becomes more difficult for us to be moved, harder to recall the miracles of our past. So we carry cameras to capture joy on film, to hold a perfect sunset or a guileless smile suspended in time forever. We arrange the pictures in photo albums, spell books to bring back happier times, and in lockets filled with loved ones, talismans to keep out the cold.
But then we experience a moment of pure, transcendant beauty that reminds us what pale facsimilies of perfection photos really are. These moments are made all the more priceless because the only place they exist is in our mind. They are the moments that make us pause and think "I really must remember this for later."
After the cliff top wedding, after the photographer went home and we flew back to Georgia, we had a reception, a party with 150 friends and family. It was in the country, in a building built in 1842 that had once been a church, which was turned into a barn, and now, with chipped gold paint and rough wooden floors, it was my reception hall. I made a hundred country lanterns for the yard, canning jars with green wire for a handle and one white votive candle glowing within. I hung the ancient oaks with my lanterns and the little girl in me gazed raptly at the effect - like fireflies in the branches.
That night, as the guests drank and mingled, Mike and I slipped away from the festivities. We stood together beneath a tree lit by a single candle jar, holding hands and listening to the night. Inside the barn, a song began.
"I want to thank you,
for giving me the best day of my life.
Oh, just to be with you,
is giving me the best day of my life."
We danced there, spinning slowly in the dark, dusty yard, the moment set apart in time and space. It was one of the best days of my life. No camera captured it but it burns like a flash bulb in my mind. And this miracle didn't cost me a penny.
Unscripted, unpredictable, immeasurably valuable. Devastating beauty makes us all children again, forgetting ourselves as we are reminded momentarily of all we have lost - and all that we have found.
(Song lyrics courtesy of Dido, "Thank You.")
For a price, such an artist could take pictures of me, and I could be a miracle too.
The wedding was amazing. A party of ten, standing mere feet from the edge of a red rock cliff, overlooking the blue-sky panorama of an Arizona spring. I told my mother I would be married in nature because I wanted God to be present. And He was there, everywhere; in the renewing touch of the cool spring breeze, in the rustling of the tenacious cliff pines and in the timeless foundation of the warm red rocks beneath our feet.
Our wedding photos were amazing too. Perfect natural light, deep human emotion and a talented photographer combined to make the documentary of my marriage magical.
And yet, as wonderful as those pictures were, the most memorable moments of my marriage, of my entire life, are rarely caught on film. Life is what happens between the photographs, in the moments when your camera is turned off, or forgotten in the car.
There are some things too miraculous to even dream of capturing on film, like my childhood memory of twilit woods filled with fireflies, a thousand lightening bugs bumped from the air by a gentle summer rain. En masse, they took refuge in the trees, blinking merrily. To my eyes it looked like a thousand Japanese lanterns flickering in the branches.
As a child, life is full of everyday magic. A sparkling chunk of quartz, just pavement for the driveway, is a treasure. An inch worm on a flower is cause for exclamation and a tree full of fireflies leaves us speechless. When does life, with its disappointments and frustrations, worries and preoccupations, steal from us the wonder of the small things?
We grow up, for better or for worse, and it becomes more difficult for us to be moved, harder to recall the miracles of our past. So we carry cameras to capture joy on film, to hold a perfect sunset or a guileless smile suspended in time forever. We arrange the pictures in photo albums, spell books to bring back happier times, and in lockets filled with loved ones, talismans to keep out the cold.
But then we experience a moment of pure, transcendant beauty that reminds us what pale facsimilies of perfection photos really are. These moments are made all the more priceless because the only place they exist is in our mind. They are the moments that make us pause and think "I really must remember this for later."
After the cliff top wedding, after the photographer went home and we flew back to Georgia, we had a reception, a party with 150 friends and family. It was in the country, in a building built in 1842 that had once been a church, which was turned into a barn, and now, with chipped gold paint and rough wooden floors, it was my reception hall. I made a hundred country lanterns for the yard, canning jars with green wire for a handle and one white votive candle glowing within. I hung the ancient oaks with my lanterns and the little girl in me gazed raptly at the effect - like fireflies in the branches.
That night, as the guests drank and mingled, Mike and I slipped away from the festivities. We stood together beneath a tree lit by a single candle jar, holding hands and listening to the night. Inside the barn, a song began.
"I want to thank you,
for giving me the best day of my life.
Oh, just to be with you,
is giving me the best day of my life."
We danced there, spinning slowly in the dark, dusty yard, the moment set apart in time and space. It was one of the best days of my life. No camera captured it but it burns like a flash bulb in my mind. And this miracle didn't cost me a penny.
Unscripted, unpredictable, immeasurably valuable. Devastating beauty makes us all children again, forgetting ourselves as we are reminded momentarily of all we have lost - and all that we have found.
(Song lyrics courtesy of Dido, "Thank You.")