That picture.

December 19, 2016, Columbia (Missouri.)

That picture.
The bravery of that AP photographer. The poise.
The white walls, the black suit, the art on the walls, pictures.
That picture.
I wonder if I would show such bravery and poise in such circumstances. I hope I never find out.
Today was a snow day for us, crowning a weekend of winter wonderland and sweet things to come. We were running errands. I was getting my hair colored. Standing there while the kids were getting their hair cut while I waited for the color to take, chatting with Ellie, the hairdresser from Nicaragua whom I’ve grown to love over my monthly vanity rendezvous, chatting about family and the cost of health insurance and how to make churros over the cup of coffee she always offers while we wait, but today she was cutting the kids’ hair and I checked my phone for news and there was the news, and that picture. The picture was going viral on social media, on its way to a Pulitzer, someone among all the photojournalists reacting on a friend’s social media page said. That picture, a punch in the gut.
Eight shots, shouting “Don’t forget Aleppo!, Don’t forget Syria!” The young man, so sharply dressed, shouting and threatening the crowd after shooting the Russian ambassador to Turkey, black against the white background, it all goes so fast and there is that picture, a photographer was there and what he did is incredible. The picture so crisp in such a tense situation, and the contrast, the clash of black and white, the face of rage against the outstretched body of the ambassador, the suit flowing, the finger raised, nothing else and everything is there.
The elegant and sober setting and this young man, his rage, but he is so composed, look at his trigger finger, somebody else on that photojournalists’ thread on social media said, he has his finger outstretched and not actually on the trigger, while throwing the Tawhid hand sign, the universal raised index finger sign that ISIS has adopted and twisted, the Tawhid the belief in the oneness of god, but for ISIS a sinister signifier of extremist rejection of any and all other views.
That picture won’t let me sleep. What bravery in that photographer and what an image.
In its perfection it reminds me of James Nachtwey’s images of the Somalia famine and how their beauty raised a storm of ethical questions among us photojournalists but ultimately prevailed: in our job as visual communicators, the reality of the horrors we may be called to cover and convey demands no less than that quality, and far from glorifying horrors and making us insensitive to them, powerful and beautiful images are the best tools we have to bear witness.
That picture is already an icon.
Here in my world I had taken a picture of an angel.

Just starting.

December 7, 2016, Columbia (Missouri.)

In a moment of rare quiet solitude this morning I was reading a New Yorker profile of Pedro Almódovar and when I got to the part where he talks about losses, and how he feels them differently now that he’s older, it made me reflect on the milestone I just passed, turning fifty. After a week of sheer joy with friends, basking in their love and partying as if I were twenty, it is time to start reflecting: those symbols, milestones, rituals, these heightened steps on the chaotic and haphazard and uncontrollable path of our lives. Turning thirty was a momentous time; I had made it a symbol and a hope, the day when I would start freeing myself from what was tying me down.
When I turned thirty I stopped feeling sorry for myself and my handicap (I turned deaf around my mid-twenties from a pool of bad genes) and decided to rescue an abysmal self-image (becoming a photographer better to hide) and I started opening my eyes. When I turned thirty I started rediscovering the world of sound and talk, and the social world I had been slowly leaving, digging my own hole out of fear and shame; I started consulting surgeons to find out if a minor birth defect that had come to define my life could be addressed (it could not, and so it is, and it stopped defining my life); I started taking charge, and even if I skipped and fell often as I ran, I went on running with eyes wide open and as I turn fifty I’m just finally learning to fly.
The wild rosebush in the driveway is still blooming in subfreezing temperatures, calling to me as I look out the kitchen window.
Eyes wide open I'm learning to fly and  taking nothing for granted. The leaves crunch under my feet in the morning and are ringed by frost, shades of brown and white. The fog is lifting, and as I start to fly I want to take others by the hand, better to feel the air in my lungs. I am flying free and growing strong, and I am teaching my sons to do the same, take others by the hand as they soar - no time, no time to wait fifty years. It is grey and cold today, winter is settling, and we’re learning to fly together in the little bungalow, drab outside with all the colors inside.
There’s no stopping us, the sky is clear above the winter clouds and the image is coming into focus, and we’ll be flying high because these times demand it and the losses feel acute when you’re older but they’ve always been, dead by overdose at the age of nineteen he was, when last night he was playing the piano with me - wide-eyed thirteen-year-old.
It is not just about turning fifty and hoping for fifty-five more, seeing it all clearer and sharper now, it is about coming into focus, assessing the essential, art and ideas and actions hand in heart in hand.
I’m just starting.