Haven't Been Here For a While.

This was the first photo I scanned from photo class. Tom likes it, which is nice for me. "This man likes hot chocolate" is what he wrote next to it, when he made it his profile photo on Facebook. The scanner makes it look a little weird here, purpley or something, and Jahnavi says I still need to do some burning on the left side of it, bring in more tone on his left hand, in the sky. "Paper white isn't that attractive," she says. She also says "You're working some things out," and she's right about that, even the print above is  still a lot better than the first prints I made. I'm learning. 

The other photos I scanned are also of people, of course. One underexposed shot from when the battery was dead in my camera, Jessica up in Edison in front of the gorgeous raindrops she filled the shop window with. That was such a good day we had, driving around in her little truck, eating the best eggs benedict in the world at Tweets, and I got the very last chocolate chip ice cream cone.

I've taken photos of Jason before, but never like this one. I think he looks so dear here, all rough and vulnerable, curls and beard and sweet clear eyes. It's enough to make a girl want to throw together a blog post. It has always been the photos that made the posts easy, lured me into the writing. It's the words that are the hard part. I have to work hard to forgive myself the awkwardness, just be okay with typing, telling you a couple things, saving other things for later. I remind myself that faith exists, and just like that, it finds me.