An invitation

I've just started reading Dorothea Lange: A Life Beyond Limits. She is the photographer who is best known for this iconic Dust Bowl photograph.

She eventually settled into teaching and an assignment that she liked giving to her college students asked them to answer the question, "Where do I live?". According to the book, "she wanted to see an intimate relation between the photographer and the subject of her or his photography." Therefore, a picture of an apartment or house wasn't going to cut it for this assignment. I read that page several days ago and it has really stuck with me.

This is a year of tremendous transition for me and sometimes, I wonder how I got here and where I'm headed. I've decided to explore this question of "Where do I live" as a theme for this spot. Oh sure, there will be the usual rants about work and likely my newly minted single life. But, I've been searching for a theme and this will do nicely for this year. I'll share poems, scrapes of papers, and photographs that get at the essence of this question. I'd like to invite you to share your answer or answers and we'll collectively design a map of our lives. Here's my first answer, a poem I've been toying with in my head for weeks. Enjoy!


Whence

From smoke encased womb, I emerged,
Frightened of shadows, disappointment, and success.
Kept in a transparent box by parents who couldn't keep that uncle away.
Adult quarrels isolate more intensely.
Fighting siblings, now strangers.
Love, sex, love, sex,
Blindly unable to differentiate.
Self exile to the land of drive-thru coffee, doughnuts, and shinny.
Unconditional love of a child
welds steel to my veins ,
frees my voice.
Whence and destination.