A reflection on the holy ache of love—how it lives in us, how it shapes us, and how, sometimes, we must let it breathe without us. This piece belongs to the fire-lit quiet where survival and love coexist.
Love isn’t a choice. It isn’t a decision. It is a default. A divine state. The way breath happens without trying, without knowing— that is love.
That is our love, whether for a song or a story, for animals or a wild wind, for a vision, or a soul.
We are love. We have embodied it… become it.
This is the weight we carry. This is the fire within us that lights the way for so many— but feels like burning alive for us.
And in times of heartache, when the world sharpens its noise, when grief coils into our chests, we do not run— we retreat.
We ache for the world because we are still tethered to the breath of it. We have done our part, we have showed up, and done our work.
Make no mistake, we continue to. From the shadows, in our tonal silence, our love still flows. Reverberates. Echoes.
We do not walk away because we are cold. We step away simply because we are melting. We step away… to survive. That is what survivors do.
We do not stop loving. We stop offering our tangible lives, for a time, to those who can not—or will not—feel us. Those who may never know…after all, they have forgotten even themselves. We pause.
To love like this, to grieve like this, is to carry the holy burden: to hold light for others while burning through your own bones. But it is also to breathe.
So if we disappear, if we go quiet, if we bow out—
know this:
It is not rejection. It is not retraction. It is survival. Because we do not want to die along with what is dying. Instead, we love from a distance while allowing what is dead to rest.
Love is not a thing we give. It is what we are. When we cast ourselves back into silence, it is to return… to the breath. To the fire, before we burn out. To the only place where the burning becomes light again.
Like love itself, it is not a choice. We must.
entry two — scattered light, fractured grace: a quiet archive of light, loss, and what remains.
What you create… does not require an explanation of itself. It doesn’t need to convince, convert, or justify. It just needs to exist. Quietly, softly— like fog curling through trees or dust dancing across old floorboards.
Like light through ancient glass, sacred, but unflinching; gentle, but resolute. A whisper with weight, in that space exists everything— beyond the reach of articulation.
Silence is a presence, as much as an absence. Holy. Haunting. Both leave their imprint.
You are free to feel without having to be felt back. Free to present instead of perform. Free to sit beside your own silence, and know that it understands.
Because your creation… exists.
entry one — scattered light, fractured grace: a quiet archive of light, loss, and what remains.
In my mid-20s, I experienced an interesting exploration of death as a subject in my work, professionally and creatively. Delving into the intricate realms of death became an unexpected but necessary journey. Originating from my research and work in psychology, the fascination found a niche in the recesses of my mind, dancing at a newly discovered crossroad: psychology and spirituality.
The illusion of immortality, a comforting notion in my youth, began to unravel, and a sobering awareness seeped in – a gentle reminder that time, despite our desires, marches on. This realization stirred occasional anxiety, yet it birthed within me an artistic sanctuary. While my “irl” associates and friends were rather put off by such a topic of discussion, it was given tangible validity within the “lovely dead stuff” community on Instagram.
Back then, Instagram thrived on genuine connections, nearly two decades ago during its inception. Communities flourished, spanning from technical visual elements, like layering textures and tones, to profound philosophical discussions embedded in art. It was within the latter that the “lovely dead stuff” tag/community found its home. While the platform’s landscape may have evolved, I suspect its essence endures, adapting to the shifting tides of philosophy and the world’s unfolding events.
The “lovely dead stuff” community, a haven for kindred spirits, provided a liberating space where my inquisitive mind and creative endeavors harmonized. In those formative years, it fostered an environment that not only embraced my curiosity but also guided me in the art of amalgamating thought and creativity. It became a conduit for transforming introspection into tangible expressions, a timeless journey that shaped both my understanding of mortality and my artistic identity.
During that formative time in my spirituality, I realized that the connections between psychology and spirituality were becoming a pressing issue in my still immortal mind — I think I wanted to, like many, freeze time and never die and there was this underlying current of consciousness beginning to happen to me that screamed, “you’re not as immortal as you think you are, young ‘un!”
It would sometimes create a lot of anxiety, those explorations, but I am so grateful that I found an outlet in the “lovely dead stuff” artistic community on Instagram. It was a liberating community that embraced all those levels of me (brain, heart, and soul) and helped me learn to employ them simultaneously for the first time in my life (I’d never been allowed that prior to that time in my life). I was able to create some tangible reality out of it all.
I was not expecting to revisit those memories or that topic today, but I found myself considering it as I “walked the yard” (a Dorie thing that some of you may remember) this morning in search of moss to photograph for a mixed media project I was working on to commemorate my mother’s birthday. Amidst the quiet canvas of nature, the stark contrast between the lingering death of winter and the emerging promises of spring captured my attention. Winter’s remnants, laid bare and hanging in the air, echoed the transient beauty of life’s inevitable cycles. Meanwhile, the subtle signs of spring’s awakening breathed new life into the scene, embodying the enduring spirit of renewal and the continuous dance between life and its inevitable counterpart.
It served as a poignant reminder that, like the seasons, our perspectives too undergo a perpetual transformation, each moment holding within it the delicate balance of both closure and new beginnings. Here’s to remembering and retrying forgotten editing skills, and to whatever comes next…
Happy birthday, Mama. Thank you for the lessons, and the love. I miss you…
HipstaCat stands for Hipstamatic + Catacosmosis. I’ve decided to make myself play with Hipsta again. Per usual, I’ve lost my creative drive due to stress and caregiving anxiety (that’s on my brain’s inability not to worry and fear, not on anyone being a burden, to clarify) so thank heavens for tools like Hipsta and Mextures that allow me to create without doing so from scratch (if that makes sense). I got this, right? LOL
Hipstamatic, Frederick + Combo2X
This is a crystal statue in a hall at St. Vincent’s hospital. I dig it, so I hipsta’d it.
Sometimes it feels like you just want to jump from a great height and be gone. But why?
We all make mistakes. We all do things, fail to do things, or find ourselves in situations we can’t control. For example, sometimes people lie about you and you lose someone you love because of it. But if that person cared about you and not just themselves? Instead of erasing you from their life and losing something that could have been good (erasing you except for holding a grudge/hating you) they’d choose differently.
THEY don’t realize that they broke your heart AND their own. YOU don’t realize that the truth is, it was probably for the best. Rejection is spiritual protection, my friends. And nothing beats your spirit team…
I love fall flowers…I love how they feel like summer’s last hoorah, or perhaps Mother Nature’s final gift before the long, cold winter…
When the season of death is upon us, both literally and figuratively, in nature and in life, I think we are often give this gift but tend to take it for granted.
I suppose that’s why I shoot so many details, and so many natural things…I wish to bring them back to the consciousness of those who live a sadder life because they’re forgotten them…or just become too complacent to see the gifts and the beaut that is always right before them.
Enjoy these flowers, and have a blessed and beautiful day.
You don’t know what someone is dealing with…what they’re going through. Sometimes a person can be confident and also anxious, look healthy but be sick, look happy and be miserable, look good but feel ugly, act hopeful but feel hopeless, smile and be broken, or never smile at all and be happy… You don’t know. So unless you ask, don’t judge. Don’t assume. Sometimes a person you see every single day or think you know very well can be fighting battles you know nothing about.
Flowers!?? Of course, flowers! How could I not start this whole top five/top ten thing with anything else when that is what I shoot the most?? OK – it’s probably a tie with droplets, but even those are technically flower shots. ((blows raspberry)
Specifically, as you’ll remember me mentioning Nicole if you read my last post, flowers are what she first asked me to choose as a top five list. I’m going to have to go with ten, though, because I share almost exclusively flowers. It was too difficult for me to choose just five. In fact, it was extremely difficult for me to put these in any sort of order as far as my own “top” choices. The rest of these will likely be “five” lists. This one was definitely the hardest.
10. Blue
I love this one because it combines different visual elements but still keeps the flower as the focal point. Another reason this one is special is because I shot it to complete a calendar I was doing for my Mom. This flower was one from one of the sprays given in memory of my father at his wake, and it also reminds me of the blue and white ceramics that she collects. Things so often tie together like that, in my perception and creativity.
**Sony Alpha (a37), Tamron macro 90mm f2.8, manual focus on full, tripod, external flash. Unedited, aside from crop.
09. Calla
I love this flower edit, done with DistressedFX on the fly. I shot this Calla lily at the oil change place with my phone. It was February, and I was attempting to leave for New Orleans for the third time in two weeks. I was so desperate to get there and find something. This flower, before I even embarked on my journey, was the first thing I “found.” What I was looking for in New Orleans exactly, I’m still not sure, but, all told, I found a lot more than I bargained for.
My plan to stay once I arrived there was foiled by understanding and learning in a very tangible way that you can’t always escape reality, and that when you love someone you’ll always return to them. My dad fell ill and that’s why I ended up coming home in the end – which I wasn’t planning to do at all…and from there my life began to unfold a chain of events that would forever change it – but not all for the bad.
**iPhone 5
08. Finding It
This cute little flower was hanging out on my cousin Gail’s porch at the farm. I shot this during a time when I felt so…overwhelmingly lost. It was a day when I simply didn’t know how to breathe without my father’s presence in my life, and was struggling to find meaning in ever leaving my room again, and when I saw this flower and spent thirty minutes photographing it and even longer playing with the DistressedFX/Mextures edit, I found a ray of meaning to get out of bed the next day: a desire to find more flowers to shoot. It was a very meaningful day because of this tiny little flower.
I found these daisies on clearance at Home Depot around mid-spring this year. This experience was something on many levels that I can’t even put into words…but this shot is visually one of my favorites because of the angle, focus and colors.
Some form of wild sage, I think. I shot these while walking in the woods somewhere in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. I love these little purple flowers, and I didn’t have any super special experience for or equipment with this shot. I just love the textured edit I did with it using Mextures.
**iPhone 5. Mextures Formula Code – TWTIYIE
05. Lightroom
With this shot, I was playing with Lightroom – which, at the time, I hadn’t done for a very long time. I’d been using mobile apps and devices and hadn’t touched my computer for months (ok, truth be told, years). Here I was trying some different styles with some shots from earlier in the year, and I was especially addicted to some Lightroom presets I’d gotten from Creative Market. Mixing presets and filters with Mextures formulas and effects from other apps, like DistressedFX and Stackables, is fun and you get some pretty cool results.
I chose to include this image because I love the gradient of the colors in the edit, but when I looked back at the original post I remembered very clearly how I felt on that day and why I called it “Soul Dance.” It was all down to music – a song called “Crystallize,” by Lindsey Sterling – as my moods often are. Internally, I was having such a hard time. I remember how light and how empowered that music made me feel, and as I was editing this image whilst listening to it and was trying to imagine my spirit flying like these dandelion seeds soon would be, I titled it after the song.
Continuing with my dandelion obsession this year, this shot is one of my all time favorites. I shot this while walking a trail at Norris Dam State Park, located on the Clinch River in Campbell County, Tennessee. I was sitting down, talking on the phone with my Dad (one of the last times I ever spoke with him before his illness and death), and he was telling me he was still not feeling well. It was at that point that he was going back in to the doctors to request more blood work and I was very scared and concerned and asked if I needed to come home. He said no, he’d be ok.
I remember telling him that the sun was going down and I saw this shot I wanted to try to get while I’d been sitting on the path talking with him (this shot), and I had to go, but I’d call him later that evening when I was back at the place where I was camping. That return phone call was when I told him about my art show in Knoxville, and he was so excited about it and didn’t say a whole lot about his health the rest of the time I was on that trip. It was just a couple weeks after I returned home that he went into a diabetic coma.
Sigh. It’s sometimes very emotional for me to see how things fit together when I look back on them. I’m so grateful that I got a good shot of this. It’s funny to me now that half the dandelion is missing – half of me is missing now, too…
**Lumix GF3, Panasonic Leica DG Macro-Elmarit 45mm f2.8, manual focus on full, handheld. Unedited, aside from crop.
02. Invisible
A very recent edit and a new favorite, I shot this the same day that I shot the blue flower at number 10. I was still experimenting with the external flash, and decided to play with this paper white bloom that had fallen to the floor when I’d moved things around for the blue flower shoot. I love the way the shot turned out, and edited it to further blend into the lighting with Mextures and the Stackables app. One of my all time favorites of my edited shots.
My number one favorite flower image is this macro image of a rose that was in one of the many gorgeous vases that were delivered to my house the day after my Dad passed away. I suppose we all know that flowers are my favorite, they are my friends, and I photograph them more than anything else. I just absolutely love flowers and have a fascination with them at many levels. This is something, interestingly enough, that I shared in common with my Dad. I kept my sanity during the weekend before we were to plan his funeral by shooting these flowers, somewhere in my heart hoping that he was there with me, invisibly enjoying them, too.
As I was shooting this particular flower, I had one of my first spiritual experiences with my dead father, as well as my first completely overwhelming, breathtaking, soul wrenching moment of grief. I remember falling to the floor and just completely breaking down for the first time that afternoon. I began to talk to my Dad, out loud, and I remember having this revelation that got me through that night and the next morning (the funeral home, picking out the casket and all that happiness).
As I shared on the original post:
I used to think that nothing lasts forever. Now I know…the love of a father does. I feel it all around me, especially when I close my eyes, and especially when I cry…even though he is gone. What a beautiful thing.
catacosmosis 