As most of you know, I have a strong familiarity with death and its unfolding, especially in humans, and a fondness for and kinship with death and dead things, all in the most holy, positive and beautiful sense⌠in the way one honors the combined soul and humanity of a teacher they have come to not only respect but to understand to such a depth that they recognize in them a truly kindred spirit.
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Endings speak a language I have learned well: honest, unpretentious, and oddly comforting once you understand and accept that there is no escaping them. In fall and winter, I find that endings, at least in nature, also make for the most interesting and oddly beautiful subjects. Therefore, prepare to be lovingly spammed with my perspectives and perceptions. đ
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Death is our friend precisely because it brings us into absolute and passionate presence with all that is here.
â Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet (1929)
Itâs as important as perspective. Perhaps even more soâŚ
We talk so much about perspectiveâabout changing our view, reframing the story, finding the silver lining in the storm cloud.
But sometimes, perspective doesnât shift easily.
Sometimes, circumstance leaves you standing exactly where youâve always stood. The view is the same. The light hits the same edges. The shadows fall in familiar places.
But even when the scene remains unchangedâŚthe focal point doesnât have to.
Focus is a choice.
A sacred, stubborn one.
Itâs the difference between staring at the problem and noticing the petal behind it.
Itâs where your attention lands, and where your energy follows.
Itâs learning to zoom in on grace even when grief is still in the frame.
And with that subtle shift, a new vision â a new truthâ came forward.
Almost alwaysâincluding in life, and despite circumstanceâthe best composition doesnât come from changing the scene but from learning which part of it to focus on.
When youâre connected, you pause. You listen, and ask better questions. You observe your own patterns, and stop attacking or blaming others for theirs.
When youâre connected, you become a space of calm in a world of storms rather than another disruptive, destructive wave in a sea of chaos.
When you forget how to listen inward, when you stop grounding in self-awareness, you lose your anchor.
Check yourself before you wreck yourself. Itâs not about being perfect. Itâs about being aware.
Pause, and come back to yourself.
Reconnect, and become the clarity youâve been searching for.
Remain connected, and become the clarity that helps to guide others home.
entry ten â scattered light, fractured grace: a quiet archive of light, loss, and what remains.
Black-eyed Susan (Rudbeckia hirta), a fading ember of late summerâgraceful even in decay, still holding the shape of sunlight after the bloom has passed. Lumix GX7 + Panasonic Leica DG Macro-Elmarit 45mm f/2.8 ASPH. MEGA O.I.S., VSCO (A10PRO), Mextures (personalized texture formula: MEZPZZC), Lightroom Mobile (watermark only).
My mother always told me, in every possible circumstance a child might ever need encouragement, âDo your best, and leave the rest. Itâll all come right some day or night.â
It was a line from âBlack Beauty, by Anna Sewell.â
She was a third grade teacher, a grammar Nazi, and a mother trying her damndest to connect with me and, well, do her best.
And, as ornery and difficult a young person as I could often be, she never knew that I believed herâŚ
âŚeven when I forgot I did.
Black-eyed Susan (Rudbeckia hirta), a fading ember of late summerâgraceful even in decay, still holding the shape of sunlight after the bloom has passed. Lumix GX7 + Panasonic Leica DG Macro-Elmarit 45mm f/2.8 ASPH. MEGA O.I.S., VSCO (A10PRO), Mextures (personalized texture formula: MEZPZZC), Lightroom Mobile (watermark only).
There was so much distance between us as I struggled through high school with her overbearing âsin obsessedâ guidance, and she struggled to save my soul.
Even when the days were so long, when they bled into each other, and when the nights felt like punishments I hadnât earned, as her brain and body were swallowed by Alzheimerâs.
Even when the thread broke, or maybe I cut it, when she diedâŚI honored and nursed a clean, holy wound in the shape of freedom for both of us, from past grievances, from debts yet unpaid, from fear, from tension, from aching hearts and confused minds and the evils of that horrific disease.
Still, that line stayed, like a soft breath. Like a healing balm. Like the part of her that couldnât leave, because it lived in me.
Black-eyed Susan (Rudbeckia hirta), a fading ember of late summerâgraceful even in decay, still holding the shape of sunlight after the bloom has passed. Lumix GX7 + Panasonic Leica DG Macro-Elmarit 45mm f/2.8 ASPH. MEGA O.I.S., VSCO (A10PRO), Mextures (personalized texture formula: MEZPZZC), Lightroom Mobile (watermark only).
Do your best. Not more than that. Not perfection. Just presence. I tried, truly.
Leave the rest⌠The story. The tragedy. The one who couldnât stay.
It will all come rightâŚand maybe it already has.
entry nine â scattered light, fractured grace: a quiet archive of light, loss, and what remains.
Weevil (Meibomeus musculus), a quiet laborer of the forest and the fieldsâŚcarrying the weight of being, petal by petal. Vision: Lumix GX7 + Panasonic Leica DG Macro-Elmarit 45mm f/2.8 ASPH. MEGA O.I.S. Tools: VSCO (KP3), Mextures (personalized texture formula: QBHASZK), Lightroom Mobile (watermark only).
There is a kind of presence that doesnât announce itself.
No sound. No shimmer. No need to be noticed. Just a body doing what it does.
Clinging to a petal, breathing the moment, belonging to the quiet. Sometimes, that is the work.
Not saving, not proving. Just being.
And somehowâŚit shifts the entire forest, the entire field.
For some souls, there is a burden in being seen ânot the fear of visibility, but the ache of being misread when presence itself was the offering.
VSCO (SS1 Pro), Lightroom Mobile (watermark only).
Aperture
There is a kind of light that doesnât just shine, but also fractures.
It breaks open the moment with something softer than silence and more honest than certainty.
You donât chase it, you receive it.
This image wasnât planned.
This frame wasnât forced.
Thereâs a stillness even the flowers seemed to know, and reflect back to me.
It is not the stillness of silence, but of surrender.
Not of bracing against beauty or the process of becoming-in-progress, or of apologizing for taking up space mid-bloomâŚbut of letting the light have its way.
I simply stood still long enough for the light to offer itselfâscattered, wild, and full of grace.
I saw what was really there:
Buds preparing to bloom and light wafting in, yet also ambient and still.
The entire moment was an aperture through which grace entered, unbothered and whole, needing no permission.
And in that quiet moment, it became a mirror for all of usâone that perhaps none of us knew we needed, and that many would automatically overlook.
How often do we chase clarity instead of becoming it?
How often do we disturb ourselves, or disturb the world while attempting to distract ourselves, by blaming everyone else?
How often are those moments merely us trying to be louder than what already speaks through us?
There is no control in peace.
No performance in healing.
Only presence.
And in that presence, we disturb no oneânot even ourselves.
We become the quiet offering.
We become the still center in a world unraveling at the edges.
Today, as I stood still in the midst of both internal and external war, peace didnât arrive with fanfare.
It arrived as fractured light through pine trees.
As a silent, oft unnoticed breath.
As a reminder that maybe the most sacred work is not to act, but merely to remain open.
Not to close.
Not to harden.
Not to explain ourselves into exhaustion, but to become aperture.
To simultaneously remain wide enough to hold whatâs real and narrow enough to let illusion fall away.
And, to be balanced enough in both intellect and empathy to know the difference.
This is the answer: detachment.
Not from emotion, but from illusion.
It is not denial, not distance.
Rather, it is the quiet rerouting of both emotion and cognition back to stillness.
A return to clarity, not an absence of care.
And somehow, by not reacting, by not reaching, we find we are already held.
Mimosa (Albizia julibrissin). Lumix GX7, Panasonic Leica DG Macro-Elmarit 45mm f/2.8 ASPH. MEGA O.I.S., Lightroom Mobile (watermark), VSCO.
Not everything soft is weak.
Not everything brief is forgotten.
The mimosa blooms like a passing thoughtâpink, feathery, fragrant, gone before youâre ready. But even in its short season, it rewrites the air.
And maybe thatâs the point:
To offer sweetness without needing permanence. To make magic in the margins.
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Mimosa (Albizia julibrissin). Lumix GX7, Panasonic Leica DG Macro-Elmarit 45mm f/2.8 ASPH. MEGA O.I.S., Lightroom Mobile (watermark), VSCO.
The Mimosa tree (Albizia julibrissin) is commonly known as the silk tree or Persian silk tree. Albizia julibrissin isnât actually a true mimosaâthough itâs been lovingly misnamed for generations. Native to Asia, this delicate tree has made its way into southern landscapes with grace and stubbornness alike.
Its blooms are light as breathâpowdery tufts that attract butterflies, bees, and human daydreamers. They bloom at dusk, shimmer in the wind, and drop silentlyâoften leaving a petal-scattered sidewalk like a love note no one signed.
Mimosa (Albizia julibrissin). Lumix GX7, Panasonic Leica DG Macro-Elmarit 45mm f/2.8 ASPH. MEGA O.I.S., Lightroom Mobile (watermark), VSCO.
Though itâs sometimes called invasive, thereâs no denying its presence feels like a portal: part nostalgia, part perfume, part dream.
Its scientific name, julibrissin, comes from the Persian gul-i abrishamââsilk flower.â A name that suits it perfectly.
Mimosa (Albizia julibrissin). Lumix GX7, Panasonic Leica DG Macro-Elmarit 45mm f/2.8 ASPH. MEGA O.I.S., Lightroom Mobile (watermark), VSCO.
In folk medicineâespecially within Traditional Chinese Medicineâthe mimosa tree is known as the âTree of Happiness.â Its fragrant pink blossoms and bark have long been used to lift the spirit, ease grief, calm the heart, and quiet a restless mind.
The flowers are brewed into gentle teas, while the bark is sometimes tinctured for deeper emotional support. Often given to those moving through sorrow or heartbreak, the mimosa is considered a natural ally for joy, resilience, and emotional rebirth.
A reflection on the holy ache of loveâhow 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 isnât a choice. It isnât a decision. It is a default. A divine state. The way breath happens without trying, without knowingâ 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 manyâ 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 runâ 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 notâor will notâfeel us. Those who may never knowâŚafter 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 outâ
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 â 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 â 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 âirlâ 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 â 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, âyouâre not as immortal as you think you are, young âun!â
It would sometimes create a lot of anxiety, those explorations, but I am so grateful that I found an outlet in the âlovely dead stuffâ 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 (Iâd 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 âwalked the yardâ (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. Hereâs to remembering and retrying forgotten editing skills, and to whatever comes nextâŚ
Happy birthday, Mama. Thank you for the lessons, and the love. I miss you…
catacosmosis 