The wilderness is the oldest, truest friend a human can have, both in body and in spirit.
It teaches in silence.
It speaks without words.
It holds space for your becoming, your undoing, your return.
And it is only ādangerousā when we forget to honor it, or refuse to learn from and respect it.
There is a moment, early in a few blessed summer evenings, when the heatāthe oppressionāsighs and lets go.
Not in protest, but in quiet surrenderāthe sun lingers, the sky softens, and a hush moves in with the rain.
Steam rises like incense from the bones of the earth.
Youāve felt that coveted shift.
Itās not loud. Not showy. Just the heaviness loosening its grip on your ribs as breath returns without warning.
This is how some battles endā
Not with victory, but with survival.
Not with a roar, but with a breeze.
No fanfareājust rain through fractured light, and the ache leaving your body before you even know itās gone.
What remains?
A field of yellow flowersābent but blooming.
Tired, but free.
And air that smells like something holyāfinally lifted.
catacosmosis // 2025
Itās never been money or material success that has defined wealth for me.
For most of my life, I chased meaning in moments loud enough to echoāgrand gestures, perfect timing, outcomes wrapped in validation. But it was my most treacherous and grueling experiencesāthe ones that stripped me bare and rebuilt me from the soul upāthat taught me something higher.
They taught me to be still.
To be quiet.
To kneel at the altar of the subtle.
A blurry cloud, simultaneously barely and boldly defining its own form, illuminated at just the right angle.
A battered feather, found in the dead center of a forgotten dirt road, caught in evening light.
The soft hush of trees at dusk, whispering the memories of the ghosts that still roam underneath them.
This is abundance.
Thereās something sacred about catching these quiet offeringsāthe ones that ask for nothing but your presence. No performance. No hustle. Just your full attention. And I think thatās what Iāve been learning to fully morph into, slowly but surely, all my life.
Iāve always been in love with nature, and over the past few years, Iāve begun to understand whyāconsciously, spiritually, viscerally:
Nature doesnāt demand applause, but it offers everything to those who notice.
Before caregiving and grief, nature called to meāquietly, consistentlyāand I always accepted her invitation to explore and to wonder. During caregiving, she became an escape. I retreated there as often as possible, weary and begging for rest that not even sleep could offerā¦and nature always obliged.
Now? I donāt go to escape or to retreat, I donāt just visit. Nature meets me. Whether Iām deep in the woods or walking my yardā¦hiking a trail or running my neighborhoodā¦now, I am always home.
We live in a world trained to skim, to scroll, to monetize every breath of stillness. But thisāthis sky, this feather, this light that passes and never repeatsāreminds me:
Presence is the prize.
Itās all around us, all the time, no matter where we areā¦but people donāt see it anymore. They no longer observe. Most have forgottenāthat observation is a form of reverence. And reverence, when practiced daily, becomes a kind of homecoming.
āAbundance is not found in money and material gaināat least, not for me. To me, it is found in natureās unexpected surprises.ā
I wrote that in my memory while standing beneath the canopy of trees shared above as it held the last light of evening. There was no one else there. No applause. Just me, and the divine choreography of stillness.
In that moment, nature herself invited me to remind you:
If youāre searching for proof that youāre loved, that you belong, that thereās meaning woven through even the hardest daysā
Look up.
Look closer.
Be still.
The abundance youāre looking for is already here.
Itās been waiting for your eyesāand your heartā to land on it.
Be present.
Pay attention.
Be observant.
Your presence in the present matters.
Itās where abundance lives.
šŖ¶šāØ
catacosmosis // 2025
The real you is not a puppet which life pushes around; the real, deep down you is the whole universe. (Alan Watts)
The meaning of life is just to be alive. It is so plain and so obvious and so simple. And yet, everybody rushes around in a great panic as if it were necessary to achieve something beyond themselves. (Alan Watts)
I stood in the green hush, face to face with a bloom so intricate it felt like a secret whispered by the wild. The passionflower doesnāt need to perform. It simply is. Unapologetically strange. Beautifully complex. Alive.
I thought of the two Alan Watts quotes Iāve included above, and I thought of my dead loved ones. This is what I want to remember:
That being fully presentāhere, now, in the middle of whatever hurts or healsāis enough.
That passion isnāt always loud.
Sometimes, it curls quietly out of the forest and dares you to look closer.
This is what death has taught me about life.
Iām really grateful I stayed, after they were all gone.
šŖ½šāØ
catacosmosis // 2025
Witness.
It holds the grief.
The growth.
The survival.
The silence.
It kept watch over the forest
as the love was letting go.
One tree saw what I became,
as I became itā
what death could never be.
Alive.
entry ten ā scattered light, fractured grace: a quiet archive of light, loss, and what remains.
My mother always told me, in every possible circumstance a child might ever need encouragement, āDo your best, and leave the rest. Itāll all come right some day or night.ā
It was a line from āBlack Beauty, by Anna Sewell.ā
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 herā¦
ā¦even when I forgot I did.
There was so much distance between us as I struggled through high school with her overbearing āsin obsessedā 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 hadnāt earned, as her brain and body were swallowed by Alzheimerās.
Even when the thread broke, or maybe I cut it, when she diedā¦I 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 couldnāt leave, because it lived in me.
Do your best. Not more than that. Not perfection. Just presence. I tried, truly.
Leave the restā¦ The story. The tragedy. The one who couldnāt stay.
It will all come rightā¦and maybe it already has.
entry nine ā scattered light, fractured grace: a quiet archive of light, loss, and what remains.
There is a kind of presence that doesnāt 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 somehowā¦it shifts the entire forest, the entire field.
For some souls, there is a burden in being seen ānot the fear of visibility, but the ache of being misread when presence itself was the offering.
This is the shape of a soul made for stillness.
This is the purpose of a hidden heart.
entry eight ā scattered light, fractured grace: a quiet archive of light, loss, and what remains.
Zooming in, pulling back, reframingā¦
ā¦itās the practice of shifting perspectives.
Cropping is discernment.
Itās important in photography,
and in life.
Focusing closely.
Examining the details.
Leaning into the moment.
Studying the layers.
Trying different anglesā
then pulling back to take in the whole.
I do this with my art, my edits, my healingā¦
ā¦and my priorities.
Cropping, and discernment.
Both are framing what mattersā
letting the noise blur into the background.
Itās not just a gift,
not just a tool.
Itās a process.
With practice, it teaches clarity through choice.
Over time, it becomes discernment embodied.
Cropping alters perspective.
It is learning to see againā¦
ā¦as many times as it takes to actualize the vision.
entry seven ā scattered light, fractured grace: a quiet archive of light, loss, and what remains.
Even the smallest lifeā
black-winged, humble, and intent on its taskā
carries beauty enough to hush the noise of the world.
We rush past so many moments like this.
Moments where grace is not loud, not dramatic, not grand or sweeping.
Justā¦ present. Quiet. Steady.
Doing the sacred work of being alive.
To sit still long enough to witness it is to remember.
Not some distant, complicated truth, but a very simple one:
The miracle is not in the event.
Itās in the noticing.
Grace doesnāt need permission to land.
It only asks that we pay attention.
šāØ
entry six ā scattered light, fractured grace: a quiet archive of light, loss, and what remains.
Uphill climbs donāt always look like mountains.
Sometimes they look like breathless pauses in the woodsā
a slant of green light through canopy, and a silence that steadies you just long enough to keep going.
Some paths donāt warn you how steep they truly are.
But, with a little faith and grit, grace still finds you mid-climb.
Not lost, just learning how to breathe on the incline.
Every root you trip over, a lesson not yet learned.
Every step upward revises the story the bottom once told.
A new perspective in the makingā
fluid and becoming in the shelter of the trees, and at the topā¦
ā¦found.