A few posts back, I wrote about how Debra and Brian invited me to New York City to document their engagement session.  Since my hubby and I had never been to NYC and rarely get to take vacations during wedding season, we decided to make a weekend of it.  Normally, when we visit new cities, we try with all our might to avoid looking like tourists, to look like we belong.  But as our giant airport shuttle drove us into the heart of Manhattan, my face pressed expectantly against the tinted window taking in the mass amounts of people, gritty streets, ornate architecture, street festivals, sidewalk vendors, endless, endless, endless buildings forever disappearing into the horizon...I knew that I was going to be one of those open-mouth, looking-up, camera-around-the-neck tourists. Meh, c'est la vie.

We spent three days wandering, eating and sightseeing our way through Little Italy, Soho, Greenwich Village, Chelsea, Midtown, Murray Hill, Times Square and Central Park.  I thought I would create a million images.  I thought my camera would be permanently affixed to my face.  But it turns out I was so mesmerized by the city, by the stunning architecture, iconic movie locations, the subway, the sidewalks, the shopping, the people, the heat, the Empire State Building, the food, oh sweet baby Jesus...the food, the heart-wrenching artwork at MoMA, the Brooklyn Bridge, the tops of buildings disappearing into tiny specks in the sky, the sprawling, historic, endlessness of it all...my mind couldn't process it fast enough. 

I was sure that I would be taken by the glamour of the city, you know...bright lights, big city.  But what resonated with me was the sense of personal history, the thought of thousands of hands that touched thousands of bricks, the raising up of buildings, families, careers, hope, and the comforting connectedness of a past that left grounded, physical evidence of it's existence.  I'm certain on my next visit, I'll have some much needed perspective and will create lots more imagery. But for now...this is a tiny handful of what was in my heart that weekend.

Last week my mother-in-law treated me to a three-day getaway at The Greenbrier.  And it was, in three simple words...vintage southern luxury.  I must admit...from the time I was twelve, quietly immersed in the 1024 pages of Gone with the Wind, I've secretly wished to visit that charming, chivalrous, ephemeral old south.  And now, I'm absolutely certain we traveled through time to a place of courteous, elegant, southern perfection.

We visited about four weeks shy of the peak summer travel season...so my glimpse of the resort was a quiet journey through impeccably designed, immense, vacant spaces.  It felt the like a reception ballroom before the guests arrive...perfectly poised, quietly waiting for the arrival, the rush of conversation, joy, movement, laughter, life.

Yesterday I went exploring with two different photographer friends, on two separate photo journeys, with one word in mind, "Together".  I chose to explore the definition of this word, sometimes literally, sometimes abstractly, sometimes forgetting it altogether while creating...but the meaning of the word persisted within the images themselves, or the pairing of images with one another. It's profoundly touching how many ordinary, inanimate things are together, and furthermore...how many things are interpreted as being together.  It's comforting, somehow.  And in some small way...makes our stark world seem friendlier, and maybe even the slightest bit enchanted.