Week 1: Beauty in the Darkness

This is a photo of Antelope Canyon in Arizona, taken on my recent road trip here to Irvine from my childhood home in CT. My mom came with me on the road trip, and even though I had been living with her for the last four years, we kept such different schedules and are such busy people that we didn’t have a whole lot of time to really connect. As I’m finding my adult path, developing that new relationship has been very important to me, and this road trip was an amazing way to just be the two of us. Antelope Canyon in particular is something we’ve both been talking about wanting to go to for 20 years. We used to go out to the southwest a lot as a kid, but haven’t in a long time, so (a) it was important to me and to her to finally go here and accomplish this dream, and (b) it was refreshing and healing to go and build new memories there for the first time since my parents’ divorce (which of course can sometimes put a weird feeling in regards to family traditions). Of course, it is an absolutely gorgeous place. And this photo reminds me of the awesomeness of being in this amazing place, and how happy and fulfilled I was to finally go to this place. So, this picture gives me that sensation of the joy and beauty of the experience, and the triumph of finally experiencing this place; I was not disappointed. The rocks are so vibrant, red and tans at first, but as you get closer, you see purples and blues and yellows. And as the light bounces through the canyon walls, you get these amazing shadows and colorations, lights and darks. Which to me all made a metaphor for this experience. There was light squeezing through, revealing things you might not have seen before, and creating something beautiful and new. It allows you to see different colors, see things in a different light (literally), see new depths and angles, see the layers and details, and end up with something beautiful. And that is exactly what this trip was about for me and my mom. Finding something new, getting to know each other better as adults, and finding beauty and light and excitement in a place and time when things can sometimes feel dark and weird. Allowing love and light and beauty into the dark chasm of reality, and enjoying something that much richer for it.