create.

i spent a lovely afternoon at deep eddy pool (the oldest swimming pool in Texas, built during the depression by the WPA). the pool is fed by the frigid springs of the colorado river, so no matter how hot it is, the blue-green depths of deep eddy at least give you one guarantee: you will be cold.

oliver and i went with my good friend "auntie b"-- we'll call her -- and we talked about soap operas, adventures on the public bus, and enchiladas mole. and then we got onto the topic of life-fulfillment-and-satisfaction. how do you get it? deep eddy brings you close, but leisure-filled snow-cone days by the pool aren't it. we agreed that the humans have an innate drive to be creative (a drive usually killed sometime in the elementary school years). auntie b speculated that somewhere between childhood and adulthood we became afraid to create. or too apathetic to even think of what we would create, much less start creating it. i feel that has happened to me... being a teacher or a mother or an athlete or even engaged in social causes isn't enough. there is something within that yearns to build or paint or write something. in bold letters. with yellow paint. or to capture an image so powerful, that it expresses the seemingly unexpressable. so with that thought in mind im posting a photo taken by bryant austin, who sold his belongings to fund his passion for whaling photography. the resulting work is so stunning, and the eyes of the whales so wise, that tears roll down the faces of people viewing his work.

click here for a link to today's new york times article on austin and his whale photographs.