Black + White

I found myself ugly crying in my car this week as a book I agreed to read with a group of friends was concluding (I "read" via audiobook these days because I drive way too much and have no time to sit and read at home). 

It tore me apart from the beginning. Because life is messy. We can never wrap up any point in our lives as something simple. Truth is, any point we arrive at hasn't been acquired by a nice straight line. The ups and downs are real, sometimes it seems our path forward takes a long line backwards first. We move on we continue we carry on. Rarely is it black and white

We are often drawn to the black and white portraits. The images that seem monochromatic. So simple. But, even in those - they are filled with all variants of whites and grays, not all parts are 100% white or 100% black. If they were there would be no depth, no interest, no parts to jump out, nothing to hide in the shadows. 

In this moment I find that so perfectly descriptive of reality. I've always been drawn color and light. The pop of things bright and joyful. I've long thought color images are a better portrayal of "reality." That black and white strips the beauty of an image, of a scene. Now as life has taught me how messy it is, how things are so gray, so varied, so beautiful and sad together - there is a special beauty to the black and white images. The outlines, the shadows, the things that pop, the things that are hidden. They tug at my heart and mind. They bring emotion and thought. 

This similar tug on my heart brought a need to tell stories, the snippets of real life, of who we are, who we can become, have become, desire to be. The mess. The beauty. That somehow through the sharing maybe, juuust maybe, it can help break molds - as so many are endeavoring to do already. Maybe it can help achieve perspective, a more birds eye view of the world as it could be.

We could maybe love each other a little more, understand one another a little more. Maybe it would invite more conversation, maybe our concrete ideas of the world would shift. Maybe things would no longer be concrete, but more like fault lines. Shifting. Giving. Moving. Realigning.

The concrete left abandoned, to crumble as we look and move onward.