Singing words, words between the lines of age

mazel tov to my friends, amanda & ben, for their (finally) engagement! a short version of the story is over at Ben's blog as well as a photo of the happy couple on the beach.

those kids are adorable. i'm so so SO happy for them. :o)

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i wrote some time ago about wanting to be a better storyteller. it's not just the oral tradition or the writing tradition of storytelling, but also i'd like to venture into photo storytelling.

after a crazy week of work and *stuff*, i decided to take a drive up to philadelphia, ms. our family still visits the home of my late great-grandparents, which is stuck in time. little papaw (as my great-grandfather was fondly known as, his counterpart being little mamaw. i suppose it was to offset the difference between them and my grandparents. possibly, also, is because they both were just around 5 feet tall.) passed away in the late 70s and little mamaw died the Easter before i was born in 1981. the house looks like it probably did throughout the decades of happiness and hardship they spent there. i've never been up there by myself (its exact location? somewhere in the heart of neshoba county on river road [now known as road 602]) and when i opened the door, tears poured. i've always felt the presence of memory there, not just my own, but the memories of the generations of family that have lived there. i've been on a mission to discover what my genetic code is trying to tell me and what the ghosts of those before me are trying to relay. i had packed up my car with two cameras (my newest digital and the trusty 35 mm--note: NOT a point and click, i've always appreciated the control of the lenses), a big bottle of water and some neil young, gillian welch, grateful dead, neko case, among others. they were my traveling companions for this brief trip. after singing along to 'cowgirl in the sand' and 'i dream a highway', i pulled up to the house on the crossroads.



and here i used to paint watercolors among the splinters,
a tow-headed child with dirty feet and unknown aspirations.
this is the porch where i first saw fireflies
and rocked with the women of generations ago,
this is the house where i came today
and felt at home in a universe of noise.




i ventured throughout the house, revisiting each room fondly like a long-lost relative. i breathed that old air and began snapping pictures, hungry for more memories and listening all the while to the whispers: