Supreme Moments

1/19/2014

(9/14/13)

It is a special kind of clean to soak off the grubby sweat and dirt from seven long hours in the car with a bubbling hot tub, then dive in a cold pool and later shower off the chlorine.

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Four months ago – when fall had not fallen and heat still shimmered brown between buildings, heavy and thick as bubbling caramel – pups and coons and bears headed from northern cities and climes into the southern south, to the northernmost Carolina. From even further and wider than we traveled, cousins came from the west and elsewhere to meet at two great, giant houses on stilts – separated by reeds and a neat path along a pond – near the Outer Banks beach of Corolla.

All told – at our most numerous – we numbered 20 humans and six dogs, most of us with the same ruddy blood flowing in veins, rising, and warming with the sun as pink as our skin did the first two days of the trip.

For a glorious week, we laughed from hot tubs on dusk-lit porches, rose to see sunrises of the same color, and ate bagels, doughnuts, and barbecue to fuel our bodies for swimming, digging, paddling, burning, rowing, and sleeping before doing it all again the next day.

It was a lovely time of family and talks, full of good medicine and closeness.

(9/17/13)

Supreme moment – fox digging for crabs, windswept shore, seafoam, sunrise. 

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Despite getting sick almost immediately upon arrival and existing without a voice for over a week, those days were full of supreme moments.

Something about going there of a September, escaping stressful, pivotal times in my life for even a little while, like two years ago, resets and empowers me.

Be well, you – I love you all, and I’ll love you always.

Only eight more months till next year, guys.

– Sarah

 

 

 

Posted in Beautiful Souls, Documentary, Portraits, SAWK Living, Travel Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

2014!

1/17/2014

It’s 2014 now.

It was projected by some that it would be very good, a strong year, steadfast, even keel, full of hard work and steady habits – and hopefully this proves to be so.

We’re 17 days in, and – already – it is a doozy.  The 405 hours and 40 minutes that I’ve so far experienced of this year have been full to brimming, full to bursting, and full, full, full – of friends, of songs, of quotes, of shaves, of laugher, of icy drives, of cabins, of Blockus, of logs, of engagements, of sadnesses, of loss, of work, of emptiness, of fragility, of bronchitis, of twisted wrists.

It irks me sometimes that the new year is born in the winter. For a fresh second, all is vibrant, prospective, open, and possible, as colorful and warm and radiant as the fireworks blasting over the city at midnight. Days later, the glitz of that attitude is difficult to remember as you trudge through the slush of the beginning of winter, three months of extra layers, fogged up glasses, and hat head ahead of you in the dark chill.

But no doubt if it came in the spring, with new grass to match the new year, it would seem all mud and rainstorms, hail and damp clothes.

C’est la vie.

But what a beautiful vie it is, often, when some nights you can nest into big leather chairs for good TV, or awake in warm sleeping bags next to best friends with sunlight on your faces as it glints through hanging icicles, or read endless books on drizzly afternoons to inquisitive boys who talk to the moon.

Or as you sit eating sushi alone on a Friday night in a house that isn’t yours, but is still homey.

Life is all there in all its loveliness and mundaneness and its work and tears and miracles.

So I toast you, 2014, despite your endless typos and corrections caused by wrists with casts, and your tissues crumpled next to water glasses, and your unwelcome changes, because you are still so beautiful, and full of the ones I love.

Be well, my darlingest darlings.

– Sarah

 

 

 

 

Posted in Beautiful Souls, NYC, Portraits, SAWK Living Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

Matt + Katie

9/9/2013

The first time I met Matt and Katie, we were at my dear Bear’s house for a potluck, and they cheerily blew up the stairs and into the tiny apartment with a supremely delicious dish of mac-and-cheese.

From those first hellos and handshakes, it was only a short time before I stood in a black box theater in Rehoboth, Delaware, laden with cameras and equipment, watching them kiss and laugh as husband and wife.

They are delightful, and so was their wedding. I wish I could shoot events like it every weekend – full of happiness, love, and happy faces I love, stuffed with barbecue and dancing under perfect lighting.

Some photos by the illustrious Doctor DBB, who was my solid second shooter and whom I paid in delectable shrimps, at his request.

Be well, my pets. I am confident your two rad, beautiful selves will have equally rad, beautiful babies.

Huzzah, and congratulations Matt and Katie!

Love, Coon

Posted in Beautiful Souls, Portraits, Weddings Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

Celebration of Simplicity

6/13/2013

Written this morning to a friend – on another rain day – while countless thousands of drops fell and puddled over breakfast.

There is something about the rain that makes it easy to prattle to you, something about the steady, falling drips that lead me to stillness and contemplation – a pause from a quiet breakfast of coffee, grapefruit, and toast with cream cheese.

They are simple things – these splats on windows and milk in coffee and sweet, pink sections on a shiny teaspoon – but I realize more and more and more and MORE that they are what life is about. So small, so inexpensive, so unimportant; yet they mean everything to me, are so big, are so rich, are so significant.

Simplicity is key in living a happy life, I’m sure of it. It is beautiful and efficient and challenging and delightful, but so hard to accomplish. And there are a great many glittering distractions, and time-wasters, and hole-fillers that still leave you empty.

I hope that if – on a fantastical, wild off-chance – I come into extravagant hordes of money, I will give much of it away, save some of it, and spend the rest on the dear, simple things that are solid, timeless, and that burrow deep: guitar melodies, matches for campfires, knitted sweaters, ripe avocados for guacamole to feed friends below high rooftops, gas for trips to mountains and lakes, and – one day – a stretch of openness to put a house and make a home, small in size but huge in heart.

I love each of you and I’ll love you always.

Ever all of yours,
Coon

(Photos from the last couple weeks of vast and intimate gatherings, riddled with change).

 

Posted in Beautiful Souls, Documentary, NYC, Portraits, SAWK Living Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

All the Beautiful Buffalos

5/16/2013

It is no great secret that I am a lover of many beautiful souls.

People often peg me as a giver – calling me too many nice things, like kind, or generous, and open with myself and my things and my dogs and my kitchen – and it could be true, but if it is so, it is all in selfishness! . . . My large heart is wide and insatiable, and it is only in the company of these souls with their bodies kissing my self and using my things and chasing my dogs and standing in my kitchen with wine and laughter that I feel content in this big, small world that I occupy with all the rest. I will give you whatever you want, my darlings, I will try to be kind and generous and open, only let me look at your faces and hear your voices and sniff your scalps and kiss your necks and cook for yins.

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Chris Faroe – my burly, curly, bus-playing, guitar-driving, bread-finding, coffee-giving, dog-walking, tea-drinking, rice-eating friend who has two green pairs of shoes – is one of the beautiful souls. He is shockingly creative, decisively determined, and is the gentlest giant I’ve ever met. He is a musician, and a wonderful one, and believes in a world of shared arts and passions. He is in love with my dog Boon (and also a lovely human named Kathy), and Boon is also in love with him, and the man has more than once described the dog’s scrawny, brindled frame as a “wonderland.”

Chris is often guilty of complimenting me when he should only be receiving compliments. For instance, a month ago in April, I was one of the lucky hundred to attend the release of his lovely and latest album “Buffalo Buffalo Buffalo Buffalo Buffalo Buffalo Buffalo Buffalo”.

Yes, that’s eight buffalos; look it up – it’s a legit sentence.

The release show was held at the Brooklyn Society for Ethical Culture on a rainy spring night, and everyone packed together in the darkness, littered over chairs and floor, among candles and stained glass, hearts warm, breath warmer, fingers sticky from baklava made by mothers in-the-know. Chris played his whole new album, a few old things, and also invited other beautiful souls – The Sneaky Mister, Ladder to the Moon, and Plume Giant – to play with him for us.

It was stellar and every good thing. Time and time again while he played and sang, I smiled to myself – proud that I know him, proud of who he is, and so happy that he rolled like a tumbleweed through the desert to my trailer a year ago to sleep on my futon.

Chris, baby, your towel is in the closet. Your beet scraps are in the fridge. I love you. The pups do, too.

Be well.

– Sarah

For a treat, visit Chris’ website, Facebook, band page, or bus, which is often found in Red Hook near the water. 

Posted in Beautiful Souls, Documentary, NYC, Portraits, SAWK Living Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

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