The Rut

I've been in a rut. Have you ever been in a rut? I'll admit that a rut doesn't seem like a good place to be while you're in it. I've come to appreciate the parabola of creativity and know better than to try to force something that isn't there. It just doesn't work that way. The frustrating part about the rut is that you never know how long it's going to last. While it's sometimes difficult to remember exactly when the rut began, there's never any difficulty remembering where it ended. Sometimes a rut is artificially extended due to weather, life's obligations, or generally unfavorable circumstances.

After being in the depths of the rut for some time now, I'm starting to see the subtle clues that I tend to notice when I am going to emerge. Something unexpectedly fabulous or amazing is lurking. I never know when or where I'll encounter it and it does absolutely no good to look for it. It's one of those things that you have to wait for. I know by now that it's worth the wait, so I've developed a patience for it. I used to have the most frustrating experiences while I was in a rut. It wouldn't matter where I went with my camera-something would go wrong or nothing would happen at all. The big nothing. As you know, there's never really nothing happening anywhere. This is when I go out with my camera looking for something in particular, don't find it, and come home claiming that I have a memory card full of art. When I can't see what I'm looking for and nothing seems to be happening, I start to look at things with a different eye. I begin to see something where there had been nothing moments before. This usually begins when I start to pick up subtleties about light or angles in ordinary objects. Sometimes I see ordinary things in an extraordinary way when this happens. At any rate, it's a gift. It's like the world forces me to slow down and really absorb what is going on around me.

Even when I am not taking photographs, and that has been most of the time lately, I've come to notice that I see things differently than most people. I'm not necessarily looking at things differently, I just process them differently. It's something that I notice all the time. I see little flashes of details that most people don't seem to notice. I stopped asking people if they saw it a long time ago. Occasionally I am with another photographer and we both see it at the same time. It makes no difference if either of us were shooting at that moment, there is an unspoken communication that's registered. We both saw it. It's gone in the blink of an eye, which is why I describe it as a flash.

Tonight for the first time in quite some time, I don't have to do anything. There are certainly things that I could be doing and a few that perhaps I should be doing, but I needed to pause instead. So I carved out a couple of hours and accomplished next to nothing and it felt good. Again-sometimes nothing is something.

So, I'm eagerly anticipating my emergence from the rut and I'm waiting for something fabulous to happen. I feel like I've been waiting patiently - come and get me.