puffy vests and garnet rings and sunsets

my friend tracy lost her mom this week, unexpectedly. I cried when I heard, could feel the heartbreak one hundred times over.

today, she wrote something really beautiful.

beautiful because it comes from a deeply brave and honest place, but also because it comes from a deeply painful, nearly unthinkable place. I love her for writing it. I know how hard it was. I wish I didn't, but I do. I know. 

tracy, your mom would have been so proud. you will see her in every wide open sky, every technicolor sunset, she will show up again and again in the most unexpected places. I know this to be true. I do. 

and now tomorrow is today

and what I can tell you about my time last year in new orleans with friends is that, in the simplest of terms, it made me glad to be alive.

and not just because we took the train down and talked and talked (and talked) and stared out the window at all the tiny southern towns along the way. or because the place we stayed at felt like a hundred year-old three-storied dollhouse complete with a cherry red spiral staircase, a bed tucked up in the attic and a wall full of old mirrors.

and not just because when we ate beignets at cafe du monde, we realized that everything (and everyone) seemed to be covered in a fine dust of powdered sugar, including the boots our server was wearing. or because when we wandered into a downtown casino and I gambled for the very first time in life, I won exactly one cent. and have the payout receipt to prove it. or because we rode bikes down magazine street all the way to audubon park and felt like we were nine years-old all over again.

and not just because music was everywhere and everything tasted like love and for exactly 72 hours, we meandered up and down streets and through old cemeteries with no particular route or schedule in mind.

not just because of all these things, but because (and this is not news)-- real time with real friends is like nothing else in this world and the older I get the more I realize how profoundly important it is. cheaper than therapy and with more laughing and if you do it in new orleans, there will probably be breakfast sandwiches made with doughnuts. 

nola, twenty sixteen

new orleans, twenty sixteen, with my friends: photographs tonight, words tomorrow. 

collected

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(two)


(three)


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(five)


(six)


(seven)


(eight)


(nine)


(ten)


(eleven)


(twelve)


(thirteen)


(fourteen)


(fifteen)


(sixteen)


(seventeen)


(eighteen)


(nineteen)


(twenty)


(twenty-one)


(twenty-two)


(twenty-three)


(twenty-four)


(twenty-five)

pinterest is great and all but it's the homes of my friends that really and truly inspire me.

and over the last year or so, I've visited quite a few. thank you, jen (4, 9, 14, 22, 25), dera (5, 12, 15, 18), amy (7, 16, 19), alix (3, 11, 24), leslie (10, 13), lisa (2, 23), shelby (1, 6, 21) and mollie (8, 17, 20) for letting me lift my sad little iphone up to shoot whatever lovely bits caught my eye.