Posted inLife

Your one wild and precious life

Watercolored drawing by Greg Pak of the words "YOUR ONE WILD AND PRECIOUS LIFE"
Watercolored drawing by Greg Pak.

I think a lot about Mary Oliver’s poem “The Summer Day” and its stunning last two lines:

Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

I worked very hard today on a bunch of things and now I think I need to make a little time to do something just for myself.

Thank you as always for the reminder, Mary Oliver.

UPDATE 06-01-2023: This is the little something I ended up doing for myself yesterday:

35mm B&W macro photograph of a rose, viewed from above.
Minolta XE-7, Vivitar Series 1 90mm f2.5 Macro, Kodak Tri-X 400, Arista Premium Liquid Film Developer.

It’s been six weeks since I developed any film, and I should have mixed fresh developer and fixer. So these negatives ended up a little fogged and pretty grainy. But this is still a pretty glorious image. I shot it with a Vivitar Series 1 90mm f.25 macro lens that I got for a bargain price the other month and that’s apparently a bit legendary for its sharpness and bokeh. It’s a bit hard to judge given the extra grain in the image, but I love what I’m seeing so far!