A bit overdue:

Montana and I are complicated lovers. 
We should probably move on. 
But I cannot. 
There is something about waking up in the embrace of mountains...
of hearing nothing but the very distant car 
interrupting the slow inhale of hills 
and the long exhale of sky. 
It takes my breath away 
but gives me its own breath. 
And so I breathe easy 
as I take in winding dirt roads. 
I breathe easy 
as on cold mornings 
when you can see your breath leave in puffs 
like lost clouds trying to find their way home. 
I breathe easy 
and I know this will always be, 
in some ineffable way, 
home.

Seeing.

I have begun taking walks as prescribed by my mother. I forget why. There was some very important health reason. Muscles? Maybe... Stress relief? Sure... Better sleep? Could have been... Less headaches? Sounds right... Anyway, yesterday being the exception, I have been walking about 20-70 minutes everyday. I feel like I am seeing the world for the first time some days. I used to look at the details of other people's worlds and lives. I am only now reclaiming that. Here's my album.
I realized that I stopped taking photos in the city because I don't like being watched while I work and here someone is always watching; and because everyone is a photographer here, I felt like I had to know what I was doing. I needed to choreograph my seeing; but that's not how seeing works best. You should see the objects and people on their terms, put them in their best light and angle, and forget about how you look in this process.
And so I walked and kept on walking. I saw and I kept on seeing. I saw so much that I forgot I could be seen.

And then I saw things that I could not photograph. I saw where wealthy neighborhoods fell away into *other* neighborhoods as if a line had been drawn. Feeling seems a lot like seeing when you begin to see abstract concepts. You close your eyes and the feeling is still there with senses that have not yet been named, telling you about the worlds out there.

It's taken nearly 3 years or 8. Depending on how you count it. But I have successfully changed my identity, I think. I say "I think" because of my own insecurity. (Because I'm afraid it wont stick). But I call it a success because I have seen the way people have changed the way they see me. And the way people I know see airplanes. I love it. I get photos, cards, texts...and so on. Because people I love see an airplane and think "Elaine!". Yes. Success. It's not all of who I am and it is not all of who I want to be. But I am days away from finishing my mechanic's program and only just realizing I am in a new chapter of life and one which I have fought so very hard to get to. I am battle weary, but I guess I should be. It's nearly the end.

Overflowing.

I promise...
to do more seeing
and less talking.

There are too many words here.
Too many so as to take the place of Oxygen.
So let us look
because our eyes are not yet full.