May 2021

Several years ago, Ben and I sat in our living room when my phone rang. It was a Friday afternoon, and one of the few Fridays Ben had off. He was supposed to have a 4-day a week schedule but… Read More »Clayton O. Carpenter

I’ve spent 6 years sitting on the balcony of this apartment watching the sunset in May. I’ve spent 6 summers in this apartment. We didn’t intend to stay so long. It was meant to be a jumping off point, a… Read More »The balcony

I step onto the platform and breathe deep. The air is thick with millions of tiny water droplets. I can feel the hair on my head dampen immediately and begin to curl. It’s chilly. The kind of cold that cuts… Read More »The smell of exhaust

Just like I love to watch the way people eat, I love to watch people move around their kitchen. Basically, I just love to people watch, so I’ll probably end up writing quite a few different observations about the things… Read More »Place it on the counter

A Quick and Easy daily practice I photograph my food a lot. It’s not because I think it’s the most beautiful food on the planet or because I want to become a chef. Photographing food is practice for me. Photographing… Read More »Photographing food

Letting go and having faith are two things I am not very good at. I like to know what is going to happen. I need lists. I need lists and Punnett squares and permutations and factorials. In my mind house,… Read More »Need to know

Sitting on the hard, faux-wood floors of my apartment with the light streaming in through the windows, I painted in the near silence of being alone on a late summer afternoon. The floor felt comforting, or maybe it was the… Read More »A memory of painting

Does art inspire life or life inspire art? I guess if you think about it, at some point, life inspired art. I mean, unless you count the Earth itself as art. We are lucky. We live in an endless cycle… Read More »Art inspires life inspires Art

I spend most of my time trying to capture the moments and scenes that I’m seeing for one of two purposes. I’m either trying to remember them for myself or I’m trying to show what I’m seeing to the world.… Read More »It couldn’t be captured

The world is nuanced. And it’s a difficult thing to wrap our heads around. Even to say it, I know that in the back of my head there are several situations that I see as black and white. Situations that… Read More »The middle ground