unruhiger apfel

Having a restless tendency alternately feels like a blessing and scourge; one to which I owe my facetious gratitude for sleeplessness, mild anxiety and occasional anorexia but, no less, for my blind willingness to pack a briefcase, luggage and camera bag and embark - week after week, month after month - to the places where the business of my industry requires.

I am accustomed to a bizarre and gently bound double life with echos of the one penetrating the veil of the other with comforting frequency. I find myself as much at home with familiar things as with those that are not - so long as they are either entirely beautiful or entirely horrific - and I have a special knack for finding both [and often in the same place] and regarding beautiful things: our son is celebrating a birthday today.

I am not sure if Tara shares my guilty feelings for having jointly manufactured imperfect people [I should ask her] but the imperfections of this particular specimen are, at once, charming and rare. He is an absolute delight. He is; in equal part, my pupil and teacher.

He is also a lifeline that anchors my sensibility and laces together the disparate tapestries of my alternating lives at home and abroad. He quells my restlessness like no other.

pupillam oculi mei

Happy birthday, little dude.