This photo was taken a couple of weekends ago when I visited the Experimental Farm. It's a Red Bubble reject... 2 weeks on Red Bubble and it couldn't generate half the views of my second least-popular photo. It doesn't surprise me... It doesn't look like much in a thumbnail... and the photo itself probably isn't that technically great.

The only person to comment on the photo was perhaps the only person to 'get' it. They commented that it really looks more like a winter tree than a fall tree. That's exactly what I thought when I saw the tree in real life. It was a warm day when I took the photo... The temperature was above 20 degrees Celsius, and it was really more like summer... but the dark sky looks like it could be threatening snow, and the bare branch tips warn of colder, bleaker times to come... For me this tree epitomized fall... a season whose only significance is the transition between summer and winter. But as a photo... it's probably not much.

You have probably noticed that I haven't been writing as much about my photos lately. Part of the reason is that work is trying to kill me these days. I'm no stranger to that, though. The real reason is that my cat Jackie is in the hospital, very sick with renal failure. He's getting better, but the long term prognosis isn't good. The vet says 4-6 months. Every molecule in my body hopes for Jackie to do much better than that... to beat all the odds and recover completely... but it is what it is.

I hate myself quite a bit right now. I've known for a long time that something wasn't right with Jackie, but I didn't do anything about it. I was completely self-centred and obsessed with frivolous things like taking pictures and my exams while my little guy suffered alone.

I've always had an interest in photography, but it only became a serious obsession for me about a year and a half ago. It happened accidentally. I got a new point-and-shoot camera for my birthday. We were vacationing on Vancouver Island and Graem was angry with me one morning. He went off and did his own thing, and I was locked out of the place we were staying with not much to do. I had my little camera in my pocket and I went down to the beach... I took a couple of snapshots of the beach and the ocean... the usual kind of beach snapshot with the crooked horizon smack in the middle of the picture. Mostly I was just angry and bored. As I wandered down the beach taking photos, I started to see beauty everywhere around me... It was a sunny day and the clouds were reflected in the smooth wet sand. The light gleamed off the smooth, wet, black surfaces of rocks and bright yellow flowers poked out between the crevasses, surviving where no flower really should. The shallow tide pools were filled with uncountable treasures, and on the beach, crows swooped down to claim dropped potato chips... kids splashed in the shallows in their bathing suits, adults walked dogs along the beach. There were beautiful and amazing things everywhere around me,and I captured them all with my little camera. By the time Graem came down to find me on the beach that afternoon, I had been transformed into a photographer.

Since Jackie has been sick, I have completely lost interest in photography. Beauty brings with it a wistful sort of hurt. The beauty is gone for me now, and only the hurt is left. I hate a world that could do something like this to such an innocent, generous soul. Fall does nothing but remind me of inevitable decay. When I see the fall leaves, all I can think is that Jackie might never accompany me outside to photograph flowers again. I might never see his coat lightened by the summer sun.

I have a lot of photos stored up from the past few weeks. With work the way it is, I wouldn't have time to take new photos right now anyway... I post photos here and on Red Bubble in the same way I try to carry on with the other routines in life... I eat, drink, sleep and go to work with varying degrees of success. Whether I take any more new photos once these ones run out is something that remains to be seen.