STAYING WEIRD WITH NEW FRIENDS

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It’s just really cool having someone that shares my passion for photos and kind of ugly 90’s dresses around.

I became friends with Ashley via the magic of Instagram. When she moved down south from LA we talked about getting together. It took us about a year. Sometimes I hold back with new people, but this time I quickly saw that I had met someone who not only appreciates my own personal brand of weird, but can throw it right back at me with her own.

Her two young boys take me back ten years, they remind me so much of my two man children when they were that age. They love my “big kids” and my big kids love having new “little apprentices”. We’ve been able to hang out a few times over the last couple of months, and each time the sun goes down and the kids go feral with hunger, I wish we had more time together.

You can see Ashley’s photos from this afternoon in Laguna here.

 

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A little bit of business info:

The May DC/NC trip has completely booked up, but I have a few spots left in Seattle. Contact me if you’d like to book a session together while I am there.

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WE’VE BEEN COMING HERE OUR WHOLE LIVES – THE BALBOA PIER

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My parents brought me here and then I brought them here. The park has changed a little bit but everything else is basically just the same as it was when I was nine, or when they were nine.

Asking for quarters for the telescopes on the pier and parents saying no.
Looking into the buckets of the people fishing, watching the fish flop around.
Dodging seagulls and pigeons.
The loudspeaker calling out orders from the roof of Ruby’s Diner.
Peeking through the cracks into the water underneath.
Standing at the very end of the pier, sometimes getting lucky and seeing a whale or a seal or a pod of dolphins playing close.
The creak of the swingset. The splash of the showers.

It all sounds the same, it all smells the same, it all feels the same.

I remember when you could eat on the roof at Ruby’s. I remember thinking a vanilla Coke was just about the best thing in the entire world. I remember my stepdad challenging us to tie cherry stems into a knot in our mouths, and how I always could. I remember my sons begging for more time to climb the triangle structure, always wanting to go higher and stay at the top. I remember pushing my daughters on the swings forever and ever. I remember when the line to the bathroom was out the door and around the corner, and I was about six, and my mom marched us past the entire line and into the stall no one wanted to use because it had no door, and she held a towel up for me so I could go, and I figured everyone in there must think we were the smartest people in the world. I remember in high school when I brought my boyfriend/husband here and he spent his first paycheck on a long black flowery dress for me.

I remember so much and yet on this day it all overlapped and seemed like it never happened, like it wasn’t me and it wasn’t them in those memories. It can’t possibly have been us, because those people aren’t us now and they still exist don’t they? Somehow? I felt heavy with all the experiences I have had here, heavy with time and age, with shock that so much life and tragedy and happiness has passed and the swings are still creaking, the speaker on top of Ruby’s is still calling out orders, and the kids are still climbing higher, and higher, to the top.

 

Swing from Tara Whitney on Vimeo.

SUNDAY AT DUSK

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Sunday night.

I clean up the house.

Husband got back from the grocery store and kids put the food away. Dinner was eaten. Everyone else, now upstairs to relax and take showers. Time to prepare for Monday.

I hear them upstairs. Water turns on, drawers open and shut, someone is typing on a keyboard, someone is singing along to Eminem with headphones on. Sometimes they laugh, sometimes they bicker. My husband’s computer chair squeaks.

I fill up a cup with ice and water. I light incense and place it near an open window. Dusk is overtaking the house and I grab my camera to play for the last few minutes of the day, in the quiet hum of a weekend ending.