underneath the night sky with burn-out worlds, their ghosts the starlight, I sit here at the laptop, thinking about my life, the choices I have made, and whether the direction I’ve found myself following along is the one I wanted to go along with.
At twelve, I was going to be a woman who knew the world on intimate terms, living and breathing in different air on different continents, words and images made real by my cameras both still and moving, and I’d be unencumbered with babies and fools for lovers.
At seventeen, I wanted to be an American expatriate living in Paris with houses in Istanbul and Barcelona, a filmmaker who made movies I wanted to watch, not what the studios wanted to finance. I was going to be an auteur and a conceptual artist.
At twenty-one, I fell in love. Stupidly. Crazily. And my life became derailed.
At thirty, I let go of that first love and found myself in a job that was utterly so unlike me.
At thirty-three, I married the man I truly love.
At thirty-four, I became a mother, and I wondered at the insanity I sprouted back when I was twelve. How could I not ever wanted a child like Izabelia? She was the best of me. She is my Paris, my Istanbul, and my Barcelona. My dreams made flesh.
At thirty-five, I became a mother again, and I felt as if I have gone supernova. At thirty-five, I knew the best and the worst simultaneously. I flew higher than the heavens above, and I fell further than the nadir of Hades itself. I died, and I was reborn. My darling Lucrezia, she gave me back my life, and held fast to me through the storms that threatened to tear me apart. She is my world, and I skipped along the edge of fury toward certain people for trying to destroy my family.
And, now that I am thirty-eight, I am certain of only one thing: as long as I am sustained by the love from my husband and my daughters, I can conquer the world by being who I am, ferocious-proud and humble-awed, and let the world see me as I am.
Izabelia with her tears of rage, just like her mommy would tear up whenever she becomes mad . . .
I photograph my children and the people who wander in and out of my life in their moments true as my momento mori.
