60 mm.

Two months ago, I turned 33. I meant to post about it at the time, but it slipped through my fingers and got lost in a fold of time. The most amazing gift I received on that day was Marc's Nikon D70 camera, together with his 60 mm. macro lens. This is the only lens that I have ever used, and possibly will ever use. And should you ask why I only ever use this one lens, I would say: 'because it sees and shows the world from the exactly right perspective'.

But this is not a post about photography. Or only tangentially.

It is about writing, and mothering, and meditation. All things I am currently doing. All things I intend to continue doing. All things that to some extent define me at this stage in life. All things which I often think of as perpendicular to each other, eating on each other's space, conflicting with each other's needs, and sometimes together, sometimes separately, creating the tension at the basis of the fear and anxiety that has been accompanying me throughout this pregnancy. Thinking about how to combine, how to integrate, how to weave them in with each other. And finding enormous inspiration for doing so here, here, here, here and here. And in the heart of a friend.

In placing them side by side, day after day, again and again and again, I have accidentally stumbled upon the secret link between them, the silk thread that holds them together. What makes mothering, writing and meditation deeply fulfilling, spiritually expanding and intensely true is one word: detail. Love is in the detail. Poetry is in the detail. Stillness is in the detail.

And how very appropriate for one like me whose eye forever scans the horizon in search of unifying principles, great theories and all-encompassing truths to stumble thus on the smallest truest truth of all. How humbling a discovery, and how exciting too.

I know that with this gift in my pocket, I am ready at last, ready for the baby, ready for the changes, ready to enter this new phase of life with the 60 mm. macro lens of my heart screwed on tight.