Thank you for visiting this little curation of curiosities I’ve gleaned from travels and everyday life, which are inspired by the intricacies of nature and nuances in humanity. Sometimes the lens through which I view them feels almost childlike, adorned with an innocence not yet tainted by adulthood. This is what continues drawing me back again and again to capture places and personal expressions, this solace I discover when seeking what I’ve grown to see as treasures that help keep me grounded in a society driven by distraction. 

I’ve been comforted by art and literature since as young as I can remember, whatever age I was first introduced to drawing and books. Both quickly provided both sanctuary and freedom. Somewhere along the way, from childhood to maturity, that balance began to elude me. In the busyness of adulting the appeal of stillness evaporated and with it the understanding that the sense of peace I kept seeking had never left, that it could still be found within me all along. It’s taken decades to return to myself again, the me I was before the world molds each of us into whom others expect rather than who we actually are, that ten year old me who looked at the world with wonder and appreciation rather than ambition and want. 

It’s been nearly two years since I initially pieced together this small portal of visual mementoes prompted by a maelstrom of midlife crises. Sometimes it feels like attempting to finish one of those million piece puzzles continually taking up space on a dining room table, my lack of attention and gap in communication stemming from the same procrastination as pausing to look at the puzzle then walking away again without a bit of progress. Taking a break, however, can be the best response when what the world offers up is just too heavy to hold. 

At the time this website launched, many of us were trying to breathe through anxiety reawakened by an election outcome we could not fathom, though others presumably desired. What some saw as a win was a loss for others, as with every election. The definition of election is formal and organized choice by vote. One of my favorite writers and podcasters, Kate Bowler, recently posted;

“…every meaningful choice requires us to foreclose on other possible futures…and choosing will always come at a cost.”

— On Living With Regret, Everything Happens with Kate Bowler (katebowler.substack.com)

She’s writing about regret and how it tricks us into believing we knew more than we actually did during a past decision making moment that in looking back seems so clearly and unforgivably avoidable, this choice we wish we’d never made - in other words, the ‘wrong’ choice. In her post, she also paraphrases Maya Angelou’s famous quote recognizing that we do the best we can with what we know at the time and when we know better we can do better.

A point they’re both making is there is always an alternative to every decision we’re making every moment we’re alive. Some outcomes are more positive and some more negative, and sometimes there will be completely unknowable avoided tragedies or missed celebrations along the way. Yet, there is always wisdom to be gained whether we apply it going forward or not and that, too, is a choice.

It is this very duality that defines life. All of it, for all of us. No one is immune, no one gets a golden ticket to bypass disappointment, pain or suffering and no one is exempt from experiencing excitement, contentment or joy either. Any or all of these can and likely will touch each of us at some point in our lifetimes, for some maybe all at once and for others over many years. 

A Little Place to Land has evolved into a series of bookmarked pages of the story of life I’m currently living, highlighting the simultaneous presence of both beauty and decay, birth and death, stillness and speed, but mostly that even in darkness there is also always light even when it’s impossible to see. As I scroll back through the photos, essays and other visual trinkets collected here, the memories they evoke are reminders of the wisdom I’ve gained and reference when wanting to show up better in this world, in this “one wild and precious life” (Mary Oliver, The Summer Day). 

Thank you for joining me. Please pull up a seat and stay for as long or as little as you’d like.

—Kimberly