Light Passed Between Us
How place shapes relationships, 2 years of long distance relating.
These photographs were shared as a portfolio featured in the Kinship Photography Collective.
How do the relationships we have to place shape the relationships we have to each other? How do we place value on our relationships to each other, place, and the more-than-human world? How do we honor those relationships?
This week marks 2 beautiful years with my partner, who I met at an Irish bar in Spartanburg, SC while at an artist residency through the Goodall Center at Wofford College. Place brought us together-within a few minutes of beginning to chat, two awkward introverts in a noisy bar, Zach mentioned he grew up in Glendale, the small town I was exploring through the residency, and I felt a small nudge from the universe.
Place has continued to form the container of our relationship. There are 72 miles between our houses, mountains, a state line, between 1 hour 30 minutes and 2 hours of traffic. Long distance requires a level of commitment to connection that has been at times a burden, and many times, a gift. The days scavenged from hectic work schedules and life demands that we spend together are all the more sweet for the days that we spend apart.
We each have attachments to place, and while there is an imagined future in which the distance between us collapses significantly, it is also true that we understand the role of place within our relationship, and the value each of us places on our homes.
I have known very few loves that have been as ferocious, as moving, as world shaping, as the love I have for my current home here in Marshall, North Carolina. The river I frequent, the cows I call neighbors, the plants that I eagerly await each season-my home is a great love in my life. My relationship to my partner has been another, one that has softened my worldview and changed my experience of myself. My partner has gifted me a new home in both the way we relate to each other, as well as his rootedness to Spartanburg.
For all the yearning, I find myself endlessly grateful to have seeds of my life in another place with friends to see, trails to hike, creeks to swim in, and a hand to hold.
