I love color and have a hard time turning any of my photographs into black and white. I tried with this one but couldn’t let go of the green grass and the blue sky. And of course the contrast of that very dark cloud that was either coming or going. You will have to image the drama of the cloud because, even though I was there and took the photo when we were leaving the campground on Manitoulin Island, I don’t remember the cloud’s story.

What drew me in about the barn were the traces of what once was. Maybe I felt an empathy with the body of this old barn – I know what it is like to have an old body with faint vestiges of what once was. This came up in conversations with JB a couple of times this week – how much of our long-age bodies has been lost, but also how we don’t feel any different as people than when we were dating well over half a century ago. I look at him and see the young man I found so hot back when we were teenagers. Even when I think about it for a minute or two, I realize that he is all he ever was but only better because he has relaxed and I have relaxed and our main goal is just to enjoy the life we have left.

I smile when I look at this barn because we understand, the barn and I, how important it is to get these sagging, worn out parts patched back together every once in a while. I’m beginning to understand that I, like this old barn, can be beautiful even though I have some titanium patches, need to apply some dabs of color here and there, and have a bit of a sag in places. Yes, I can learn a thing or two from this old barn in all it’s glorious color.