say cheese.

I took this shot during an intensely lonely moment as I clambered around the tiny island of Agathonissi in the Dodecanese many years ago. (God that sounds rich and privileged, doesn't it? For what it's worth I was sailing on the cheap, in a trade for work.)

I was reminded of it recently while exchanging notes on goats and their cheese with a Flickr friend, but here's why I'm posting it: When I took it, with this grandmother's kind permission, the plastic bag bothered me; broke the pastoral perfection that I was hoping for. Now it's my favorite part of the image. Nearly a punctum. Not quite, but gives me hope that I'll get there some day.

And just down the hill on that tiny little island in the very moment this image was taken were two strangers who, within hours, I would share glances of recognition, and then over a week we would decide that yes, we'll know each other for a while, and now going on years I gratefully count them as friends I would never want to live with out.

Life's funny like that: Matters of great importance waiting for you just a little way down the hill.