Find It in Everything

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For Will and Olive

I have always loved hearts. The way that one continuous line accomplishes the most extraordinary thing—it conveys love. It is a symbol of goodness. It doesn’t have anything ambiguous about it. It is loud. It is confident.

I love this shape so much that I started seeing it everywhere. I would see it in a fragment of light. I would see it in a paper straw wrapper on the ground. I would see it in the fur of my dog. I would be looking into a glass display case of fish, and the tuna steak would unexpectedly have something heart-shaped about it, and it would make me happy.

I started taking pictures of these things, because it was a way to capture moments of magic. It wasn’t me doodling on my binder, “I heart so-and-so.” It was nature saying, “I love you.” It was a scientifically explainable moment that generated the international symbol of love. It was someone’s trash morphing into a message of hope for someone else who might need it.

Then one day a few years back I was discussing
E.T.
, the film I had made when I was six, and someone mentioned E.T.’s big red heart, which sometimes glowed from inside him, and I had an epiphany. His heart wasn’t necessarily shaped like a heart, but I remember that his puppeteers would always light it up at moments when E.T. felt happiness. And I wondered if, when I was an impressionable young girl, that big red light had jump-started my love affair with hearts.

I cannot say for sure what it is that has me so obsessed with them. I think it also has something to do with the fact that they have no negativity. They are just something we use to show love. Hearts are my beacons. I love them man-made and natural, young and old. Whenever and wherever I see the heart shape, a smile spreads across my face. The heart has an unbeatable romance when you discover one where you least expect it.

And that is why I try to find it in everything.

My dog Flossy.

She was my friend for sixteen years.

This was a moment, midday, when I was lying by the window in cozy socks, content.

I saw the pink guitar and picked up my camera.

The heart is obvious in this one, but the real heart is mine in this moment.

It was calm.

It was safe.

It was happy.

I was just going about my business, and I turned around and found the heart-shaped tear in a T-shirt.

I grabbed my camera and snapped, just before the person moved.

And then it was gone.