I love this photograph, and in more ways than one. I believe it is the first photograph I have ever taken that I sent to another photographer, a friend, and asked for help in figuring out how to edit and cropped. I had a 35 mm lens in my camera, we were driving by this country road and I saw this beautify Sycamore. Maria turned around – she is saintly – and drove me back, I went into the field to capture it.

I took the shot in color but the tree wanted to be in black and white and I had trouble figuring out how to make it stand out, and what to do with all of the sky and field in the photograph. I was stumped, unusual for me.

I should say I am a devout believer in the Beavis & Butthead school of learning. Because I am stupid, I am free.

Because I don’t know what I’m supposed to think, I am free to think. But I am understanding the importance of learning, one way or another, at any age. Perhaps because I am loving teaching, and also understanding the power and importance of doing it well.

I suspect I am trying to re-write my history. I never had one single good experience in any school I attended, including the two colleges I dropped out of.

School was a misery for me, every day of it. For years I failed class after class, I felt ridiculed and dismissed, I hated teachers and only in therapy did I come to realize the responsibility was mine: I was too messed up, too frightened, too beat up and distracted to learn. The first teacher to break through to me was a Providence, R.I. librarian who read my stories in her library and told me I would be a writer one day, my books would be on her shelf. She was the only teacher I ever believed.

I was messaging Deborah Glessner about my confusion, and she offered to help. So I decided to let her. And she did.

Deborah is the opposite of me in many ways, and a soulmate in many others. She has degrees both in English and Library Science, and is also a brilliant photographer. She loves dogs a lot too. I suspect she is a grammar zealot and would like to choke me.

In my former life, Deborah might have been one of the people I hated and battled with, one of the people who battled with me. Or maybe she would have been the one to break through to me, I don’t really know. Anna Freud says we damage all of our children in one way or another, some are smudged, some are scratched, some are shattered. I was in pieces. When I started taking photographs six or seven years ago, I asked no one for help, took no instruction, just started shooting away and learning as I went.

I believe in learning by doing, I never took a writing class either, although I have learned to love and listen to my editors.

I hate having other people’s voices in my head when I create, I want my thoughts and ideas to be my own. For me, that is the core of original thinking, avoiding the dogma and canon of others. I will never submit to the labels of left or the right, that is the death of thinking as we see on the news every day.

And photography is loaded with dogma.

I dislike all the photographic chatter about focus and settings, it is not a technical exercise for me, but an emotional and creative one. Like writing, photography has become another complex and closes system in which the precious few seem to hold the keys of learning for the many seeking to get in the door.

I have always said that the only men I like were the ones that were either tortured as children or humiliated as adults, those are the ones who open their soul up to others, show their vulnerability, and begin to learn the truly important lessons in life, as opposed to the ones we are often taught are important.

So I e-mailed my first photo image (below) to Deborah and she messaged me right back. Too much sky. I bristled a bit. This was the first time I have ever asked anyone but Maria for a response to any of my photos. It might seem like a small thing, but it was a big thing for me, a new experience. It felt strange, frightening. I got angry, then curious. I cropped almost all of the sky out. Sent it back to her.

Next message from Deb: Need a little more sky.

I put some sky back in. Back to Deb. Next message back: How about a little more field? I put some more field in. She loved Sycamore 4. I did too. It felt curious to ask for help, stranger to get it.

The photograph was important to me, I knew the Sycamore could touch people, the tree had something to say, the way it stood out there in the middle of the woods, dancing for us.

Deborah Glessner is a good friend of mine. She is hearing impaired, but is one of the most articulate people I know. She is a great dog lover and a generous soul. And a teacher and artist. On our long trek to Virginia to pick up Fate, we stayed with Deb coming and going. We felt as if we had stayed there a hundred times.

Good teachers and good librarians, are angels, perhaps fairies. They are strong and have magical powers, they see beyond time and fear.

She was happy to open her home up to two exhausted people and a lunatic, nuclear-powered puppy. I am not one of those people who is at ease with everyone I meet, or like to stay with strangers, I have always been at ease with Deborah. There is none of the creepy he-said she said stuff that is the warning sign of an unhealthy relationship.

I called Maria into my study and showed her this strange and miraculous thing I had done. She understood the significance of it. Good for you, she said. How great. She loved the photo. I have known many people who bristle at the idea that others have better ideas than they do. They might have said (and have said to me) wasn’t I good enough? But I can always trust Maria, just like Deb. They have those shining souls, they trust their gifts.

I started to learn a few years ago, when my life finally cracked open, as inevitably happens to the great deniers. A brilliant therapist beat the daylights out of me, and I began to learn. But old habits die hard, especially in old men.

So an opening, a new path for me. Learning is not, of course, just about process and programs. It is really about life, and if the broken people can learn to open up their souls at any age, then anything is possible, for me, for the world. So thanks for the help, Deb, you just put a few of the pieces back together.