Author: brenda

lens artists: spring

March winds bring April showers and May flowers

In northeastern Colorado, March and April often bring heavy snow storms. While many across the globe may be tired of snow, I delight watching big snowflakes cover the world outside my window waiting with anticipation for the stilled silence that will embrace the neighborhood.

Waking up to a snow covered streets is a sure sign that soon there will be a call; it’s a snow day! A guiltless day away from the office, yes!

And then after a sleep in, there is a walk through the park and being silently greeted by snow people.

Do you remember playing King of the Mountain on the big piles of snow left by snow plows?

The next best part of these storms is the warning that occurs in a day or two … the sounds of melting snow’s rivulets and the touch of spring’s silken breezes.

spring begins–
sparrows at my gate
with healthy faces ~Issa (haikuguy.com)

Sofia Photographias: spring

lens-artists: Road (most often) taken

Road trips! I love spontaneous road trips with nights in “X-Files” motels that invite with their buzzing neon vacancy sign.

I delight in planned vacations that included staying in city centered-hotels, having breakfast while watching national news, and then roaming (with camera in hand) through art galleries, museums, churches, parks, historical buildings, cemeteries, and shopping districts.

I welcome intentional photo walks that invite an openness to be present to the world as it presents itself and to delight in the richness, complex and wondrous elements of life.

These roads most often taken is Contemplative Photography where I open myself to what is and to see without expectations.

Journeys with Johnbo: The Road (most often) Taken

dawn

Throughout the frosty night

I lay awake. When morning bells

rang out, my heart grew clear–

upon this fleeting dream-world

dawn is waking.

~Hasegawa Shume*

Leica D-Lux7: f/1.7 . 1/2500s . 11/1mm

*cited:

Japanese Death Poems

Yoel Hoffmann

monochrome wednesday

image submitted for Leanne’s monochrome madness and Bren’s mid-week monochrome posts.

tiny whispered wishes

Year by year, season by season, day by day

quietly in the memories of children. . .dandelions.

Drifting in peaceful slumber . . .

tiny whispered wishes, two or three.

Edited post, Tiny Whispered Wishes, 4 September 2017.

lens-artists: peace

peace within one’s self; peace in the world – Thich Nhat Hanh

…and may we in that moment of “external” silence also hear a peaceful quiet within

sound asleep
there is peace on earth…
pond snail ~ Issa (www.haikuguy.com)

Tina (Travels and Trifles)

seeking spring’s arrival

Sending on ahead
My contemplated image of the form
Of remembered cherry flowers,
How many ranges have I vainly crossed
Taking for blossoms white clouds upon the peaks? ~Shunzei, Chūshū Eisô*

*Edited by: Miner, Introduction to Japanese Court Poetry, 110

morning’s monochrome

There may be another with thoughts like mine,

Who is gazing toward the sky of the morning moon.

~Izumi Shikibu (The Diary of Izumi Shikibu, Diaries of Court Ladies of Old Japan)

Fujifilm X-T4: f/4 . 1/1000s . 67mm . 1250 ISO

lens-artists: alone time

A freshly-opened cherry bud … her lips upon the flute. She leans in the corner of the balcony: the night is chill, her silken robes are thin, her fingers cold . . . but music floats through the frosty woods and startled plums fall pattering down. ~Chang Hsien (Ed. various. The Jade Flute, The Project Gutenberg eBook)

The general sense impressions I have of “alone times” are moments of grief and loss as well as feelings similar to forlorn, isolated, lonely.

if there’s a house
standing alone, sure enough…
plum blossoms ~Issa (www.haikuguy.com)

I have often pondered a different sense of “alone” after learning of it’s origins; Middle English, “all one.”

“All one” speaks to me of a time of solitary; a sense of completion, wholeness, self-direction, and freedom.