art

a shell of a thing came to be

The storm came one night, you see

The thunder came and fell the tree.

Falling, falling became the tree.

And a shell of a thing came to be.

A small shell of a thing, you see

Flying high above the sea.

There is no alighting upon the sea, you see

For a shell of a thing above the sea.

Searching, searching for her tree

That fell the night she became to be.

Weary, tired – flying, flying above the sea

Wishing for all to see.

Oh how brave, how marvelous she is to be!

As she flies so high above the sea!

Blind to their eyes, she is to be.

Wings flying, trying so hard to be,

Above the torment of the sea.

For there is no rest above the sea.

Only the falling, falling tree, you see.

fading vision II

It is an in between time — stepping through the doorway that separates sleep and wakefulness — when one has a sense of self shifting betwixt roles. The observer of and actor within a movie which randomly muses through moments past or re-creates imagined eras. 

abstract street photography

The awareness of self as an observer and/or director, speaks to me of an inner knowing of something that is vague, immense, and has a Will separate from the unconscious actor “me.”  Let us name this in-between time, Chaos.

Chaos manifested in the beginning.  Within her void, time slumbered in undifferentiated fusion with all the elements, potentials, and seeds of sentience.  Yet, some say that Chaos was born from Mist and that Mist was the first to exist.  

Mist is symbolic of things indeterminate, or the fusing together of the elements of air and water, and the inevitable absorbing of the outlines of each aspect and each particular phase of the evolution process.  

lens-artists photo challenge: favorite photos of 2019

2019 in review…

As I was reviewing 2019 images within the WP media library, I notice these two images side-by-side. While not my favorite images, together they create a unique perspective and invite contemplation.

transforming

As 2020 unfolds, present moment by present moment, may you and all your loved ones awaken to life’s mysteries and know joy.

Images submitted for Patti’s lens-photo challenge – favorite photos of 2019.

a lone

on a tree standing

by the cliff in an old farm

a dove –

how lonely his voice

calling for a friend this evening

~ Saigyō (cited: Makoto Ueda, Far Beyond the Field)

“Of course you must know that every letter of yours will always give me pleasure, and only beat with the answer which will perhaps often leave you empty handed; for at bottom, and just in the deepest and most important things, we are unutterably alone…” Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet.

early morning readings

Your imagination and your emotions are like a vast ocean

Etty Hillesum
shields pond…Nikon D750 f/4.5 1/400s 55mm

“…But let me impress just one thing upon you, sister. Wash your hands of all attempts to embody those great, sweeping thoughts. The smallest, most fatuous little essay is worth more than the flood of grandiose ideas in which you like to wallow. Of course you must hold on to your forebodings and your intuitions. They are the sources upon which you drew, but be careful not to drown in them. Just organize things a little, exercise some mental hygiene. Your imagination and your emotions are like a vast ocean from which you wrest small pieces of land that may well be flooded again. The ocean is wide and elemental, but what matter are the small pieces of land you reclaim from it. The subject right before you is more important than those prodigious thoughts on Tolstoy and Napoleon that occurred to you in the middle of last night, and the lesson you gave that keen young girl on Friday night is more important than all your vague philosophisings. Never forget that. Don’t overestimate your own intensity; it may give you the impression that you are cut out for greater things than the so-called man in the street, whose inner life is a closed book to you. In fact, you are no more than a weakling and a nonentity adrift and tossed by the waves.

Keep your eye fixed on the mainland and don’t flounder helplessly in the ocean…”

cited: Etty Hillesum, An Interrupted Life The Diaries of Etty Hillesum 1941-1943, pp.6-7