art

the dead of the night, moon-gazing

In the dead of night, moon-gazing,

The thought of the deep mountain affrighted,

Yet longings for the mountain village

At all other moments filled my heart.

~The Sarashina Diary (Diaries of Court Ladies of Old Japan)

Image and poem submitted in response to Travel with Intent’s Six Word Saturday challenge.

lens-artists photo challenge: countryside

Sony REX-5N f/9 1/160 70mm

Ten years it took

To build my little cottage.

Now the cool wind inhabits half of it

And the rest is filled with moonlight.

There is no place left for the mountain and the stream

So I guess they will have to stay outside.

~Song Sun (1493-1583) Trans: V O Baron & C S Park

Wyoming landscape and poetry submitted in response to Amy’s (The World is a Book) lens-artists photo challenge: countryside and/or small towns.

i yearn for a tranquil moment

I yearn for a tranquil moment
To be out upon the sea of harmony,
In that enchanted boat.
Oh, boatman, do you know my heart?

~The Sarashina Diary (Diaries of Court Ladies of Old Japan)

A small section of the Pacific Ocean along the Oregon coastline (2010) and a poem from The Sarashina Diary submitted in response to Travel with Intent’s six word challenge.

lens-artists photo challenge – magical

Rain, hail, snow, and ice;

All are different,

But when they fall

They become the same water

As the valley stream

~Ikkyu Sojun

Horsetooth Reservoir …. Nikon D750 f/8 3 1/2 min 24mm

Image and poem submitted in response to Leya’s photo challenge: magical

now I need so much patience

“…talking to you, God. Is that all right? With the passing of people, I feel a growing need to speak to You alone. I love people terribly, because in every human being I love something of You. And I seek You everywhere in them and often do find something of You. But now I need so much patience, patience and thought, and things will be very difficult. …”

~Trans: Arno Pomerans Hillesum, E. An Interrupted Life p. 16

Image and quote submitted in response to Travel with Intent’s Six Word Challenge.

early morning readings

May I find the Courage to withstand the crumbling of my
delusions so that the light of right understanding guides me on a life path absent of greed, anger, and ignorance.

Nikon D750 f/4.5 1/250s 85mm

” ‘To find a pathway absent of greed, anger, and ignorance’ messages hope that there is indeed a way of life that leads out of this petrified forest in which there looms gigantic trees twisted and bent by an ego intent on creating a self- referenced world. Each tree has been tagged with a label that takes possession of it through the identification of “my memory”, “my feelings”, “my ideas”, or “my dreams”. Circling the trees are multiple pathways carved out by the anger of unmet desires and covered over by entangled vines driven by a need to satiate an unquenchable thirst. For years I have wandered in the shadows of this forest unable to see that it is of my own creation.

I come to a place where I envision myself eagerly before bookshelves, my eyes lightly and briefly touching upon one book’s title and then another, feeling their words tickle my thoughts until I surrender to their unspoken promises. Once engaged by the promising nature of a title, it is hope that opens a book jacket and begins another journey through pages. With the turning of each page, desire seeks the experience of validation within the configuration of a writer’s text. All of this, I believe, is driven by memory traces of how the words of unknown authors enfolded my emotional self as they alleviated the subsequent emotional chaos that followed the death of my father when I was three years old.

Later, literature provided me with alternate threads by which to darn a harmonious, yet delusional, understanding of death, of fatherless children, of a family.”

~B C Koeford (A Meditative Journey with Saldage)

the linden tree

Nikon D750 f/5.6 1/25s 150mm 100 ISO

“Thursday Morning, 9.30. On a summer’s day like this I lie in bed as if cradled in sweet arms. It makes one feel so indolent and languid. And when he sang, ‘The Linden Tree’ last time (I thought it so beautiful that I asked him to sing me a whole forest-full of linden trees), the lines on his face looked like old, age-old, tracks through a landscape as ancient as creation itself.”

(cited: E Hillesum, An Interrupted Life p. 115)