monochrome photography

reweaving within grieving

the uncertainty within grief’s reweaving memories…

The personal story is a narrative of our unique sense of identity.  We create our identities through the stories we weave onto a tapestry that is formed against the background of our family mythologies. We pull threads from of an assemblage of recalled details from our pasts and weaved them into images that cast us in whatever role corresponds with our current situations, feelings, thoughts, or actions. The colored threads of this tapestry are often re-embroidered to reflect the creative and dynamic process of our perspectives as we shift in, out, and between various roles, feeling states, and cognitions.  As we reflect on our self-created images we are in turn affected by them; therefore, there is an unconscious re-weaving of our tapestries. ~The Meditative Journey with Saldage

autumn sun

December 1, 2025, Monday morning … last night’s snow powder left by the season’s first snowfall … mystery creating mist …

First snow! I see it young every winter, 
Yet my face grows old 
As Winter comes.

~The Diary of Izumi Shikibu (1002-1003 AD)*

*Diaries of Court Ladies of Old Japan

shadows of squares -6

The Art of the Egg or the Egg and I

“It occurred to me that I have done an awful lot of egg drawings and paintings. Not quite sure why. It is a subject I use in my drawing classes quite frequently and I tell my students that if they can draw an egg, they can draw anything. It is like a little creature, a tiny model – and symbolic of so much: new life, fertility, possibilities … It is the perfect shape to to practice tone and get the 3-D effect. Some love this exercise; some will never look at an egg again!”*

*Catherine Wells,
Director, Pointe-St-Charles Art School

Visit The Life of B to join November’s Shadows of Squares

shadows of squares -5

In Adelbert von Chamisso’s, Peter Schlemihl, Peter the title character of the 1814 novella, sells his shadow to the Devil for a bottomless wallet, only to find that a man without a shadow is shunned by human societies. Later when the devil wants to return his shadow to him in exchange for his soul, Schlemihl rejects the proposal and throws away the wallet. After this he seeks refuge in nature and travels around the world in scientific exploration, with the aid of seven-league boots.*

Schlemihl finds reconciliation with others as they care for him during a long illness and he no longer searches for his shadow. After he recovers, he returns to his scientific studies and in time develops a deep harmony with both nature and his personal self.

*Seven-league boots are an element in European folklore. The boots allow the person wearing them to take strides of seven leagues per step, resulting in great speed. The boots are often presented by a magical character to the protagonist to aid in the completion of a significant task.

Asked which book by another author he would most like to claim as his own work, Italo Calvino once said without hesitation, Adelbert von Chamisso’s Peter Schlemiel. First published in 1814, this brilliant novel is not only a precursor of Poe, Kafka, and the magic realists – it is a timeless fable with a remarkably contemporary flavor.

Visit The Life of B to join November’s Shadows of Squares

shadows of squares -4

“Unfortunately there can be no doubt that man is, on the whole, less good than he imagines himself or wants to be. Everyone carries a shadow, and the less it is embodied in the individual’s conscious life, the blacker and denser it is. At all counts, it forms an unconscious snag, thwarting our most well-meant intentions.” ~Carl Jung*

*Carl Gustav Jung was a Swiss psychiatrist, psychologist, and psychotherapist who founded Analytical Psychology.

shadows of squares -3

light and shadow…ongoing movements … playfully evolving … never ending … story-ing nature’s transitions of … light touching objects … creating shadows … forming … redefining … altering … narrating reconciliations of opposites.

Visit The Life of B to join November’s Shadows of Squares

lens-artist: street details

at my feet
when did you get here?
snail ~Issa*

the street’s world of feet in action…

This week Ritva invites Lens-Artists to “… skip the classic street-portrait approach and reveal the often-hidden, magical world, of the details we never take the time to​ notice anymore.”

*haikuguy.com

lens-artist: dreamy

that village’s
floating bridge of dreams…
spring frost ~Issa

Ann Christine from Leya invites lens-artists to share their interpretation of the theme Dreamy. She introduces soft dreamy photographs as images created with soft light, soft focus, delicate tones, and other gentle aspects to produce an ethereal picture.

The dark sky dulls my dreamy mind, 
The down-dripping rain lingers– 
O my tears down falling, longing after thee!

~The Diary of Murasaki Shikibu

Thank you Ann Christine for this challenge…sometimes life’s realities need to slumber and awaken the gentle nature of dreamy.