lens-artists: window shopping

Hum … window shopping. It has been a long time. I do miss those days walking about Old Town, watching people stroll about, listening to a shopper play a public piano (Piano About Town art project), governing the impulse to buy, sitting out doors with a cappuccino, and most of all, walking about with camera in hand.

Why not join The World as I see it’s lens-artists challenge: window shopping

life’s passages … 45

sunday morning with Thich Nhat Hanh

‘… the flower is made of non-flower elements. We can describe the flower as being full of everything. There is nothing that is not present in the flower. We see sunshine, we see the rain, we see clouds, we see the earth, and we also see time and space in the flower.


A flower, like everything else, is made entirely of non-flower elements. The whole cosmos has come together in order to help the flower manifest herself, The flower is full of everything except one thing: a separate self, a separate identity.


The flower cannot be by herself alone. The flower has to inter-be with the sunshine, the cloud and everything in the cosmos. If we understand being in terms of inter-being, then we are much closer to the truth. Inter-being is not being and it is not non-being. Inter-being means being empty of a separate identity, empty of a separate self.” ~Thich Nhat Hanh, No Death, No Fear: Comforting Wisdom for Life

Zepher Richard Lee

life’s passages…40

snowymtsweb82918
Nikon D750  f/5.3  1/80s   112mm   100 ISO

Standing at this Threshold

With uncertainty, I question:

What is it that I seek?

Protection? Compassion? Acceptance? Forgiveness? Completion?

Who is it that I beckon?

A father? A mother? A sister? A brother? A companion? A child? A god?

To be? To endure? To offer? To embrace? To validate?

An intentional presence that is drawn upon

A place and time of shadows, myths, and dreams?

Birthed within a family?

Matured within a relationship?

Nourished within a community?

Where the Stillness within Silence,

Affirms the exchange of life’s giving and taking,

Embraces the connection of life’s emotional threads, and

Observes the interdependence of life with non-judgmental awareness,

Yet, knows of a united oneness with another that can not be?

Since it can not be, do I yearn

To know integration through the formation of thought;

To see clarity through the flowing of ink; and

To feel completion through the act of creating?

And then, finally, within the stillness of silence,

I befriend

An internal companion with whom

There is an honoring of the who and what of which I am;

A woman, a daughter, a sister, a niece, a wife, a mother, an aunt, a grandmother, a great-grandmother.

I touch

With reverence the presence of all that was, is, and will be.

I release

The seeking, the beckoning, the yearning to the Winds of Change.

I with uncertainty, Step over this Threshold

Foreseeing a return

~bckofford

lens-artists … sound

Creating sound within the frozen moments of a photograph – introduced by Ted Forbes in his discussions of rhythm and tempo.

Rhythm I – all around us are shapes that are pretty basic and similar to each other. We will see them repeating at regular intervals within nature, design, works of art, architecture, and photography

Rhythm II – the primary characteristic of rhythm is predictability and order.

Tempo – the means by which we display speed, movement, as well as the passing of time all within a frozen moment.

Have you heard the silence within a snow storm?

Sending gratitude to Wind Kisses for this week’s Lens-artists challenge: sound

life’s passages…39

his traveling hat
looking small…
mist ~Issa*

“his traveling hat.” The hat in question is a kasa: umbrella-hat. I picture Issa watching travelers departing in the early morning–perhaps from an inn. As their bodies blend in with the spring mist, all he can see now are the outlines of their umbrella-hats growing smaller and smaller. In this early haiku he shows that he has already mastered the art of using simple observation to suggest depths of meaning and feeling. Like Issa, we shall miss those who go before us, fading into nothing.

*cited: haikuguy.com