fan

Glazed silk, newly cut, smooth, glittering, white,
As white, as clear, even as frost and snow.
Perfectly fashioned into a fan,
Round, round, like the brilliant moon,
Treasured in my Lord's sleeve, taken out, put in—
Wave it, shake it, and a little wind flies from it.
How often I fear the Autumn Season's coming
And the fierce, cold wind which scatters the blazing heat.
Discarded, passed by, laid in a box alone;
Such a little time, and the thing of love cast off.
~Pan Chieh-Yü*
fan…Nikon D750 f5.6 1.60s 300mm 100 ISO

*cited: Trans: Florence Ayscough & Any Lowell The Project Gutenberg EBook of Fir-Flower Tablets

each at its own hour

The grass does not refuse
To flourish in the spring wind;
The leaves are not angry
At falling through the autumn sky.
Who with whip or spur
Can urge the feet of Time?
The things of the world flourish and decay,
Each at its own hour. ~LiPo

Trans: Arthur Waley, The Poet Li Po II. 26. The Sun Gutenberg.org

Nikon D750 f/5.6 1/80s 150mm 100 ISO

“The old man was thin and gaunt with deep wrinkles in the back of his neck. The brown blotches of the benevolent skin cancer the sun brings from its reflections on the tropic sea were on his cheeks. The blotches ran well down the sides of his face and his hands had the deep crease scars from handling heavy fish on the cords. But none of these scars were fresh. They were as old as erosions in a fishless desert.” ~Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea

lens-artist photo challenge: you pick it!

After autumn winds have blown away the colors of fall, the wilting landscape left behind is a sleeping yellowish-brown hue that remains until spring winds travel across glaciered lands. Between the snowfalls of winter, it is wabi-sabi that greets me throughout each day.

Words of old--
whispered today by wind
in the reeds. ~Shōhaku (cited: Trans: S Carter, Haiku before Haiku)
Nikon D750 f/5 1/1000s 48mm 100 ISO
From bare brush
along a mountain path--
the sound of frost ~Shinkei (cited: Trans: S Carter, Haiku before Haiku)
Nikon D750 f/5 1/250s 100 ISO
Fallen to the ground
like those words of old--
glowing leaves ~Inko (cited: Trans: S Carter, Haiku before Haiku)
Nikon D750 f/8 1/125s 250mm 100 ISO

Travels and Trifles invites photographers to share what they find interesting about a chosen subject. This post represents current work with double exposure as an avenue to open myself to the beauty of the imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete qualities of late autumn.