double exposure

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.

a new kind of empathy

newkindofempathy

After listening to the TED Talk, “Can a Divided America Heal”, I did a brief exploration of the three basic principles of moral psychology

  1. Generally we influenced by intuition and then use that which “feels right” to justify our moral judgments.
  2. The underlying motivation in moral reasoning and communication is directed more towards manipulation or persuasion than exploration of truth.
  3. Morality is a crucial element of tribalism which is the building block for the development of large, cooperative societies.

A bit of personal reflection opens a window of understanding of how I’m more often than not influence by what feels right and yes, the importance I place in intuition over reasoning.  Often a movement towards “spiritual” reasoning occurs after a period of solitude and contemplation.

There is also an awareness that I do enjoy the rhythmic power of football tribalism while being perplexed by a religious leader’s comment about limiting compassion to one’s own tribe.

Then finally…do I acknowledge the possibility of some hidden agenda to persuade you to join me in what feels right over someone else’s sense of right?  Ugh, I think I’ll close this window for a bit and open one that has us explore a new empathy.

…we have an existential threat on our hands..we need a new kind of empathy…if you want to escape from this [the anger and worry of the last year], read Buddha, read Jesus, read Marcus Aurelius. They have all kinds of great advice for how to drop the fear, reframe things, stop seeing the other people as your enemy. There’s a lot of guidance in ancient wisdom…(Jonathan Haidt)

Ancient wisdom guiding us to “a new kind of empathy.”  I believe that the on-the-ground community response to Harvey is a living example of an ancient empathy that has the potential to heal.

I invite you to listen to the TED talk below in which social psychologists Jonathan Haidt and TED Curator Chris Anderson explore the sharp divisions of today and then discuss how we may be able to move forward.   _()_

the world seems…

Is it because my mind

keeps dwelling

on every worldly thing

the the word seems

more hateful to me than ever?

~SaigyO  (Poems of a Mountain Home)

doubleexposurebuddha

SaigyO was born in 1118 in the capital city, Kyoto.  When he was twenty-two he suddenly left his post as an elite private guard of Emperor Toba to become a Buddhist  priest.  I find it interesting how his poem written almost a thousand years ago resonates with me today especially when I think of Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr’s (who was born in 1808) translated epigram, “the more things change, the more they stay the same.”

 

 

awakening

riverbendponddoublex

Prospect Ponds Natural Area…awakening

 

…the very essence of all alchemical work was a spiritual transformation, liberation of God from the darkness of matter. …alchemical symbolism describes pictorially the process of change from psychic sleep to awakening, and the stages along that journey. Jung found in this symbolism an illustration…he called the process of individuation: one’s gradual unfoldment from an unconscious to a conscious state, and the healing process underlying it.*

*The Essence of Jung Psychology and Tibetan Buddhism, pg 36

Radmila Moacanin

 

100 days…84th day

Clipped Wings

dreamingdoubleexposure

How did it come to this?

A forced landing, weakened wings

a solid source of former strength,

taking you through 

dark clouds and heavy downpours.

 

Those resilient wings assured your

bodily independence

as you soared through storms,

high winds battering

and pressing upon your life.

whiteblossom

 

Now those same weathered wings

bear evidence of missing feathers,

thinning bones and shrunken wingspan,

no longer able to lift and sour

or glide with the gusto that carried

you through turbulent tempests.

 

Slowly, slowly you learn to accept

those clipped wings, to be content

with nesting in the arms of elderhood.

csublossomsb&w

 

You submit to this final appendage

of your journey, bid farewell

to cherished autonomy

and slowly fold your worn wings

in peaceful surrender.

                                                        ~Joyce Rupp*

 

*cited:

Fly While You Still Have Wings

Joyce Rupp