monochrome

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

lens-artists: longing

I was introduced to the Portuguese word, saudade, which has no immediate English equivalent about 30 years ago. Saudade is a word that feels intimate as it named a life-long companion. It touched upon a vague and constant desire for something that does not and probably cannot exit, for something other than the present, a turning toward to past or towards the future; not an active discontent or poignant sadness but an indolent dreaming, a wishfulness.

Over 30 years ago, I met a homeless woman who identified herself as a sundowner.   She described how each evening’s sun invited her to settle down along the side of her life’s path so that her journey could begin afresh in the morning sun.  She eloquently described an undercurrent of yearning that ebbed and flowed throughout her soul and how, in her past days, she found herself at the mercy of private memories, thoughts, and imaginations and had encountered, time and time again, various degree of discontent that wandered along side her aloneness.

As I heard the suffering within women who story their lives through the multi-colored threads of substance use, I find myself acknowledging a similarity within each of these unique stories with my own metaphysical search for someone, something, or some place that remains beyond the forever next horizon.  Each of our unique narratives reveal an unending wandering with satchels of discontent that tell of a spiritual emptiness and an emotional intimacy wit, “a homesickness for a place one knows cannot be.”

Thank you Egídio for your invitation to wander through loneliness.

lens-artists – quiet hours

There is a profound moment … a second or so before the sun’s light peeks above the horizon … when a quiet stillness embraces the soul.  And then … a single bird’s singsong begins a welcoming of the dawn followed by the distant scent of a coffee … releasing me from the solitude of night.

Thank you Stupidity Hole’s for this week’s lens-artist challenge – quiet hours.

lens-artist: reflections

In this hour of longing 
Reflection brings to mind each day gone by
And in each one 
Was less of sorrow.*

“… the dream interpreter interpreted my dream, but I could not realize this. Only the sorrowful reflection in the mirror was realized unaltered. …”**

Anne from Slow Shutter Speed invites lens-artists to explore images of reflections

*The Diary of Izumi Shikibu, Diaries of Court Ladies of Old Japan

**cited: The Sarashina Diary, Diaries of Court Ladies of Old Japan

lens-artists: books

Within one of the realms of The Wheel of Suffering, is the animal realm in which a bodhisattva is depicted holding a book representing the need for wisdom that arises through thought, speech, and reflection.

” … I come to a place where I envision myself eagerly standing 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 …” (cited: B Catherine Koeford, A Meditative Journey with Saldage)

“… you and I in the living room.  You gave me three hard bound books…illustrated books. One about the lives of bees, the other about the Civil War, and lastly…the female reproductive system, “You are a woman now.  You must wash your face twice a day …” 

I was a woman.  Three books. Books freed us to worlds beyond a rural newspaper route.  Books were trips to the library, classical comic books left on my bed, novel reenactments, and later carefully National Geographic cutouts attached to your letters.  

I loved novels. You, nature and science …”  (cited: My Mother Came to Visit, memories of my mother during Covid …”it was a remembered touch that announced her arrival”)

Unseeded and Two Springs – two photo books of personal journeys of healing.

Two Springs: you left,
I remained… two springs

A photo journey…in remembrance of my mother, Elberta.

Unseeded: “The first time I heard the word “unseeded” I felt it resonate with another term saudade, a unique Portuguese word with no immediate English equivalent.

Saudade describes a vague and constant desire for something that does not and probably cannot exist …”

 Ritva has invited lens-artists “to embrace your inner book lover and share your most creative photographic interpretation of anything related to books.”