Loveseat

January 31st, 2018

1/31/2018

 
Picture
Richard Rohr:  "If you watch your mind, you will see you live most of your life in the past or in the future.  The present always seems boring and not enough. So, to get yourself engaged you will often 'create a problem' to resolve, and then another, and another.  The only way many people know how to motivate themselves is to create problems or to need to 'fix' something.
If you can't be positively present right now, without creating a problem, nothing new is ever going to happen to you.  You will only experience what you already agree with and what does not threaten you—and you will never experience the unexpected depth and contentment that is always being offered to you . . . No problem to solve; just an immediate intimacy to enjoy"

January 29th, 2018

1/29/2018

 
Picture
"What I believe, what I value most, is transitoriness.  But is not transitoriness—the perishableness of life—something very sad?  No! It is the very soul of existence.  It imparts value, dignity, interest to life."  Thomas Merton

January 27th, 2018

1/27/2018

 
Picture
Scott County, Missouri, again, this time sunset
This morning I came across the following, written by Quentin Bajac for a Museum of Modern Art show, "Stephen Shore/Solving Pictures."
"There are no heroics in Shore's images, but rather a poetics of the ordinary and the everyday . . . echoing Walker Evans' desire to reveal the 'deep beauty in things as they are.'  His approach can be tied to a long American tradition of elevating the simple and commonplace . . . to a certain poetry and a way of life, from Ralph Waldo Emerson writing that I 'embrace the common, I explore and sit at the feet of the familiar, the low,' to Walt Whitman championing 'a perfectly transparent, plate-glassy style, artless,' characterized by 'clearnesss, simplicity, no twistified or foggy sentences.'"

Reading that led to my realizing a  certain similarity between my writing and my making of images.  I quoted here recently  Twain's "eschew surplusage" and Jefferson's "never use two words when one will do" and I tried to follow those recommendations  in my writing.  It may be that my writing expereiece  is why when I turned to making images I came to admire Shore's work— it resonates quickly and intuitively with what I seek in both my writing with ink and with light.

January 26th, 2018

1/26/2018

 
Picture
In some of his early work, the photographer Robert Adams formed images of the Great Plains near Denver—vast, empty appearing surfaces of plain stretching out as far as the eye can see.  They are to my eye puzzles—why focus on attention on such apparent emptiness?  But when I am at my daughter's in Missouri, I am struck by the flatness, the ever onward stretching out of the farmland, again as far as the eye can see, and I begin to understand better what Adams was showing us.  Trees, in their wintery naked forms, stand out in the middle of the flatness, sometimes solitary, sometimes in a row, emphasizing to the eye that  stretching out of the flat surface.  It encourages and supports a meditative stance—paying attention.  Old houses, falling barns, tilled fields all begin to reveal themselves just as they are, in their suchness.

Belden Lane, backpacking in southern Missouri, wrote:  "The world is full of natural wonders that we notice only when we take time to attend to details.  We marvel at how mockingbirds delight in hopping and wing-flashing on the top of a dead tree, how the leaves of an aspen tee flutter in the least bit of wind, how the cracks in the bark of a ponderosa pines smell of butterscotch pudding, how flying hawks use their shadow in hunting mice (the fear of their passing sillhouette causes the rodents to run in panic).  The world on  the edge of our awareness wants to fill us with amazement."

January 24th, 2018

1/24/2018

 
Picture
Sunrise, Scott County, Missouri
I have returned after a week away.
 
The following reflections come from Belden Lane:

"'In the point of rest at the center of our being,' says Hammerskjold, 'we encounter a world where all things are at rest . . . Then a tree becomes a mystery, a cloud of revelation.'   But we won't arrive there so long as we have to label every cloud as altocumulus or cirrostratus, every tree as deciduous broadleaf or evergreen conifer.  Our primary task is to be present to whatever is there before us.  We don't have to pigeonhole it in our minds . . ." 



January 21st, 2018

1/21/2018

 
Picture

January 17th, 2018

1/17/2018

 
Picture
Light, earth, water, air
We are all of these and through them
are connected to everything that is


​
I am going to be out of town for a week or so, so this is the last post for awhile.  See you when I get back!

January 15th, 2018

1/15/2018

 
Picture
Light, air, water, earth
Each a gift we receive every day

January 14th, 2018

1/14/2018

 
Picture
Light, water, wind and earth
​together make patterns like these

January 10th, 2018

1/10/2018

 
Picture
Belden Lane:  "What I seek most in going into wilderness is not exercise or escape, but a physical and spiritual depth of intimacy.  I'm moved by nature's power and beauty, but what sets me afire is the longing I sense there of everything else wanting to connect, the desire for an intimacy that is as alluring as it is frightening . . . The highly sensory way of 'knowing' that wilderness requires is the most natural and meaningful way I have of experiencing anything holy,"
<<Previous

    Archives

    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013

    Categories

    All
    Art And Aesthetics
    Photography
    Spirituality

    RSS Feed

HOURS

M-F: 7am - 9pm
​

TELEPHONE

415-555-1234
​

EMAIL

info@email.com

Proudly powered by Weebly
  • Home
  • Home
  • Reflections on photography
  • Travels
    • Alaska >
      • Inner passage >
        • St. Augustine
      • Cityscapes
      • Florida Impressions
      • Arizona
      • Fairbanks area
      • Acadia National Park
      • California
      • Interior, including Denali
      • North rim Grand Canyon
      • North Carolina Autumn
      • New Mexico
      • Key West
    • Maine >
      • Portland and Bar Harbor
    • Utah
    • Washington State
  • Shop
  • Galleries
    • Fauna
    • Flora >
      • Ringling Roses
    • Constructs >
      • Architecture >
        • CCC in Florida Parks
        • Tampa Bay Architecture
    • Photographs Plus >
      • Black and White
      • High Dynamic Range photos
      • Watercolors
  • About
  • Blog
    • Panama Canal
  • nabesblog
  • Contact
  • Home
  • Home
  • Reflections on photography
  • Travels
    • Alaska >
      • Inner passage >
        • St. Augustine
      • Cityscapes
      • Florida Impressions
      • Arizona
      • Fairbanks area
      • Acadia National Park
      • California
      • Interior, including Denali
      • North rim Grand Canyon
      • North Carolina Autumn
      • New Mexico
      • Key West
    • Maine >
      • Portland and Bar Harbor
    • Utah
    • Washington State
  • Shop
  • Galleries
    • Fauna
    • Flora >
      • Ringling Roses
    • Constructs >
      • Architecture >
        • CCC in Florida Parks
        • Tampa Bay Architecture
    • Photographs Plus >
      • Black and White
      • High Dynamic Range photos
      • Watercolors
  • About
  • Blog
    • Panama Canal
  • nabesblog
  • Contact