Loveseat
  • Home
  • New Page
  • 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

March 30th, 2020

3/30/2020

 
Picture
Our restrictions continue to deepen;  while this view is about a block away, we're told not to go there:  we are to remain on campus (including the sidewalk around campus).  I got groceries delivered yesterday and I didn't go to the barber while I still could, so I will soon be returning to my 70s' "hippie" look.  Such interesting memories; such difficult times now.  Stay safe everyone.

March 27th, 2020

3/27/2020

 
I'm reading Paul Kingsnorth's "Savage Gods"; I quoted some of it yesterday; here's some more of what he has to say:

"every cell burns with the true light when you realize, in some tremendous moment—some kiss, some death, some echo across a midnight lake—the high, thin, oxygenless truth of being here".  And, "(l)ate May.  I am in the field, scything the grass and the docks down.  I am mowing shirtless in the rain . . . and suddenly, in an instant and just for an instant, I am here.  I am nowhere else.  I am the field and the motion of the scythe and the falling of the rain and the movement of the muscles in my back and shoulders, the sideways motion of my stiff hips and I think nothing at all.  I just mow.  I just move.  I just am.  For a moment I just am.  

Sometimes, when you least expect it, you are given a gift."

Grace, enlightenment, call it what you will, but certainly, a gift.


March 26th, 2020

3/26/2020

 
Picture
Wild Columbine


When I read about Republicans and "conservatives" willing to sacrifice human lives for the sake of their stock portfolios I am left feeling so angry (although not surprised) that I find it hard to speak.  I watched Trump's bumbling, self-congratulatory, self-serving (he wants his hotels open by Easter) news conference yesterday (though I know better than to do such a self-flagellating  act),  I wasn't so much angry as bemused—how can anyone not see what he is and what his toadies are?  (Fauci may be a modern day saint).  What can one say in the face of this that is helpful instead of hurtful?   Pray, meditate, go for a walk (if you're allowed to?) and look at the world which goes on its way, not paying attention to human frailty and hubris.

Perhaps it's self-deceptive, but in these crazy times, I still find some comfort in things like what Paul Kingsnorth wrote:  "it's something I've believed in—no, it's something I've felt--for as long as I can remember . . . That was what I wanted: to live in a culture which thinks the world is a sacred thing, for which reality is . . . a flaming hoop, whose language is the language of beauty and fire, which sings to the forest and expects it to hear.  I have always wanted to be part of a culture which walks through the wild world as if it were of it, which doesn't talk of . . . profit or growth but talks and lives as if this way of speaking were the poisonous bullshit that it so obviously is."


March 23rd, 2020

3/23/2020

 
Picture
Basho:

"Ah—speechless before
these budding green spring leaves
in blazing sunlight."

March 19th, 2020

3/19/2020

 
Picture
Warmer days, highs in the 80s.  Spring is here.  The Coronavirus continues to spread in Florida; shelves are empty, more and more places close (Clearwater beach is closed as of Monday).  We live in interesting times.

March 16th, 2020

3/16/2020

 
Picture
In this perplexing, perilous present, these words from Brian Doyle seem appropriate:

"As a fan's notes for grace, a quavery chant against the dark, I sing a song of things that make us grin and bow, that just for an instant let us see sometimes the web and weave of merciful, the endless possible, the incomprehensible, inexhaustible yes.

  Such as, for example, to name a few:
   The way the sun crawls over the rim of the world every morning like a child's face rising from a pool all fresh from the womb of the dark, and the way jays hop and damsel-flies do that geometric aero-amazing thing and bees inspect and birds probe and swifts chatter . . ." [and rivers flow through a forest] "Look, I know very well that brooding misshapen evil is everywhere, in the brightest houses and the  most cheerful denials, in what we do and what we have failed to do, and I  know all too well that the story of the world is entropy, things fly apart, we sicken, we fail, we grow weary, we divorce, we are hammered and hounded by loss and accidents and tragedies.  But I also know, with all my hoary muddled heart, that we are carved of immense confusing holiness, that the whole point for us is grace under duress, and that you either take a flying leap at nonsensical illogical unreasonable ideas like marriage and marathons and democracy and divinity, or you huddle behind the wall.  I believe that the coolest things there are cannot be measured, calibrated, calculated, gauged, weighed, or understood except by sometimes having a child patiently explain it to you, which is another thing that should happen far more often to us all.  In short I believe in believing, which doesn't make sense. which gives me hope."

March 12th, 2020

3/12/2020

 
Picture
Gerald May:  "I was feeling an increasingly passionate yearning for . . . something.  I called it my longing for God . . . but I could just as well said it was a longing for love, for union, for fully being in life, for being vitally connected with everything . . . This particular yearning, I now know, had been with me all my life.  It was the power behind my striving, the reason for my ambition, the need that fired all the energies of my life.  It was my eros, my passion, my relentlessness of spirit."

March 09th, 2020

3/9/2020

 
Picture
Reminder:  By clicking on the image, a larger image will appear.
The coronavirus is affecting us:  my retirement community is no longer taking us off campus, so getting groceries and meds will be more difficult, since I don't drive and riding the bus seems unwise.  Oh well, at this age, it's just one damned thing after another.
The image above of the Tetons reminds me of something Gerald May wrote: 
​
"The Allegheny foothills always surprise me . . . I'm driving along and the hills are not there, then suddenly, even when I know to expect them, they appear as if they had just decided to show up. A surprise of beauty.   As I see them now, though, I sense more than their beauty; it's a deep homecoming, welcoming feeling.  I could swear the mountains are reaching  out for me, as if they have palpable arms opening, guiding, ready to take me in.  Everything in me relaxes at this.  I want to be taken in."

That's similar to what I felt when I landed in Jackson:  suddenly the mountains are right there, alongside the runway, thrusting themselves up from the plain, announcing that they are here, waiting.  A surprise of beauty indeed!

March 05th, 2020

3/5/2020

 
Picture
Sea, desert, mountains, plains—America the beautiful
Pico Iyer:  "As soon as I take out my camera I find that stillness within, that deep sense of peace that I crave every day.  I get lost in such a beautiful way that it's hard to describe; it's as though I find a piece of me that I had lost without really knowing that I lost it.  As I sit quietly looking through the viewfinder, my senses become heightened.  The smell of the earth makes me feel grounded; the sound of the waves crashing or grass rustling in the  wind or the bleating of a lone sheep in the distance makes me feel so alive; and the vastness of what I see makes me feel expansive.  This is what it is like to be in the Now, which is really just to be still in mind and body."

March 02nd, 2020

3/2/2020

 
Picture
Oregon coast
Mary Oliver:

"The sea can do craziness, it can do smooth.

It can lie down like silk breathing
or toss havoc shoreward; it can give

gifts or withhold all; it can rise, ebb, froth
like an incoming frenzy of fountains, or it can
sweet-talk entirely."

    Archives

    December 2024
    November 2024
    October 2024
    September 2024
    August 2024
    July 2024
    June 2024
    May 2024
    April 2024
    March 2024
    February 2024
    January 2024
    December 2023
    November 2023
    October 2023
    September 2023
    August 2023
    July 2023
    June 2023
    May 2023
    April 2023
    March 2023
    February 2023
    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    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

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.
  • Home
  • New Page
  • 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