Category Archives: Photography

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Humanity

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Curiosity, creativity, collaboration, compassion.

Spontaneity, self-esteem, self-reliance, morality.

 

Ignorance, competition, capitalism, aggression.

Complaint, dogma, habit, paranoia. 

 

Love and appreciation. 

Ego and aversion.

 

Open. 

Closed.

I observe humanity, myself included.  What’s been in the news and on my mind?  Landing a roving data-collector on Mars.  The fatal shootings at a Sikh gurdwara here in Wisconsin.  (My sister is a Sikh.)  Drought and global warming.  Conversations with Steve about who we want to be, how we want to live, what risks we are willing to take, what new modes of being we want to develop.  Trying to see my inner self and assess it with honesty and compassion.   Hoping and yearning for my children.   Monitoring my energy. 

We are living.  We claim and generate energy, all the time.   The flow of that energy is governed by our choices.  (Ours and other living things’, although we humans are the ones who make cognitive choices.  Plants, animals, planets and cosmic particles participate in that flow differently.)  We are responsible for our choices.  Are we looking carefully and critically at those choices?  Are we blaming some other source for the results of our choices?  Are we even aware of the results or do we look the other way?

7 billion people.  We are making an impact on the Universe.  Do we like the results we observe?  Can we do better?  Can I do better?

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Living Inside Out

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Denholm Elliott in the Merchant Ivory production of “A Room With a View” portrays one of my favorite wise characters.  I love the scene at the pensione when he’s trying to convince two women unhappy with their accommodations to take his room which has a view.

“I don’t care what I see outside!  My vision is within.  Here is where the birds sing!  Here is where the sky is blue!” 

He is gesticulating with his dinner fork, poking himself in the heart all the while.  Sometimes I need a good poke in the heart as well to wake up that inner vision.  I find myself feeling bored and peevish, discontent with my fortune.  Why a traffic ticket now?  Why didn’t I get that early bird discount?  What am I supposed to do with myself when it’s 95 degrees out, I’m wearing a tight corset, I’m at work, there are no visitors to talk to, and I’ve got no chores to do?  Why am I feeling so stuck?!?  Because I’m not taking responsibility and I’m not living from the inside out.  I am waiting for the outside world to stimulate and satisfy me. 

And the outside world would love to take over that job!  There are a million things to distract and entertain and lead you from one external thing to the next.  I spent 4 hours this morning at the Wisconsin State Fair, manning the Tourism booth in my 19th Century costume.  A quick tour after my shift was all I needed to grab a lamb sandwich and some fresh roasted corn on the cob.  I passed up all kinds of brightly colored, noisy stuff.  I don’t need a chamois cloth or a giant roller coaster ride or chocolate covered bacon on a stick.  They’re not really going to make me happy.  I want to be satisfied from within, and I want that for my children.  I tend to worry about their fortunes, too.   How are they going to get a job?  How are they going to pay off those student loans?  How are they going to get around if their cars break down?  I find myself getting anxious and peevish on their behalf, too.  But really, more than catching a break, I want them to catch that inner vision.  I want them to be able to be satisfied and happy and enthusiastic about life no matter what their outward circumstances show.

An inner life.  Unassailable, regenerating, like solar energy that continues for millenniums.  Do we even teach our children to cultivate that anymore?  How are we supposed to have a moral compass if we don’t?  How does a nation of outwardly motivated and distracted people develop a moral compass to guide their democratic process?  I wonder about these things…..

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Where Am I?

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Ever go walking in your own neighborhood and take a new turn that you’ve never taken and find yourself wondering what world you’ve stepped into?  In my town of Wauwatosa, I discovered that there’s a 420 million year old limestone reef tucked away behind an industrial site…used to be a quarry.  I wandered down there after a rainstorm last week.  I saw stuff I didn’t expect to see…

…even though there’s no access to the reef just yet.   We can all be travelers, even within a 5-mile radius.

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Playground Photos

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Earthbound, solid structures surround me.  My eyes shoot upward toward the moon.  Life is so much more than my immediate environment.  Hard and colorful  outlines are surely blurry and insignificant when viewed from that other orb.  I must remember this.  I freeze the thought in a frame…and wish I could expand the edges to infinity.

 

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Walking After the Rain

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Rain changes everything.  After 4 weeks of drought, it refreshes the scent of the earth and the color of the grass.  The corn leaves uncurl and look fuller, too.   Here are some photos I took after (and during) a good thundershower on Thursday.

I posted a photo of this same porch about a month ago. The difference? Now the pots have flowers in them.

Hooray for folks who own and care for historic houses in my neighborhood!

Cloud in a puddle. Sounds like the name of an old recipe.

I hope your weekend is refreshing you!

 

 

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Thank You!

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I was so excited to see this view from my front steps today:

Rain! Glorious rain!

We’ve had a few really good thunderstorms lately, after no rain at all for 4 weeks.  I was so happy that I ran down the sidewalk yelling “Thank you!” to the Universe.  Then Steve and I took a good, long walk around town for about 2 hours.  I will share pictures over the next few days.  I love the smell of rain, wet earth and wet wood.  I love the feel of a cool spray coming through the open window in the middle of a hot night.  I don’t even mind getting up to lower the windows to protect the books from a drenching!  Looking forward to a good, cool sleep tonight…

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Adventure!

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The season for Old World Wisconsin ends in October.  Steve and I are gearing up for a 2-3 week road trip.  We have about 9 possible itineraries, National Forests and Parks mostly.  We’ve come to call this “our trip to metaphorical Maine” because although Maine is one of the top contenders, it is really just serving as the title of an unknown eventual destination.  This is how Steve prefers to travel, and he is teaching me to appreciate the spirit of living in the moment rather than planning for safety and control.  Not that Steve is an “extreme” kind of guy, a risk-taker for the sake of it, or anything like that.  It’s really more a Zen kind of thing of being aware of conditions as they arise and dancing with them rather than putting on blinders and sticking to a railroad track. 

We recently borrowed the DVD of “The Sheltering Sky” starring Debra Winger and John Malkovich.  I’m sure the book was better, but the film has some terrific cinematic landscapes and brings up a lot of interesting questions.  Like, “What is the difference between a tourist and a traveler?”  A tourist wants the comforts of home.  A traveler seeks adventure.  I recently had a conversation with a co-worker who talked about a visit to France and only mentioned that there were no bugs or birds and that French waiters substitute Sprite for lemonade.  This guy never thought he’d leave the country in his lifetime.  Maybe he shouldn’t have!

I feel like I have been working on my personal demons (neuroses, grief, all that baggage) and have gained some courage and self-confidence since our last big trip.  I did have one memorable meltdown in a rest stop off the highway in the pouring rain from about 2-4 in the a.m.  That was April of 2011, and we were on the road for 4 weeks.  Here’s a shot taken somewhere near the Colorado River in Utah that illustrates one of the many decision discussions we had.  Do you want to take this road or not?  Why? 

There’s no “right answer” and there’s no judgement, Steve told me.  “I just want to know what you think about when you make decisions.”  What are we here for?  What do we call “living”?  Is it “to be safe and have children and grandchildren”?  Is it “to learn to praise God and serve Him”?  There are a million ways to answer that question.  Steve describes his answer to me every time we have a conversation.  He wants to meet life with awareness, engage in nuance and complexity, question and think critically, try to discover delusion, respond in the moment to what is before him, and participate in the adventure of living, as holistically as he can.  Yesterday, I read a short science fiction story by E.M. Forster called “The Machine Stops”.   It describes a futuristic world where the human race is run by Machine and never ventures to the surface of the earth.  It’s eerie how much that could be the life of modern individuals plugged into the Internet with no experience of the physical phenomenons of Earth.   What kind of life do I really want to live?  What kind of courage do I have to face the adventure of living?  Do I prefer comfort to challenge?  These are good questions to take out for a road test.   I’m looking forward to it! 

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Half Way Around

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Traveling ’round the sun, it seems we’re always half way done.  Imagining the opposites, the contrasts, the dualistic ideals.  If what is happening now is somehow unsatisfying, we’ve only to think that on the other side of the globe, things are completely different.  Somewhere, life is cool and peaceful while we struggle with heat and violence.

If we expand our thinking, though, we realize that everything is…always.  It is cool and hot and peaceful and violent and slow and fast and everything in between.  It is then and now and never and always.  The distinctions and boundaries are simply concepts in our brains like the lines on the map that don’t really exist when you walk the earth.   All is.  Particular conditions arise and manifest particular things of which we become aware, but those materials have always been and always are in the world.  There are no beginnings, no endings. 

‘Tis a gift to be simple; ’tis a gift to be free; ’tis a gift to come ’round where we ought to be…  When true simplicity is gained, to bow and to bend we shan’t be ashamed.  To turn, turn, will be our delight; ’til by turning, turning, we come ’round right. – Shaker song

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Family Milestone

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I have been absent from the blogosphere for a few days in order to be present at a family event.  My oldest, Susan, and her First Mate, Andy, invited a small contingent of family and friends to support them in a Handfasting ceremony.  We gathered in a woodland setting to witness their vows and verbalize our advice and wishes in a ritual with varied symbolism.  The result is, finally, that they are engaged.  They will now begin to plan the final steps toward Marriage, which for my daughter has been a big, scary journey into never-ending adulthood that has made her skittish for years.  This social event has her two sisters and at least one future sister-in-law completely ecstatic, and sent them into a frenzy of beautifying and picture-taking that reminded me of their school days on the cheerleading and pom-pom squads…

Girls will be girls

My son was much more restrained and tired from his night shift job and travel, but he surprised me by looking more like his dad than ever before. 

For Susan, the event put her in the spotlight in a way that made her very nervous and vulnerable, but to her credit, she was aware of the neurotic nature of that anxiety and owned it with humor.  Which only made her more adorable to Andy.

During the ceremony itself, I really wanted to pay attention to the real time emotion and meaning of the moment.  While others snapped pictures, I put my camera down and watched the expressions of my daughter intently as her beloved read his vows and she read hers.  Together they fashioned a three-stranded cord and allowed themselves to be bound together.  I was in tears watching and hearing and feeling and believing right along with them. 

Afterwards, of course, we had feasting and drinking and gifting at a Chinese restaurant.

If we all look like we are glowing and flushed, I can assure you it’s not because of quantity of drink so much as the fact that it was almost 100 degrees Fahrenheit outside, and it was, after all, an outdoor event. 

The heat wave continues, and the wave of good feelings does, too.  My daughter is grown and growing; she is building a very strong, very loving, very supportive relationship with a person she has admired since she was 11 years old.  And it is very good.  I suppose I can now take a sabbath rest for a day…I’ve been given tomorrow off from work because of the hot weather.

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Pointing Your Canoe

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Who do you want to be?  How do you want to live?  What do you want to do with your life?  Where do you want to point your canoe? 

Doesn’t matter where your canoe came from…Steve found this one at a garage sale

Strap it down and get ready to roll…

Set a course for your adventure and enjoy the ride!