Category: POSTS BY MONTH

Passing

This was made from a photo of reflections on a wall. They did indeed pass, as soon as the sun moved on! When I looked at them I first thought of a group of cloaked figures walking past.

Passing: passing through Now, passing beyond the past, passing over the past, passing on… , passing over, passing for . . . So much depends on prepositions!

A City Called Life : Home

Home. From: A City Called Life Series

This picture is in one of the first series which I made and the only one in which I left a recognizable person, tho slightly photo-shopped, because I did ask his permission, and gave him something in return.

Home is not a place, it’s a feeling, said someone, I forget who!

I don’t think it’s necessary to say much about this pic, but I invite you to ask yourself what the idea of Home means to you.

(If you want to know more about the City Called Life Series, click on the Series Heading on the Home Page and drop down to City)

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Soundings

“To take soundings” means, amongst other things, to drop a line down into the depths, to find out what is down there, below the surface, measuring how deep down the line will go.

In these Covid times, where very little is “normal”, we have been forced, willy nilly, to take stock of our situations and face ourselves to a degree which we may have rarely had to do before. In this pandemic, with mega-uncertainty about most things, with outcomes depending on many factors beyond our control and constantly having to make choices whether to do this or that without sufficient information, we are called on to look very deeply into ourselves, to “take soundings” to find out what is really important to us
and each in our own way, to find in these depths the resources to cope with it all. All this as horrors play out on the world stage.

And then there’s the lesser problems! We are learning that there is more than one way to do many things, work, shop, meet etc. Like most of us who are single and have no family in town, it’s not just that social isolation itself is a problem for me, but also the lack of connection and touch with “real”people.

Then today I remembered a poem which I used to keep pinned up on a bulletin board. The board has gone now but I still hold the poem in my heart. For when I need it!

IN ALL WEATHERS

only this is necessary
in rain or sun:
to follow step with step
and know the ground.
to reach out your hand,
or touch with eyes, or with the heart.
to praise, in gratitude and wonder, praise
the budding, blooming, withering worlds.
to see the forests and the trees
to etch no lines.
to weave yourself a garment or maybe even wings
with all your gathered threads
from questions, loves and wonderings,
a garment ending in a fringe
where Self or One, no question now, only depends
on where and why and and how you need to look
this moment.
here.
and in the end
to sit, or lie, or walk, or stand
open, breath by breath
hearing the one song pulse through all
the summing, sighing, shimmering, sounds.
or just to be
in silence
and to know
no whether.

Untold Story Tree

From the Tree as Symbol Series : Untold Story Tree

We all have our stories, the ones we tell ourselves about who we are; the ones we tell other people about who we are. And they are not always quite the same!

The untold story is the one you don’t tell the world but carry around inside yourself, sometimes a painful story . Or perhaps it’s the third story to someones else’s two-sided story, or may be the imagined story you hold onto about someone else.

Maybe it’s “the real story”. Maybe it is not! It’s a good idea to take out old stories sometimes and give them a shake! (Nations as well as people!!)

Natural Light Effects : TFI

This not a typical post. This time it’s not art but photographs, albeit slightly blurred, which in this case was a good thing! I had not originally intended to include straight photos in this blog. (I have another place for that), but there are a few, since one of my aims is to get people to really look at things which they might not have noticed before.

This is a closeup of part of a spider web, caught in just the right light to show a Thin Film Interference (TFI) light effect on the strands. This is what a spider web contains! Or rather, this is what your eyes may see if you are lucky enough to catch a web in front of a dark background, like the shaded woodland here, but against the light. The colours which we see are not “what is”, but rather what is produced through the combination of our eyes’ lenses, the available light, the position, the background, the materials, the distance etc.

This spiderweb effect may be due to Thin Film Interference, the same thing that produces colours in soap bubbles or films of oil or gas on a road, or it may be Diffraction. Opinions differ and the physics of it all is beyond me!

According to Wikipedia, Richard Feynman has said,

BTW, the circles in the above photo (possibly what some people call “orbs”) are likely dust particles, as they catch the light.

Something similar can also be seen sometimes on close-ups of dandelion spokes, probably not very visible in the small photo below. The iridescence of some bird’s feathers, beetles etc., is another closely connected effect. If you want to know more, check out TFI and Diffraction on the web.

Next Text

Next Text

Next text: what does that mean? Perhaps it could mean that the petals of a flower (ie Nature), superimposed over twisted lines of text, give a new and urgently needed view of “next”; perhaps it could mean that there is some text, of whatever kind, that is especially meaningful and deserves to be decorated with a flower? Or perhaps the background is not text at all! Whatever it suggests to you, that is what it “means”!

The Tree Sets Sail

From the Tree as Symbol series : The Tree Sets Sail

The Tree sets sail; how absurd is that!  Well, perhaps you remember that in this series, The Tree is a symbol for the individual and /or for our society, even our “world”.  This is the world of myth, so a tree can sail!   Here, the Tree is not adrift; its own branches and leaves are its sails. It has left its safe harbour and is setting out  on a voyage into unknown waters.

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The real voyage of discovery consists not of seeking new  landscapes, but of seeing with new eyes. – MARCEL PROUST

Every day is not just another assignment. It is a small but contained voyage of discovery- DAVID DOUBILET

There is a tide in the affairs of men, Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune; Omitted, all the voyage of their life Is bound in shallows and in miseries. We must take the current when it serves, or lose the venture                    – WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

 

Mixed Metaphor

I have always been fond of Oriental carpets, particularly irregular tribal ones, and have usually had one or more wherever I have lived, from childhood on. My most recent move was to an apartment where there was no space for my favorite rug. So it remained rolled up in storage. Later when I went to unroll it, out flew hundreds of moths! They had had such a good meal that, though I considered it, there was no sense in trying to restore it. So, sadly, out it went. A rug which had flown across several continents, both before it became mine, and afterwards as I moved, made a final journey into the garbage!

This is made from a photo of a poor replica of such a carpet, a small factory- made rug. The resulting twist reminds me both of a butterfly (a relative of the moth, I suppose!) and of the flying carpets of myth and children’s stories, both of which could be a metaphor for flying away to some wonderful place or state.

It is interesting to consider why you love to have certain objects around you in whatever place you may live. Is it because your childhood home had them? Is there a symbolic reason? For instance, I have lived in many types of dwelling, from one room to a large house, but just to name a few things, there always have to be cushions, handmade pottery, lots of little wooden drawers, in my home, and because I am a bookish woman, many shelves. (My ex said once, “you are a shelfish woman”. He had to build them!)

Do you have certain musts in your furnishings or decorations?