Close Up of Twelve

   Twelve is a number of completion and wholeness. There are twelve months in the year, twelve signs of the Zodiac, twelve inches in a foot, twelve tribes of Israel, twelve disciples of Christ, and the twelve steps. No to mention twelve colored pencils!

What is it?

   

 

The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera.

 

~Dorthea Lange~ 

 



Looking Ahead

One of the gifts of photography is that I am so much more aware now, after all these years, of how fleeting these beautiful little shows can be.  Like miracles, they're all around us, but we have to be very conscious, very mindful, to notice them.  They're almost impossible to capture, and, like moments of enlightenment, they tend to fade as quickly and quietly as they arrive. Which doesn't mean they don't exist, or don't matter.  In fact, the memory of beauty often feeds our eyes and souls for weeks and months to come. Just as this archived picture from last spring reminds me of the beauty and mystery of creation. I look forward to its bloom this spring.

A World in Ice?

 

    

 

  Might the sun turn to ice someday? Would our world look this beautiful?  In Marc Nepo's The Book of Awakening he says, "Nothing escapes the Creator's cycle. Not plants, trees, birds, or human beings. All living things emerge, gather new life, fall apart, die and emerge in new ways." Just as these ice crystals formed, fell apart and emerged again in a different form; the cycle was completed. What a metaphor for life as we live it. Constantly evolving, seeking, emerging as part of a beautiful creation that God calls "good" "very good."

 

The 60's

   For weeks I've been trying to put words to this image. It seems every time I looked at the image words would not come freely, and back into the archives it would go. Today after hearing this old tune from the  60's " The Good Bad and the Ugly" which for me evokes memories, then the words for the photograph seemed nonessential. Quickly, I found myself enthralled with the music and my carefree days of the 60's. The photo is left to tell its own story!

  It is cool to see how the song was was made after all these years.   

This is fantastic. Turn it up nice and loud and enjoy. For those still caught in the 60's groove - this is the answer to how that magnificent signature tune came about...
Superb....wait till the guy whistles!!!
 

                               http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=pLgJ7pk0X-s

The Ukulel Orchesta of Great Britan -" THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY!!"
 

 

A Furry Catkin

Fascinating of trees, the willows now,

Hung with silky aments along their bough.

Bearing scaly bracts with utmost pride,

Wearing white for the Palm Sunday tide.

Since I looked for trees in bloom,

Knowing that Easter will be upon us soon.

About the awakening woodland I stroll,

To see the willow trees as white as snow.

~Henery Renaldi~ 

     

 
  According to a Polish legend, a mother cat was crying at the bank of a river where her kittens had fallen while chasing butterflies. The willow trees dipped their long slender branches into the water so that the kittens could hold on to it and be safely brought to shore. Every spring thereafter, the willow branches would sprout little furry buds at the places where the kittens once clung.

water drops

              Listen to the sound of waves within you.

Ash Wednesday

                                                                 Ash Wednesday
                                                      the beginning of the journey

Thoughts on Silence

  Silence is important — but what's going on in these silences, these empty spaces? Total silence or a completely empty space is a rare thing. There's always someone coughing or scraping their shoe; there's always some fly buzzing at the window or an aircraft whining in the distance. Even the state of peace and tranquillity you could reasonably expect to find in the depths of the countryside is far from silent. There's always something going on, some sound to hear: the birds tweeting, a stream gurgling, the wind tearing through the trees. Perhaps you could then speculate that these sounds of nature do in fact reveal the true silence of nature, in the sense that behind and beyond these real, physical, natural noises you might faintly detect the hidden, metaphysical pulse of nature, the barely discernible rhythm of the universe, the mystical reverberation of deep silence. Which some have identified as a low hum. Ha, we're back to sound again!

I suppose true, unadulterated silence or empty space is utterly airless and featureless: a vacuum, a black hole, a nothing. In other words, completely boring — without interest, without substance, without definition, without meaning, without any possibility of change or transformation.

What's intriguing, I think, that there is no silence in silence. Is this the contemplative zen silence at the heart of all things, at the heart of the atom, at the heart of the universe, at the heart of music, at the heart of poetry, at the heart of ourselves? And what does this silence sound like?

But for some reason the image above pauses for silence, and with that I can pause also.

Delight

 

 

Every object, every being,

is a jar full of delight.

Be a connoisseur, and taste with caution.

~ Rumi~

 

 

Incomplete

 

Wabi sabi celebrates
the beauty of things imperfect, impermanent, or incomplete

the beauty of things modest and humble

  and

the beauty of things unconventional.

 

 

 

Walk through, an old building

preferably an old one that struggles

to survive yet another harsh winter,

and you will discover the essence of wabi-sabi:

nothing permanent, everything in beautiful transition.

Awareness

The things we see every day 

                                               are the things we never see at all.

~CK Chesterton~