The friend with whom I am visiting is recovering from surgery and so we stay close to her home. If you follow my blog you know that I love to peer at and through windows. Here, when I sit at her kitchen table, I peer out a window and see stacked containers of pots for plants and a sunflower growing from her compost pail. The cat referred to in yesterday’s post will sit at the window and commune with a chipmunk. A red bird flew by and there’s a resident hawk perhaps stalking the rabbits I’ve seen in the neighboring yards. From my bedroom window I could see last night’s moon. It was full and bright, so large, and its light shed on racing clouds painting them with cotton-candy hues. I tried to take a picture but then stopped and just enjoyed the light show. Walking is part of my friend’s recuperation and so soon we intend to walk along a canal. We’ll see what pictures are produced. Have a good day. 😉
Posts Tagged ‘musings’
through different windows
Posted in Inspiration, On the Road, tagged friendship, Inspiration, musings, windows on August 17, 2016| Leave a Comment »
the unexpected philosophy of kale
Posted in Inspiration, Kitchen Inspirations, tagged food, food photography, Inspiration, kale, musings, perspective, Photography, vegetables on July 24, 2016| 1 Comment »
The kale was purchased from the farmers market yesterday. It is a big green bouquet sitting in a silver bowl of water next to the window in the kitchen. The wide frilled leaves are draped over my basil and a few other herbs. It’s temporary shade since we’ll soon eat it up. But until the cooking commences, sunlight shines through the larger leaves.
From across the room I could make out the pale tracery of the stem. It was that illumination that drew me across the room. That was what I intended to photograph, the stems and the various branching. But when I got close my eyes were drawn to something different.
The interior darknesses like shadows in a dense forest. The curling of the leaves. The subtle variation in the colors of green. The leaves reflected in the water like dark clouds in a white sky or fir trees reflected in a still pond.
It was an unexpected moment of observation and exploration of perspective. All to be found in a few leaves of kale. 😉
there will be no pea soup
Posted in Branches, Inspiration, Kitchen Inspirations, tagged gardening, indoor gardening, Inspiration, musings, peas, Photography, plants on May 12, 2016| 1 Comment »
Not with my one pea pod. In the right light I can see the tiny peas. One for sure. Two maybe. I’m hoping for three. The whole pod is about three-quarters of an inch. The largest pea is the size of the smallest seed bead and the smallest pea like a period. Why does such a tiny thing bring me joy? Even in the midst of pain, physical or otherwise, I look at that pod and it makes me smile. And I wish I could box up that feeling, in tiny boxes of course, and mail it out to the friends and family who need some joy in their lives. Or at least a momentary smile.
pilgrim
Posted in Inspiration, tagged compassion, empowerment, homeless, Inspiration, musings, Pilgrim Magazine, storytelling, writers on April 3, 2016| 3 Comments »
I recently met a man who was rather wizened. His hair and beard were white as snow. He was bent over and not just from the bulging back pack he wore. He leaned heavily upon a cane. Still, there was a youthful air about him especially that twinkle in his eyes. He entered the place where I was working and asked to use the bathroom. Now even as I prepared to utter the standard words often uttered in the heart of Boston, he stopped me. “Yes, yes, I know. You don’t have a public restroom. But this is an emergency.” Isn’t it always, I thought.
But then he proceeded to share the nature of his emergency and so after making a quick call for coverage, I helped the gentleman to the bathroom. It was a circuitous path down several small flights of stairs and around some corners. He moved slowly and so he and I had time to chat. And as he talked I could not help but remark, “Sir, you do have a way with words.” He laughed. “Well, I should. I’m a writer.” As we eventually made our way back up the stairs, we talked some more. Once again I remarked upon his way with words. He chuckled, that youthful gleam awful bright. “Have you ever heard of The Pilgrim?” I hadn’t. ” Thumping his chest, he said, “Well, I write for The Pilgrim.”
I saw him to the door. We wished each other well and that was that. I forgot about our encounter until today, for some odd reason, and decided to look up his magazine. I was not completely surprised but still a bit startled to see that it is a publication written by the homeless. It’s edited by Atlantic columnist James Parker and published out of Boston’s Cathedral Church of St. Paul. You can read more about the publication via this link: http://www.thepilgrim.org/#!about/c69s
After reading several entries on the Pilgrim Blog, I almost titled this blog post “hard reading.” The writing is intense. Of the pieces I’ve read so far, one of the most moving passages, Adam Staggering, was written by someone who is no longer homeless but still adrift. And then there’s The Bed Lottery by Ricardo. The print publication must be filled with so much more and that is available through subscription.
I’m glad my path crossed with that of the wizened little man. I only wish that I had asked his name so that I might know which pieces he had written.
Image Source: The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Print Collection, The New York Public Library. “Head of an old man.” The New York Public Library Digital Collections. http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47db-ca87-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99
reminiscent of antique lace
Posted in Branches, Inspiration, Nature Notes, tagged colors, gold, Inspiration, musings, Mystic River, nature, Photography, urban landscape on March 20, 2016| 3 Comments »
sharing light
Posted in Inspiration, tagged candle, Inspiration, light, musings, Photography on March 14, 2016| 2 Comments »
It has not been the worst winter (at least in New England) but it has certainly been a dark winter for too many people I know. I think, in part, the light they seek is within and not without but that does not mean I cannot light a candle for them. Have a good day, folks.
a painting prompt
Posted in Inspiration, Nature Notes, tagged family, imagination, Inspiration, musings, nature, painting prompt, storytelling on January 30, 2016| Leave a Comment »
My brother described a scene that I wish someone would paint.
He lives in Virginia, not in a rural place, but not an urban megalopolis either. A plain old city with a crumbling downtown and further out global firms building plants, and the accompanying fancy housing for their management, on lands that used to be working farms, if not outright plantations if you go back far enough.
It’s a city near the river and crisscrossed by highways but in the beginning it was the railroads that allowed this city to make its fortune, bridging north and south, a passage way for goods of all sorts.
It was on a literal bridge that the incident took place.
My brother was driving home on a nice new road. He was recounting stories of his day to me when he said, “Oh my God. You won’t believe …” I reacted thinking at first he was seeing a roadside accident. He calmed me down and then explained, “Overhead, the bridge that crosses the road, there are deer passing by in the night. They are walking on the railroad tracks on the bridge overhead fading in and out of the mist.”
A number of people pulled off the road to watch, like my brother, hoping no train would come before the animals could walk into the surrounding fields and woods. Nothing happened. Just the lingering memories of a beautiful sight.
sightings at creativity portal
Posted in Inspiration, tagged creativity, encouragement, family, Inspiration, musings, photo essay, Photography on January 16, 2016| 2 Comments »
Creativity-Portal.com is an award-winning site offering a wealth of creative resources to viewers for fifteen years. There you will find my latest photo essay, Sightings. Enjoy.
if I could paint …
Posted in Inspiration, Music, tagged beauty, creativity, Herbert Howells, Inspiration, music, musings, organs, random, Rhapsody No. 1 in D Flat, storytelling on December 7, 2015| 2 Comments »
… I would paint what I hear in this piece of music, Rhapsody No. 1 in D Flat Major by Herbert Howells. The entire piece is only five minutes and 35 seconds long, but it is the segment between 1:30 and 3:00 that moves me most. I first heard it being played a few weeks ago at Trinity Church in Copley Square. The organist, Colin Lynch, was rehearsing for Sunday services. I appreciated the beauty of his playing but at first the music itself did nothing for me … and then something happened. I was hooked. And then released. As he kept rehearsing the piece, I wanted to dash into the church and stop him to ask what in the world was he playing but that seemed inappropriate. I thought I’d catch him at the end of his rehearsal but I missed him.
Time passed, lots of traveling took place but I could still hear that music. I tried to describe the piece to other musicians and people who knew classical music far better than I. Keep in mind I have no language for music (which is why I want to paint what I’m hearing). I kept saying, “It’s the kind of music that, you know, leads you someplace,” and other not especially helpful phrases. I was about to give up my search when I did chance upon the organist. This time I stopped him in his tracks and asked, “Hey, Colin, what was that piece of music you were playing two weeks ago?”
He lifted an eyebrow but he indulged me. He helped me find the language to describe what I’d heard. And as we narrowed down the possibilities of what he may have been playing, he finally asked, “Was it loud? Did it get really loud?” “Yes!” I said, and so he nodded and then wrote down the possibilities.
It was Herbert Howell’s Rhapsody No. 1 in D Flat. Imagine my pleasure when I found this Youtube recording by Nigel Potts. Listen at your leisure. And that’s my random story this bright Monday morning. Have a good day, folks. 😉
he moves in darkness …
Posted in Inspiration, Nature Notes, On the Road, tagged fear, fences, Mending Wall, musings, nature, Photography, poetry, politics, Robert Frost on August 31, 2015| 2 Comments »
“He moves in darkness as it seems to me,
not of woods only and the shade of trees.”
— excerpt from Robert Frost’s Mending Wall
Yesterday, I watched a former politician speaking with great authority, as his wife looked upon him adoringly, as he spouted hatred and nurtured fears in a subtle way. I had to turn off the television before I put my shoe through it. I sat for a bit trying to remember that Booker T. Washington quote, about allowing no man to belittle his soul by making him hate him.
Not long afterwards I found myself reading about current politicians and wannabe politicians, echoing the sentiments of that former politician. They spoke with great gravity about the need for bordering walls. Southern walls. Northern walls. Who knows,maybe even walls within cities. Nothing new, I suppose. Throughout human history, there have been such calls. It’s the public response to those calls that I wonder most about.
In Frost’s poem, Mending Walls, as two men rebuild the wall separating their farms, one says, “Good fences make good neighbors.” The poem’s narrator replies…
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
“Why do they make good neighbors? …
Before I built a wall I’d ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That wants it down! …”
Words + Images 