White

pure morning light is

captured and held by the snow

for just a moment

 

 

 

 

winter's spell so cold

holds us in  freeze-frame magic

still pause between breaths

My Rocky Mountain experience

I returned from a vacation in Glacier National Park, Yellowstone, and surrounding areas almost a week ago, but am only now beginning to get my head back down to earth. This was my first trip to the Rockies, and it was a truly transcendent experience. I can attest that I do feel changed by the mountains, in ways that I'm unable to put into words.


In my attempts to find a way to express this, I keep coming up with phrases like "clarity of being", or "a present stillness."
I feel like the mountains are somehow in my soul, and always will be.



Even to my own ears, this sounds hokey and "new-agey", but I don't know another way to say it.





So will I build my altar in the fields,
And the blue sky my fretted dome shall be,
And the sweet fragrance that the wild flower yields
Shall be the incense I will yield to thee.
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Happy Birthday, America

It rained here all day yesterday, so most of the scheduled fireworks displays were kind of fizzled out. In their place, I decided to post a few photos from past celebrations.






Happy Birthday, America!

Now I get it, Monet.

The last time I went to our place in the country, the pond had adopted some new inhabitants- water lilies. I'm pretty fascinated by water in general, as you may have noticed, and this development gave me a whole new angle on photographing water.




To be honest, I had never thought about why Monet painted waterlilies again and again. I guess I thought he painted them because, well, they were THERE.


I do understand why he was drawn to water as a subject, though. The colors, the effects of light on its surface, reflecting sky, land, trees- it's an ever-changing and mesmerizing show. Water can move with great force, carrying huge trees as if they were matchsticks, or be as absolutely still as the surface of a mirror. The mysteries of its depths and the life within them captivate me.


Water can appear as smooth as glass until broken by the undulation of a wave. Sometimes it looks like ice, or, oddly enough, jello. It encompasses three worlds: beneath, surface, and reflected above. Perhaps this is what gives it its magical qualities, often spoken of in fairy tales and other stories.




When I began to look at the lily pads on the water, I realized they were connected to the soil on the bottom of the pond by what appear to be long, thin strings. While I had always that they're green, in actuality they vary from yellow to green to red to purple. Moving with the liquid they rest upon, they float on top, and sometimes carry water themselves.


So I took bunches of pictures, not really expecting them to be very interesting.


When I downloaded them onto my computer, I was completely amazed. Why Monet never tired of painting them, why he put them on canvases as big as the side of a house- I get it now.

Fly Away

Today I want to fly away,
(no thinking)
to rise,
(no planning)
to ride on a cool breeze;
(no worrying)

no thinking.
no planning.
no worrying.

Drop a bundle of regrets
into the deepest sea.

forget all boundaries.
just be.

today
I want to fly away.

Butterfly Girl (Little Mona Lisa)

This was another Photoshop exercise. I took this photo at a recent butterfly show at the Krohn conservatory. Unfortunately, it was a very dark and rainy day, so it turned out pretty grainy. But I liked the image because the girl had such a mysterious expression- an inscrutable smile, you could say. She reminded me of a young version of the Mona Lisa, so I wanted to see if I could fix the photo. I thought it would be cool, since it was grainy, to make it appear to be an old sepia print, with the butterfly in color to make it stand out more. I ended up calling my son, who guided me through the process of making a mask, etc., to accomplish this, which we finally did. Another problem was that the girl's face was at the edge of the frame, so there was a lot of unwanted space behind her. We were able to kind of blur this out and make it darker, but the yucky composition still bugged me, so I cropped it. My son said it was not "professional" to crop the frame, and that it was still too grainy. I had hoped to enter it in a photo contest, but because the quality isn't what it should be, I guess I'll just chalk it up to a learning experience. I still like it this way, though.

Kinneyconnick

This place is sacred to me; a place of peace and beauty. Profound connection with the Earth is an experience for which there are no words, because it is beyond thought- it's in our very blood and bones. Walt Whitman tries to express this truth in his poem "Song of the Rolling Earth", excerpted here.



A song of the rolling earth, and of words according,
Were you thinking that those were the words, those upright lines?
those curves, angles, dots?
No, those are not the words, the substantial words are in the ground
and sea,
They are in the air, they are in you.



Air, soil, water, fire-those are words,
I myself am a word with them-my qualities interpenetrate with
theirs-my name is nothing to them,
Though it were told in the three thousand languages, what would
air, soil, water, fire, know of my name?



Whoever you are! you are he or she for whom the earth is solid and
liquid,
You are he or she for whom the sun and moon hang in the sky,
For none more than you are the present and the past,
For none more than you is immortality.



I swear I begin to see little or nothing in audible words,
All merges toward the presentation of the unspoken meanings of the
earth,
Toward him who sings the songs of the body and of the truths of the
earth,
Toward him who makes the dictionaries of words that print cannot
touch.

More Photoshop Weirdness

My very slow Photoshop education continues...mostly by trial and error. But I am learning, and having fun when I don't get too frustrated.
Here's the photo I stated with. I wanted to make the ripples more prominent,


which led me to this. Of course, I have to keep pushing it, just to see what happens.



After several incarnations, it's starting to look pretty strange and science fiction-y. But I don't stop yet...



Okay, this is too weird, even for me.



I decided to go with the science fiction theme here. I wanted to test my skills and see if I could make it look like the moon was coming out of, (or going into) the water.



It could certainly use some improvement, but I'm making progress! what do you think?

The Suspenseful Tale of a Bipolar Week, or, Snow and Ice and Viruses- Oh My!

Well, the past week has been sort of bipolar, from good to bad, frustration to joy.
First, joy: the beautiful snow, plus a whole week off from school! I took my first real photos with my new camera, and had lots of fun watching the birds. It was great.
Then, frustration: my computer stopped working. It started with a notice from my anti-virus program, so I ran a complete scan. The next morning (last Monday, our first snow day), no internet. Then my battery backup surge protector stopped working, making a horrible screeching noise. Without going into boring details, I spent lots of time on the phone with the manufacturer, who finally decided to send me a new one.
Joy! The problem would be fixed! So I unplugged it from the battery backup and into the wall.
More frustration: I still could not get on the internet. After trying all the fixes my son knew, I called the internet provider. More large chunks of time on the phone later, they decide I need a new modem.
Joy: Another snow day, but we have a 4WD truck, so went and got the new modem.
Frustration: After installing the new modem, I still couldn't get on the internet. The anti-virus program detected 41 viruses. WHAT??!!! That's when I noticed the anti-virus system that kept popping up wasn't the one I had installed. Apparently, it was a virus/spyware thing that was taking over my computer like those creepy alien things in that movie.
I called my son (who had lost electricity due to the ice storm), for about the 10th time. We spent much time trying to get rid of THE THING, but to no avail. ARRRGH!!
Joy: More snow days, so I had time to do some artwork, seeing as how my computer was not working.
Frustration: By about Thursday, The cabin fever set in, yet the roads were still icy. My son thought he could download a program that would get rid of THE THING, and email it to my daughter, who lives down the street from me. She could then put it on a flashdrive and bring it over. The email didn't come through. My daughter had to work. She also had to do homework. She was cranky, and my kids decided that I was addicted to the internet. Ha! They couldn't live without it for ten minutes on a bet.
The cabin fever grew.
Joy: She finally brought it over on Sunday night.
Frustration: It would not install. We kept trying, and it just kept disappearing.
Joy: Just when we were about to give up, it installed. I started the scan, and went to bed.
More joy: Monday morning, it had run for over 5 hours, and seemed to have conquered THE THING. YAAAAAY!!!!
And even more joy: We have another snow day today!


Does anyone know what kind of bird this is? I think he's very cute.





Deep and profound lessons I learned from this experience:
1. Too much of a good thing (i.e. snow days) is not a good thing.
2. Neither is too much of a bad thing.
3. I really, really, really HATE computer viruses!
4. My kids are way smarter than me, as well as kind and patient.
5. Many things look very weird when covered in ice.