Tag: Photography

Lightly child, lightly

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legs-light-color-bare-feet

And now an inaudible breeze, a mist, a silence, a kiss almost,
gathers them together,
erases them, caresses them, and very gently mends them.
Now they are as they are.
Now they can be recognized.

~ Vicente Aleixandre, from “The Class,” A Longing for the Light

Notes:

  • Vicente Pío Marcelino Cirilo Aleixandre y Merlo (1898 – 1984) was a Spanish poet who received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1977 “for a creative poetic writing which illuminates man’s condition in the cosmos and in present-day society.”
  • Image Source: mennyfox55. Poem Source: the distance between two doors
  • Prior “Lightly child, lightly” Posts? Connect here.
  • Post Title & Inspiration: Aldous Huxley: “It’s dark because you are trying too hard. Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly. Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply. Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them.”

Walking Cross-Town. With Snaps.

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dark-hands-paint

Snap a picture a minute, from the instant we open our eyes in the morning until we go to sleep. Calvino‘s words.  And they’ve stuck.

Snap. A pigeon, wings fluttering, in her soft landing.
Snap. Powder blue Converse sneakers.
Snap. A leafless tree on 48th rising out of concrete.
Snap. A wind gust from a passing truck lifts a green ribbon, it floats, twists and lands – softly, gently.
Snap. The morning sun, luminous, warming.

Snap. Snap. Snap. Snap. Snap. Snap.

Billions of Snaps of Light, stored, restored in a snap.

The Scoreboard? Light: Billions Served. Non-Light: ~ 30.

And, yet, here they come. Continue reading “Walking Cross-Town. With Snaps.” →

Guess.What.Day.It.Is?

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camel-wednesday-hump-day

Notes:

 

It’s been a long day

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floriane-de-lassee-Presence

Sleep comes its little while. Then I wake
in the valley of midnight or three a.m.
to the first fragrances of spring

which is coming, all by itself, no matter what.
My heart says, what you thought you have you do not have.
My body says, will this pounding ever stop?

~ Mary Oliver, from “An Old Story,” A Thousand Mornings

Notes:

Monday Morning: Don’t You Dare

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patty-Maher-back-photography-water

At 19, I read a sentence that re-terraformed my head: “The level of matter in the universe has been constant since the Big Bang.”  In all the aeons we have lost nothing, we have gained nothing – not a speck, not a grain, not a breath. The universe is simply a sealed, twisting kaleidoscope that has reordered itself a trillion trillion trillion times over.  Each baby, then, is a unique collision – a cocktail, a remix – of all that has come before: made from molecules of Napoleon and stardust and comets and whale tooth; colloidal mercury and Cleopatra’s breath: and with the same darkness that is between the stars between, and inside, our own atoms.  When you know this, you suddenly see the crowded top deck of the bus, in the rain, as a miracle: this collection of people is by way of a starburst constellation. Families are bright, irregular-shaped nebulae. Finding a person you love is like galaxies colliding. We are all peculiar, unrepeatable, perambulating micro-universes – we have never been before and we will never be again. Oh God, the sheer exuberant, unlikely face of our existences.

The honour of being alive. They will never be able to make you again.

Don’t you dare waste a second of it thinking something better will happen when it ends. Don’t you dare.

—    Caitlin Moran

Notes: Photo: Patty Maher (via My Modern Met). Quote: Hidden Shores