Tag Archives: black & white photography

Defiance

Posted on by Standard 12

I started thinking about this post when I was dangling from the bar in the playground. I wasn’t supposed to be dangling, I was supposed to be doing chin ups, but the up part… well… it was more complicated than I first expected. There were a couple of guys putting some new paint on the pool house trim at the local rec center where I am dangling, slightly defeated. I pretended I was stretching my arms, as if I intended to be hanging here unable to lift myself. I may be weak, but still proud. I’m no triathlete, but I pride myself in staying in shape. Hundreds of flights of stairs, yoga, push ups… I mean… I put effort into this. An inch shouldn’t be too much to ask. Seriously, an inch up. How hard can that be? Apparently, much harder than it looks.

I flip over and dangle by my knees off the bar, upside down. Though absolutely no health benefits in doing this, it still provided a brief acrobatic feeling that took away the shame of no chin up. I swung back and forth looking at the slides and jungle gym. Kids play here all day and they use these bars. When I was a kid I used these bars. I bend backward and grab my ankles. If I had a popsicle hanging out of my mouth the scene would be complete. I commit to returning here several times a week. One pull up. One chin up. Anything. That is my goal. My defiant Holy Grail.

I get back on my bike and head off down a trail that winds through neighborhoods and hugs a creek. I haven’t ridden in years, but like the chin ups, feels like the next phase somehow. Nothing makes you feel younger than riding a bike. In two seconds you are ten years old and it’s summer. It does not provide the steady attention to nature I enjoy while hiking, but the feel of the wind in my face, and the speed… oh that feeling of flying down a hill. The thrill is no less wonderful to me now at age 52 than it was at 10. I’m rusty, but I don’t care. It’ll come.

I try some of the dirt paths made by local children. Some are steep down hills, while others have little bumps for rocketing your bike over. I delight in being one of the neighbor boys dashing over a hillside for just a few moments. There is a curious fear at lifting off the ground on a bike that daunts me a little at my age. “Broken bones and hips”, my ego whispers. “You could fall or crash”, the small voice whines. So I do it again and again. Fear be damned.

As I ride along, I realize there must be a way to get through a neighbor’s yard to the field beyond. A child would’ve figured that out. So I begin to look and sure enough, a slip of a pathway passes between two houses covered in bike treads that leads to the larger field. A man is heading out with the trash from one house and I dash down the passage quick as lightning before I can be flagged off. I laugh out loud as I hit the field and race across it through tall grass and hard packed trails. I am the opportunistic thief Oliver Twist would’ve been proud of.

Here’s the thing about falling in love with yourself. You are constantly looking for ways to enjoy life. Ways to entertain yourself. Ways to make yourself laugh. I laugh mostly at what I’ve been told about aging. When I turned forty the women at my office gave me black balloons and my cake in a wheel chair. They meant it to be funny, of course, but we don’t realize how much we tell each other it’s over when really its just begun. How much we share the passed on story of decline and decay that was given to us by someone else. That life is like some creepy, slow crawl to the grave. I don’t want to give that to any of you. I want to give you vitality and joy. Laughter and hunger to learn new things. To be plotting your next re-invention, not your retirement.

I want to give you defiance of what everyone has ever told you about the laws of the body and death. Death is coming. It is as certain as the sun rising. So what? That isn’t even interesting. It’s predictable. What’s interesting is what we are doing with the time we’ve been given. That’s fire. Ask yourself, what do I value above all else? Then chase that with the power of a lion. Today, for me, it’s freedom. It’s remembering the promises I made to myself in my youth. It’s remembering to keep the fire burning in my belly for the life I’ve been given. It’s defying everything I’ve been told about how things should be.

Worth a glance, a short list of those who defied age.
http://mindvalleyacademy.com/featured/never-too-late

Concrete jungle

Posted on by Standard 11
Steel, Brick, Flower, Petal: Photography by Noelle

Steel, Brick, Flower, Petal: Photography by Noelle

I squeeze through cracks
Social constraints like mortar
Tight against the brick
Growth of roots comes with ardor

Bits expressed
The tenacity of a weed
Dandelion colors
That turn into seed

Steel and stone
Blood and bone
I am earth and sky
Meant to fly

Periwinkle Night

Posted on by Standard 21
Free Bing Photos

Free Bing Photos

The sky is dense in periwinkle, as a handful of stars float in the early twilight. Objects appear sharp across the horizon as the earth falls to shadow and day’s light holds a bit longer to a vanishing mountain range.

I am alone.

There is a rhythm to these sojourns. A natural gate that draws the breath and heart rate down. I smell a mix of the swamp and fresh melted snow. The tall windows of a nearby house are completely awash in the night sky, giving the illusion that east is west. I see the ripple of ducks swimming silently in the dark.

I am not alone.

The earth is a conversation the Universe is having with me. It speaks of love and passion. Richness and possibility. Renewal and evolution. Its song seeps up from the soil through the soles of my feet. Every step a serenade. My breath a kiss with a wind that invigorates my life force, as only a lover can. The night has become a devotional played on cricket backs to me.

The light slips over mountain crests, as silent as a furry moth and rises again within my breast, lighting my vision for home.

Ode to the Magpie

Posted on by Standard 14
Free Bing photos

Free Bing photos

Aerodynamically speaking, the magpie is about as mis-designed a bird as they come. A beautiful bird with a ridiculously long tail. Watching them fly can often feel like watching Irishmen stumbling out of a pub. They sing their strange song, a cross between a blue jay and a crow, as if they were mockingbirds. Curiously, they don’t seem bothered one wit about their odd characteristics, nor do they merely make do. They make a rich life along lakes and streams where they build the most spectacular nests. Almost fully woven hanging baskets.

Free Bing Photos

Free Bing Photos

As I hiked I watched a pair collecting sticks and chattering away with one another. They have such an unusual call it is a bit hard to tell if they are bickering or lovingly calling to one another. Same could be said for many couples I know. As I watch, the thicket flashes with their white and blue wing markings as they look for debris to build with. Often in the trees and shrub all you can see is this long black group of feathers bobbing up and down. They are a very curious bird, indeed.

I can’t completely explain it but whenever I watch them fly they give me hope. We can all do more than make do with what we were given. We can build nests of rich lives with what we already possess in this moment. Whatever perceived personal flaws we think we have, we likely don’t or it was even intended for our adventure. There really aren’t design flaws. Spiritually speaking, it’s impossible.

Sharon Tate was once quoted to say, “Everything that’s realistic has some sort of ugliness to it. Even a flower is ugly when it wilts, a bird when it seeks pray, and ocean when it becomes violent.” The trick is to penetrate deeply into what lies before you. To really look at a thing or a person or a situation with your inner vision, until the beauty of it becomes apparent. We aren’t changed or made better by witnessing beauty in these moments, but rather the effort causes us to see the beauty within ourselves reflected in what we see.

So here’s to the magpie. May they fly long and far.

Anew

Posted on by Standard 4
Re-posted from Collective Evolution Facebook page

Re-posted from Collective Evolution Facebook page

Cracked open
Human seed exposed
Germinating in decay
Rotted trunk gardens
Brewing organisms in deathbeds
Steeped in sun and water
Igniting delicious
Hunger for
Life

Anew

That’s Amore

Posted on by Standard 6

Most people who know me well know that I have a DJ playing music in my head all night. No matter the hour, if I get up to go the bathroom or arise in the morning there is music playing in my head. Much of it is predictable. Tunes I have been listening to or singing a great deal lately. But many nights it’s random stuff that is hard to explain, with this one exception. These outliers always make me laugh. I am convinced the DJ is this funky angel who used to be a beat singer in the sixties or a drummer in the Congo at the turn of the last century. Who ever it is they are immensely amusing. This was what I awoke to this morning. A merry Tuesday to you all.

Neighbors

Posted on by Standard 8
Couple at Johnston Lake: Photo by Noelle

Couple at Johnston Lake: Photo by Noelle

My neighbor’s wife had a stroke, not sure how long before I moved here. He is her full time caregiver and maybe in his early seventies. On a rare occasion, when the weather is warm, he brings her out to sit in a lawn chair in the garage and feel the sun. He will listen to talk radio or in baseball season the Rockies losing badly to someone. Every day he walks his chihuahua who barks as if he were a pitbull about to take your leg off. Though the sound can be grating, I can’t help but be impressed by the bravado of a creature that would be a single gulp to a real pitbull. My neighbor shares with this tiniest of fellows the only walks of freedom he knows all day away from his wife. Sometimes he leaves his dog out on the porch below mine late at night and the dog barks persistently to come in. I realize without seeing that my neighbor has likely fallen asleep in front of the TV and forgotten the dog. I wake him to bring the dog in by knocking at his door. He always seems so embarrassed, but I can feel his exhaustion, as he stands in his T-shirt at the door. I’m not sure how to say I’m not worried about the dog, just him.

The neighbor caddy corner to me never opens their shades. I haven’t a clue who or how many people live there, but the lights are on each evening. Winter, spring, summer, fall… Always down. I used to wonder if such people are hoarders, but over the years I’ve learned some people see only a world within, while still others fear the world without.

Two doors over and a flight down a grandfather comes out regularly with his golden retriever and grandson. Oh how the boy giggles and delights in the golden hip dip in snow. Across the parking lot a man stands, cigarette in his mouth, and watches without any interest; never looking away, but not looking at them really either. I wonder what he sees in the ring of smoke that circles his head. I don’t think his wife lets him smoke indoors. This is also true for my neighbor to the west. She sits in her running car, in the garage, with door open, smoking at all hours. I once approached thinking she’d accidentally left her car running. Given her irritation with my query as to whether she was all right, it was evident she’d been asked this before. Opportunities to a smoker to smoke are oddly sacred things, since it’s become an ordeal to do it. I used to smoke, so I get it, but listening to her react I realize how much I don’t miss it.

The planet is covered in billions of lives. Each person carving out their own patterns and habits. Living out stories we know nothing about. It’s not our business what all these people do, but sometimes it’s worth bearing witness to what we don’t know about so much that we see and take for granted as pieces of our own weird little world’s. My neighbor two doors down is as mousy a person as you could ever meet, but her penchant for holiday lights, banners, window displays and colorful decorations year round goes unmatched. She a gray mouse has a vibrant dragon inside her soul that pours out all over her front stoop. I rarely see her out, but I will return home and Valentine’s Day is gone and a lucky clover leaf greets me as I walk up. She is both a caricature of dime store decorations and someone entirely unknown to me beyond my random observations.

Who am I, I wonder, to all of them? What do they see as they see me come and go day to day? Am I acting out of blind habits I’ve performed a thousand times or am I mindful of who I am in this moment and who I am becoming? So many moments pass with little attention that I cannot take back. Somehow it seems very important to really see this moment and feel what is happening in it. It may make no difference to my neighbors, but I’m thinking it should make a great deal of difference to me.

Over the Hill

Posted on by Standard 8
Waterton Canyon Road: Photo by Noelle
Before dawn: Photo by Noelle

Anticipation builds as you climb the hill and near the crest or travel the road that comes to a bend. You could come this way a dozen times and you never lose the sense of magic at what lies around the corner or over the hill. It is as ingrained in our spirit as the breath of life itself. We are meant to explore, discover and ponder this Universe we were given. We are all adventurers, though some of us have fallen asleep in the field. Comfy we’ve become that we are more like a cat in a sunny window, even when the sun has diminished and the earth has grown cold.

Wake up, wake up, you sleepy head! Do not linger in this spot for too long. There is more of Magellan in your belly than the sitting hen, you oft convince yourself you’ve become. Listen closely. Do you not hear it? The trail calls just over the hill. Just over the hill and around the next bend.

Snow Falls Gently

Posted on by Standard 3
Free Google images

Free Google images

It came in so quick. Probably didn’t help that I’d left late, which is rare for me. Everyone had been driving at standard, rush hour speeds, and then brake lights lit up the pre-dawn morning, as the roads went from merely wet to snow covered and slick.

I look out my windshield and the snow is quite beautiful.

The white, probably 80’s vintage 280Z is clearly in a hurry and rides the bumper of the only slightly newer Ford Bronco. I turn away, not to feel the anxiety of a rear end that hasn’t happened yet. My hands are gripped too tight on the wheel. I focus on relaxing them. I have that odd displaced feeling of not being wholly in myself. Sort of half there and half outside the vehicle trying to project my senses forward.

The snow falls in big flakes I want to touch. So peaceful – snow and all this darkness. Mother Nature’s crazy womb.

There is no reason for concern. This is a good car with all wheel drive, new tires and anti-lock brakes. I’ve got this and yet I find my hand rubbing my neck. A Pathfinder rushes past, only to come to an even faster halt up ahead with a slide. Feeling his movements sets my nerves on edge.

The evergreens off the interstate are already covered in winter white in a matter of minutes. In my mind I can feel the cool wind standing in front of them. They wave in the winds coming on this storm front. I wonder if they are beckening me out of the car.

A Toyote slides sideways two cars up and all of us brake. My breath catches and I hear my inner mantra on over drive, “I’m okay. I’m okay.” I see another slide a bit in my rearview mirror.

As we enter a smaller valley the wind is cut off and the snow falls so gently here. It’s magic as I look off from the road.

In pioneer days we’d all stay in and wait till it’s over. How advanced we’ve become, eh? The Toyote recovers sort of and begins moving again. He is our lesson and we all move at a crawl. I find myself estimating the pace to the time I’ll arrive at work. I’ll be late. Stomach tightens a bit. I wish the car behind me wasn’t so close.

The snow falls gently.

Relaxing my hands again from the wheel I take in a few deep yogic breaths. Look how smoothly this car moves. This should be my focus, not the car’s hazard lights off to the side of the road. The woman is talking frantically to someone on her cell. My heart beats slightly faster as I remember what that feels like.

Rooftops glisten in all that white. Drab winter grays and browns are gone. A winter wonderland in less than ten minutes. I crack the window a bit to feel the cold air. It’s fresh and clears my mind a bit. Bits of snow ping my face and somewhere in me I know I am not separate from this beauty.

I try music, but it is too distracting at the moment. Three cars have come to a head in an effort to change lanes. No one has hit the other, but they are trying to determine who will go first in this darkness and snow. One of them struggles to find any lane. We all hold back to let the scene sort itself out.

The snow falls gently. I watch it melt on my windshield. What it would be like to stand in the middle of an open field and let it melt over me?

It’s all in timing and perspective, isn’t it? Seven at night and I could be in that field. Seven in the morning and I’m gripping the wheel. Not going to work and it’s beautiful. Getting to work it’s an obstacle to navigate. A different day or a different hour and everything shifts. How many things are like that in my life, I wonder? Just a different day or a different hour. A slight turn of my mind from the obstacles in front of me to the mystery and beauty all around me. I wonder…

The snow falls gently.

Alice

Posted on by Standard 11

Free Bing Photos
Free Bing Photos

If you ever want to see how ingrained a habit is, try breaking it, even once. I meditate every day after work. The weather has been unseasonably warm and to not go out in it would be a travesty, as my mother would say. To catch it I have to leave as soon as I get home and delay my sit for just a bit. Small thing, right? Even as I feel an exhilaration to hit the trail my feet drag as my body clearly wants to sit for meditation. Working at getting out the front door is tantamount to walking through a tunnel of cotton candy. It’s odd feeling your body wanting to go back inside as your head, heads out. That odd feeling though, is the sound of gears grinding on my ego’s ideas on how life should be. I’ve been thinking lately that I should practice that grind more often.

On any given day, goose poop litters the paths and sidewalks all the way to the marsh. On my walks I hop between the piles looking as if I’m playing the longest game of hopscotch ever. I know it’s pointless since, as the snow melts, the runoff is full of goose poop. What appears to be a clean path, isn’t. Still, I hop along imagining I am a paratrooper crossing a mind field into enemy lines. One wrong step and I’m done. Its entertainment for me, if not my neighbors and reminds me of being ten. Today, however, I remembered the muckers. I have sneakers I only wear to my friend’s barn to muck the stalls. Their bottoms have slogged through a lot of horse manure and I leave them in the garage. I don them happily knowing they were made for the world’s biggest piles of dung and finally leave my stoop.

A neighbor’s voice carries easily across the lake in a deep baritone, as he appears to be talking to someone on the phone. It is impossible not to eavesdrop.

“Everywhere we go, I ask after someone and they always say, “Oh that guy, he’s been dead for ages”. Then they seem all apologetic. Alice just says, “Don’t worry honey, we thought we should be dead ages ago, too.” His laughter banks off the houses on the other side of the lake and I can’t help but smile.

“Listen, listen here… I went to my 61st high school reunion. They had a list of names of those who graduated that year. Three pages of dead folks and a page of the living. All anyone wants to talk about is how so and so died. If he died parachuting out of a plane or in a runaway train ya got my ear, but other than that, hearing how old people died is about as interesting as stewed beets. Honestly, I’ve had a better time at a funeral.” He guffaws loudly. “Huh? Hell, I’ve already written my obit. No one lies about my accomplishments better than me. Ain’t that right, Alice.” I think I hear a kind of grunt come from inside the house, presumably Alice.

“No, no… I’m gonna be 87 next week. No, I’m not kidding.” He slams his hand down, emphatically, on the deck rail. “I’ll be 87. A guy called the other day to try to sell Alice and I life insurance. We told ’em if he was selling death insurance we’d be in!” Laughter storms the lake.

“I make a damn fine Rob Roy, I tell ya and here, listen up… If I get to heaven before you, I’ll have the finest Rob Roy you’ve ever had sittin’ there on the bar…. Well, hell, if you can’t drink in heaven where can you drink? Ain’t that right, Alice” Finally, Alice appears on the deck, “Ask him if he thinks that was water they were drinkin’ in those cups at the last supper? Ask him that.” I realize I’ve fallen in love with a woman I’ve never met.

Their banter continues and I walk on facing the setting western sun. They say sunlight is good for the cones in your eyes and that all of our sunglass wearing is actually weakening our eyesight. All our indoors-ness and computer screens are shortening our cones and causing them to vibrate in shorter color ranges. Holistic practitioners say we should get at least thirty minutes of sun every day. This is also true of the pituitary gland, I’ve read. That as we age the pituitary calcifies and it needs sunlight to blast off those calcifications. These are the sort of odd concerns and thoughts one has as they age. Do I have a clean pituitary gland? I mean, who wants a pituitary as hard as your shin bone. So I walk with my eye lids half closed and let the sun warm my eyes and imagine a limber pituitary and long, vibrating cones. Or I do for few moments, but the sun is warm and speaks so much of spring that after a time I am walking, half lidded thinking of beaches and warmer days to come. My meditation time is now long forgotten, along with the goose poop, as I walk into the sunny marsh. I realize I have gone from weird hopscotch lady to pituitary worrying sun bather. I remember the old man having himself a fine laugh at death with his old gal, Alice. I laugh, too. Me and my muckers and my calcified pituitary and short, faded, retinal cones, breaking the ceiling on my wierd little habits. I laugh even harder and wish I could confirm how funny life is with old Alice.