Silence

"The reality that is present to us and in us: call it being...Silence. And the simple fact that by being attentive, by learning to listen (or recovering the natural capacity to listen) we can find our self engulfed in such happiness that it cannot be explained: the happiness of being at one with everything in that hidden ground of Love for which there can be no explanations.... May we all grow in grace and peace, and not neglect the silence that is printed in the center of our being. It will not fail us."

- Thomas Merton (1915 - 1968)

An Unexpected Kindness

"Build pockets of stillness into your life. Meditate. Go for walks. Ride your bike going nowhere in particular. There is a creative purpose to daydreaming, even to boredom. The best ideas come to us when we stop actively trying to coax the muse into manifesting and let the fragments of experience float around our unconscious mind in order to click into new combinations. Without this essential stage of unconscious processing, the entire flow of the creative process is broken." - Maria Popova (1985 - )

Looking back over the life of my humble little blog, which I started in 2004 as an unsure, tentative "toe dip" into (what at the time) was still an untested world of on-line media, it has evolved into a quiet little oasis for me to spend time in, away from the stresses of life and job. Though it used to be replete with essays (something I look forward to getting back to, as time permits in the coming months), it has steadfastly remained a place for me to share my thoughts (albeit mostly via others' quotations in recent years) and images. Much to my surprise (and delight!), my blog has attracted (a still growing list of) people who find enough value in what I post here to "follow" my entries as they arise. I was reminded of this kindness - a fragile gift in this world that I try never to take for granted - while on vacation with my family in the Pacific Northwest (during which the image above was captured, on a beach on the western side of the Olympic Peninsula).

One beautiful morning during our stay, my wife and I were sipping coffee and "nature watching” with our binoculars in the solarium of a wonderful Airbnb home we had rented for our vacation. In-between numerous sightings of dolphins, sea-otters, eagles, and the like (each, an even more precious and fragile gift), I would occasionally glance at my iPad to continue reading my book-of-the week-vacation-reading biography (which on that day, happened to be of William Henry Jackson, whose photographs of the American West in the 19th century were, in part, responsible for the congressional vote that established Yellowstone National Park in 1872; but I digress). My iPad alerted me that I had a new email. I almost didn't look (and normally do not when on vacation), but look I did.

It was a lovely email from a recent "follower" who politely inquired about whether I'd abandoned my blog (reminding me that I had not posted anything new since the beginning of June!). While I post whenever I have the chance (and have new images to share), but have simply had no time for new work in recent months (a not uncommon occurrence throughout the 15 years I've had my blog), it didn't occur to me that I might actually have followers who'd miss my posts enough to send an email! The day this email arrived was already special - what, with a preternatural display of nature's beauty just outside our beachfront rental? - but my new follower's heartfelt concern for my blog's future (it is emphatically not abandoned), and the kindness he bestowed in taking the time to reach out to me, made the day that much more memorable. The impersonal sterility of our modern world makes it easy to forget (sometimes, but not on this day), that what connects us all are simple, genuine, human gestures, like one photographer reaching out to another over the technological ether to ask, "I enjoy seeing your pictures; you haven't stopped posting have you?" No, kind reader, I have not. And thank you so much for asking!

PS (to the person who sent me the email): You mentioned that you were also taking a trip, in your case to the Adirondacks in New York. I had emailed you a few "early" essays to tie you over until such time as I got back to posting, but forgot to include an old entry from a trip I made to the Adirondacks back in 2008. The entry - "Boinga, Boinga, Boinga" Shots - recounts a timeless experience that all photographers go through at one time or another. I have learned quite a bit in the time since I wrote that entry (in regards to the subject matter described therein), and will be sharing some thoughts in future posts.

PPS: I've posted a small portfolio of images from my family's trip to the Pacific Northwest.

Unbroken Movement

“There is a universal flux that cannot be defined explicitly but which can be known only implicitly, as indicated by the explicitly definable forms and shapes, some stable and some unstable, that can be abstracted from the universal flux. In this flow, mind and matter are not separate substances. Rather, they are different aspects of our whole and unbroken movement.” 

- David Bohm (1917 - 1992) 

Hearing with the Eye

"Once a monastic asked the Tang Dynasty Chinese National Teacher, Nanyang, 'Do the insentient understand the expressing of the Way?' The National Teacher said, 'They express the Way continually, energetically, ceaselessly.' The monastic said, 'Why can't I hear it?' The National Teacher replied, 'The fact that you don't hear it has nothing to do with others hearing it.' The monastic said, 'I don't understand. What kind of person can hear it?' The National Teacher said, 'All the holy ones can hear it.' The monastic asked, 'Do you hear it?' The National Teacher said, 'I do not hear it.' The monastic said, 'If you do not hear it, how do you know that the insentient can express the Way?' The National Teacher said, 'Fortunately I do not hear it. If I did, I would be one of the holy ones and you would not be able to hear me expressing the Way.' The monastic said, 'In that case, sentient beings can't hear it.' The National Teacher said, 'I express the Way for the sake of sentient beings, not for the sake of the holy ones.' The monastic said, 'Then what happens when sentient beings do hear you?' The National Teacher said, 'At that moment they are not sentient beings.'" 

- John Daido Loori (1931 - 2009)

Hearing with the Eye

Mystery and Confusion

"We are the representatives of the cosmos; we are an example of what hydrogen atoms can do, given fifteen billion years of cosmic evolution. And we resonate to these questions. We start with the origin of every human being, and then the origin of our community, our nation, the human species, who our ancestors were and then the riddle of the origin of life. And the questions: where did the Earth and Solar System come from? Where did the galaxies come from?

Every one of those questions is deep and significant. They are the subject of folklore, myth, superstition, and religion in every human culture. But for the first time we are on the verge of answering many of them. I don’t mean to suggest that we have the final answers; we are bathing in mystery and confusion on many subjects, and I think that will always be our destiny. The universe will always be much richer than our ability to understand it."

- Carl Sagan (1934 - 1996)

Life Itself

"As human beings, we are part of the whole stream of life. We have been human beings for perhaps a million years. But life itself — passes on something of itself to other life — that mysterious entity that moves and is aware of itself and its surroundings, and so is distinguished from rocks or senseless clay — [from which] life arose many hundreds of millions of years ago. Since then it has developed, struggled, adapted itself to its surroundings, evolved an infinite number of forms. But its living protoplasm is built of the same elements as air, water, and rock. To these the mysterious spark of life was added. Our origins are of the earth. And so there is in us a deeply seated response to the natural universe, which is part of our humanity."

- Rachel Carson (1907 - 1964)

Beauty and Mystery

"Some people believe that there is no distinction between the spiritual and physical universes, no distinction between the inner and the outer, between the subjective and the objective, between the miraculous and the rational. I need such distinctions to make sense of my spiritual and scientific lives. For me, there is room for both a spiritual universe and a physical universe, just as there is room for both religion and science. Each universe has its own power. Each has its own beauty, and mystery."

- Alan Lightman (1948 - )

 The Accidental Universe