Bee
Recently, Joe and I were sitting in a golf cart in the middle of a fairway when we saw a cloud of something approaching us. It was a swarm of honeybees. It was almost as if they passed through us because not one bee ran into us or our golf cart though for one, brief moment we were surrounded by them. Both Joe and I had goosebumps after they passed.
Anemone
Most of the time, the only music I listen to is jazz or classical, or some recommended artist. I don’t spend much time in the world of sound beyond having it as a backdrop to whatever I’m doing. Recently, I discovered a young sound artist who posts his work in places like SoundCloud because he began using an image of mine as his website header. I reached out to him about the image use, and in the process, I began listening to his work. Seakrecy creates tracks that are beautiful, mournful, haunting, and sometimes provoking. I’ve never had an image of mine paired with sound before, and it makes me look at my work differently…..it makes me hear an image.
This particular image accompanies his track, “Only Time Can Tell.” Audible poetry.
Drops
Let the rain kiss you. Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops. Let the rain sing you a lullaby.
Langston Hughes
Towhee in the Rain
Finally raining in a rain-deprived land.
Peace On Earth
As much as it has almost become a cliche, peace on earth, as a reality, remains elusive, but we have to believe it’s still possible. Big peace takes time, but little moments of peace are always possible–like not getting enraged every time someone cuts you off on the freeway, or someone butts in front of you in a line. I try to remind myself I never know what’s going on in another person’s life that drives their behavior. Yes, I still yell at bad freeway drivers, but I try to reign in my animosity and give other humans the benefit of the doubt. I know I’m grateful for every time someone does that for me. Little moments of peace–we can all create those, and perhaps they will begin to add up, so that rudeness and lack of compassion become the exception and not the norm.
Angry Golf
I’m always being told that playing golf (like photography for that matter) requires a certain Zen frame of mind. I’m beginning to understand that, and I’m beginning to allow myself to enjoy the game, in spite of all the slices, shanks, three and four putts, or lost balls. There’s a course near where we live that’s both beautiful and difficult, where going after an out-of-bounds ball might mean rappeling into a canyon or coming face-to-face with a rattlesnake. I’ve had to hit around large bucks and coyotes lounging in cool, grassy areas next to fairways. Once, I witnessed a bobcat trot past me down the cart path toward the clubhouse. And yet…..the game, or how well one plays the game, can get under the skin. More than once, I’ve heard other players’ loud expletives echoing throughout the hills. Sometimes those expletives have been mine. I’ve seen other players throw clubs, but I’ve never seen the results of someone breaking a club over a tree trunk, until recently. Angry golf is not fun, and it’s the furthest one can get from a Zen state of mind. The day I found this broken club was during one of my best games, a game where I was able to stay in that Zen place from the first hole to the eighteenth. So, I keep this image to remind me of the importance of maintaining a certain level of detachment, something useful in other areas of life as well. But on the golf course, I’m reminded of Kevin Spacey’s character in the film American Beauty, who says “It’s hard to stay mad when there’s all this beauty in the world.”
Dried
Ah, when to the heart of a man Was it ever less than a treason To go with the drift of things, To yield with a grace to reason, And bow and accept the end Of a love or a season?
Robert Frost, “Reluctance”
Pods
The Santa Ana winds are ravaging the neighborhood, knocking seed pods and small limbs off the jacaranda tree in the front yard.
Open Hand
A hand turned upward holds only a single, transparent question.
Unanswerable, humming like bees, it rises, swarms, departs.
–from Jane Hirschefield’s poem, “A Hand”
And he remembered it no more….
I found this small, leather-bound SwedishPsalmbok in a used bookstore in Ventura, CA. In addition to how lovely it feels in the hand, its leather softened by the hands of another, its delicate weight, the fact that it is written in Swedish was intriguing. How had that book made a journey from Sweden to southern California? Moreover, who is Kris Lind, whose name is embossed in gold on the bottom right corner of the front cover, and how did he or she end up in California? Did his or her effects end up in this bookstore after a death, both book and man to be remembered no more (a line at the edge of the page reads, “Och han minnes den ej mer…” meaning, “And he remembered it no more……”)? Although I can’t read Swedish, I recognized the language on the page as some of my ancestors emigrated from Sweden to live in the northeast region of the U.S., where my maternal grandfather, Bernard Oscar Sandquist, was born. Growing up, I was told I was named for his mother.
Kris Lind may not be related to me in any way, but his or her Psalmbok now lives with me, no longer stripped from memory.
Vila väl, Kris Lind. Inte alla är glömt.
Redzenradish Photography 