Breathing Light - Issue #5 -Finding the Spaces between Raindrops

Feedback from last week

Atamaarie e te whaanau (good morning, friends):

Thank you to all those of you who signed up and are new here. I really hope you find this newsletter meets your needs and remains of interest. Nau mai haere mai. Welcome to this place.

I love it when you write in and point stuff out to me, or what I have written sparks you to share stories or remind me that many of you live outside Aotearoa New Zealand. I had one such reminder this week from a wonderful man I met some years ago in Australia.

"Um, your use of your 'Native Language' makes it hard for me to follow."

Arohamai. Sorry, Bob. Thank you for the reminder. In the future, I will make a real effort to give you the English approximation for the words I use. I am beginning to think in te reo Maaori, and increasingly I use it and then forget others do not have that particular language.

For your information, I am now relieved of my llama-minding duty, as their owner has returned to take over.

Phew. I am sure the llamas feel the same way!

I am still feeling my way with the newsletter, so all those suggestions are helping me to shape its direction.

Would you please keep them coming!

The World Writ Small

Some fifteen years ago, on my journey to 'master' the grand landscape, I found myself teaching a workshop in Sitka, South-East Alaska. Frankly, the ferocity and strangeness of the landscape and the abruptness of the mountains had me spooked. it didn't help that warnings about grizzly bears in and around the town made me nervous to head gaily into the woods

I didn't know where to begin.

As many of you know, Ansel Adams has been an inspiration/role model for me. His Clearing Winter Storm, Yosemite, was the image that set my course over 30 years ago.

That particular day, I stood by a rain-soaked roadside, staring at the vastness around me and trying to make sense of it. This can happen a lot, I believe, when you are trying to make the likeness of something so big and incomprehensible.

I glanced down and, at my feet, was a small salmonberry plant (rather like a blackberry, but without the spines).

Then I remembered.

Years before, while studying Adams, I saw an exquisite photograph of a similar plant. It came into my mind then, and I dug out my point-and-shoot and set about doing something similar.

I learned a valuable lesson that day.

And spent much of my time there looking at and into the truth of what I saw.

And making likenesses of that.

Sometimes, to put things in context visually, we have to look down at our feet and appreciate the wonder of the world writ small.

Footnote:

My friend and former teaching colleague AHM is a master of the world writ super-small. He photographs insects smaller than the width of a human hair (how he does it, I have no idea). Bugs that feed on other bugs that feed on other bugs that...

An entomological Venn diagram, it would seem.

I know that he is going to read this and jump on me! -:)

He has also laid down a wero (challenge) for me to get into macro photography.

Actually, he is a bit late. After three years of looking up at the grandeur of all that is, increasingly, I am looking down at the supposedly humble plants at my feet and wanting to find their truth.

Where and what is the lesson in a humble dock or clover?

So this week, I flashed my Fujifilm X-Photographer card and asked to borrow an XF 80 mm macro lens. It should arrive this week.

I can't wait!

The Spaces Between Raindrops

Let's face it.

These are challenging times.

(Tony indulges indulgent propensity for a euphemism).

Covid-19 has changed the world as we knew it and it isn't going back to the old times. Ever.

Most mornings I am usually up by 0330 (some of you will have heard about that time of day lol) and I have a habit of checking in on what is happening in the world ( MSM, Twitter etc). Lately, I have begun to notice that it leaves me feeling stressed and grumpy.

There is a good lesson here.

None of what I read seeks to reassure me.

Quite the opposite.

It seeks to keep me trapped in a state of fear and powerlessness.

A daily dose of addictive Dirge.

So I have a new strategy. when I get up, I go to my back doorstep, step outside in the cool frozen air and root my imaginary feet down into the earth. I imagine myself as a tree and feel down into the planet.

If it is raining, I first listen to the raindrops and then, once I have settled, I drift into the spaces between raindrops.

Often truth exists not in the words themselves, but in the spaces between.

My Samoan friends say we should spend 20 minutes each day with our bare feet upon the naked earth (Earth). Then we will find peace and balance.

Works for me.

It might help you too.

This morning, when I went outside, to stand in bare feet on my back deck, I looked up at a leaden sky.

Then I saw it.

One lone star poking through. A reminder that beyond the veil of trouble and illusion lies a vast infinity.

perhaps we are only limited by our perspective.

perhaps we are far, far more than any of this.

Footnote:

As I write this, the wind from the north is sighing to a halt and the smoke from my neighbours' chimneys is swinging around to the south. Grey darkness is building away along and over the horizon.

Beautiful.

It will snow tonight.

And I have the perfect excuse to light a fire and use some of my preciously hoarded firewood.

Woohoo!

And so to a/the future...

A few of you have begun to ask me what I am up to.

Well...

I had a lovely meeting with my landlord ( he hates the term) last Sunday.

Long story short:

He wants his house back.

By September 20.

So now the clock is ticking.

By then I will need to be out of here.

Where will I go?

North.

My tupuna (ancestors) want me back in Te Tai Tokerau (The Far North of Aotearoa New Zealand) .

More than that I do not know. At the moment.

I do not know what way the ara (path) will lead me, or even how I will do it/fund it.

So I go out each morning, plant my waewae (feet) on Papatuuanuku (my mother, the Earth) and allow.

What else can I do?

Ngaa mihi nunui arohaa ki a koutou katoa

Much love to you all.

Addenda

Wero at Manurewa marae to Māori Television

Ngāti Akitai lay the challenge to enter the marae

Photographer Tony Bridge takes a Walk in the Shadowlands | RNZ — www.rnz.co.nz

A waiata and an accompanying photograph for every day of last year's nationwide lockdown was the challenge Te Anau based photographer Tony Bridge set himself. Raahui A Walk in the Shadowlands is the book that comes from his daily social media posts over that time. The photographs are intensely coloured, sometimes of a vast landscape and often so abstract that you have to look closely to work out what it is in the picture. On Day One for example, "in silence untainted by traffic or helicopters or the energy of human intention, I opened my heart and listened to the soft whisper of clouds sliding along the underside of the night...." Tony was a tour bus guide when the lockdown happened, and he tells Lynn Freeman his writing and photography were what helped him through being cooped up, when he was used to travelling far and wide with his camera.

Photographer Jay Maisel Shares Insights From A Lifetime Of Working With Color - John Paul Caponigro — www.johnpaulcaponigro.com

. Master photographer Jay Maisel shares insights from a lifetime of pursuing his passion for color. . Learn more about Jay Maisel here. . Read more in my Color Resources. Learn more in my Creativity Workshops.

Radioactive hybrid terror pigs have made themselves a home in Fukushima's exclusion zone • The Register — www.theregister.com

Human resettlement after 2011's nuclear disaster facing opposition from indestructible, betusked interlopers

Good Vibes : Binaural Beats — www.youtube.com

Good Vibes Youtube Channel has been dedicated to everyone who's under stress,who's in need of a friend to bring some joy and entertainment for him/her. Good ...