possibilities for this week's challenge

This year has been one where I have pondered the nature of death a lot and the good that comes from the undenable pain. In phyiscal; spiritual; and emotional senses. Even just this morning I was contemplating how we often seek to find immortality in the legacy of our family or the "works of our hands" so please pardon the fact that this response is a continuation on that pondering (it sort of naturally happens with a concept of expiration date)


I like the lighting here a lot


Here I enjoy the perspective


I think this may ultimately be what I choose because it expresses what I have most felt about the tension of expiration. We try so hard to pin point a date when something has gone from good to bad, but perhaps it is at those points of badness that we are closest to causing something great (like a whole new field of dandelions - which to me is something glorious) and yet perhaps we inhibit ourselves from this greatness with our refusal to see that the truest life is found in death. I do not mean to be morbid, nor to be someone who is just making it through life until heaven where I am to be free from earthly worries and restraints - rather I mean that for true life to begin first we must die to selfishness then we can experience (even on earth) the truer life we are seeking.


This just feels so emotive - perhaps under the influence of too many pixar movies I see a person in the flower, a very sad, almost desolate person


I enjoy that this one includes but almost by passes the actual date ... this is also high in the running

3 possibilities for the challenge

A friend and I are doing this weekly project to try and help keep our creative juices pumping when we don't have classes or professors to keep up on target. Basically we make up assignments to do during the week and it is due on Friday (cause creative kids need deadlines in order for things to leave our heads and sketchbooks and actually become anything truly tangible). This is our first go at it and the challenge (or whatever you want to call it) was rain. Since writing helps me get to the point of shooting I tend to do poem type things (especially lately) sometimes I think the writings are actually better than the images themselves - but perhaps that has more to do with my ignorance of what makes a good poem than anything else.

Regardless. What follows are excerpts from my journal as I have contemplated rain this week ....

cleansing and exposing
pounding away at the earth,
revealing the hidden things

the lost things encased by years of sediment
millennium of sand weighing in on
the priceless articles of our past

surrounding

safe in this embrace from
the tell-tell signs of progress
safe from the landfills and housing developments

safe in the sediment
held close
close in the Earth’s bosom until

its age is come
we are ready to care about it

freedom rain bounds
it breaks up the suffocating embrace

brings light to the hidden thing, kept safe
from disregard while it was common, age has made it precious

gentle scraping of excavation
finishing what the onslaught of water began

back and forth, back and forth the brush
tenderly methodical
releasing the hidden thing

once overlooked
disregarded, now precious

tools created just for its preservation, elated
we gaze upon it
ponder the way it was before
the earth encased it
clasped in protective sediment

then it was glorious
but common,
unappericated

now degraded,
but elated

freed by the rain to
shine in aged deterioration

adored in decay

08 May 13

***

What hidden things am I beginning to be ready to appreciate? Maybe the rain has not yet revealed the hidden thing, I am not yet ready to appreciate.

***

I sit on the porch that isn’t mine, and I
contemplate this bottle

already removed, the small plastic seal
clear fades to rich translucent brown
punctuated by letters proclaiming DARK CHOCOLATE MOCHA

it sits on the couch, my bed
while I in the rocking chair

writing
my dark chocolate mocha in my lap

writing and postponing

the leaves rustle
a motor hums
metal clacks
an indistinct mummer ebbs and flows from neighboring yards
and the birds carry on with their singing

all are unaware of
This moment

the sacredness of this bottle I hold
in my laps as I sit
in the rocking chair on the pouch not belonging to me

this precious mocha
this last of twelve

This was mean for a time where I could feel
closure

as if I could somehow “deal with it”
and then celebrate with a sip of this deliciousness

the ‘best by’ stamp stares up at me
giving me two months

two months

yet I know to wait is not what is needed
to wait is
to make this harder

the lid pops and slowly I unscrew it
setting it down on the adjacent page

I hold my lips to the bottle and

breath it in rather than drink it
I tip it into my parched mouth and savor
the tiniest of sips only to
let it lower

and my hand write some more

Another sip, one with gusto
the threshold is passed and the
power of the bottle is broken

I am no further from my
precious Mary Alice than I ever was
she is not in the physical things she
touched or
gave to me

She is most completely hidden in Christ and That
is her true legacy

the love that holds her and
is wrapped around us both

That is where I need to cling – not on
the artifacts of this life
imperfect
inconstant

this is my hidden thing of great value

so obvious yet so hidden until
the flood of my eyes and
this delightful coffee made me stumble
in the hidden secret

common
discarded
revealed
revered

08 May 14

plane ticket: check

So the last step to official (prior to me physically breathing in the New York air) has been taken - I brought my ticket and in 20 days I will be flying to New York to embark on the sometimes scary but always exciting and growth producing business of Summer Project!

Woot - if you will.

into the salt ...

So this is a piece from my final project. God intervened in a big way and the night before I made some major tweeking in response to some comments made by a good friend and fellow photo major, Cameron. Although the project is still not at its potential it is very definitely a move toward me being out of the funk I was mentioning.

The series was about the interaction of salt and the body but I decided to use the visible absence of the body instead of a person. I have been thinking about salt a lot lately - I have not yet been able to express visually all the contemplations I am having

I won't have much time to revisit this before New York (it is kind of a messy thing to do and I will be a house hopper until June) but when I get back I want to address some of the things mentioned during critique:

Incorporate more elements (like water, oil, strategically placed rock salt, ?) and contrast in light as well as line weight. Mark Hamliton (my professor) commented that it was a good beginning but right now they are nice backgrounds and a little "mushy."

Foiled Plans ...

This is another older piece from earlier this semester (I am not really pleased with my current project so I would rather post the still current but not in-progress stuff) that was somewhat loosely inspired by Esther 6 where God's sovereignty is seen as Haman's plots against the Jews are foiled.

It has come to remind me of just how loosely we need to hold on to our plans (even the good ones) because we can't always bring them to fruition and sometimes the best thing that can happen to us is having a plan foiled.