Challenge

So I have a confession - as I was trying to shoot for this challenge I had it in my head that the topic was isolation not solitude and so none of the images fit really well, but I finally did make a selection .... come check it out

Some Possiblities

So Jess and I finally started our joint blog again and the challenge that was due yesterday was solitude and while obviously I am running a little late ... here are the images I am considering ...

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