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Across the Channel

April 28, 2008

susan_preston_fogHaynes.jpg

Hains Fog ~ Canon 30d

The images I've posted thus far from my foggy waltz with the cherry blossoms were taken during the latter half of my journey. The entire morning felt as though I was walking through someone else's dream sequence, especially during the earliest and thickest fog while driving the perimeter of Hains Point, stopping my car every mile or so to take a new sequence of pictures. My companions, an occasional lone cyclist and a handful of fishermen, mysteriously appeared ghostlike from the fog only to sink back into the vaporous sea above land moments later.

The image above is the first I would take on this storybook morning. At first, I was at odds with the task of focusing. Autofocus should be abandoned in conditions like this. The photographer is better off feeling her way into the correct plane of focus when her primary subject isn't the landscape, the Queen of the composition here is fog.

Who would have thought the Washington Channel and the Fort McNair golf course lying just beyond the distant trees could look so un-Washingtonian? As a child, my parents would drag me out to that golf course practically every weekend, where I'd initially whine and complain - golfing immediately sank to the bottom of my Personal Passion List - followed by a desire to out-do the rest of the family with my knack for putting. There is no telling how many miles I walked in circles way across the brackish water – too many to count – but one thing I knew for sure, not one of my previous footsteps had any resemblance to this moment. I half-expected my former self to materialize out of the fog, putter in hand, and ask me to skip with her across the water. We'd sit atop the old black cannon firmly planted in the middle of the golf course – the one my brother made a freakish Hole-in-One on after his ball bounced off the cannon and smack into the cup – and consider the many tragedies and miracles that have and will make up a lifetime. Then, looking into our future together as two parts creating a whole, we'd wonder out loud about everything and anything, finally finding ourselves home in the knowing conclusion that being gone, gone, gone far across the channel to the other side of the shore, leaving the past behind and finding the light of all beings inside of this vulnerable artist's heart is more than the two of us could ever ask for.

The Heart Suttra

Gaté, Gaté, Paragate, Para Sam gaté Bodhi svaha

Gaté, Gaté, Paragate, Para Sam gaté Bodhi svaha

Gaté, Gaté, Paragate, Para Sam gaté Bodhisvaha.

Bodhi Svaha


english:

Gone, Gone, Gone beyond Gone utterly beyond

Gone, Gone, Gone beyond Gone utterly beyond

Gone, gone, gone all the way over,

Oh what an Awakening on the shore of enlightenment!


(This Heart Suttra is on the cd, Grace and Gratitude which I wrote about a couple months ago.)

Posted by susan at April 28, 2008 11:40 AM

Comments

You brought back memories, Susan.

Posted by: janet at April 28, 2008 11:57 AM

that was so touching and beautiful...your fog images lately have left me absolutely breathless...they are so gorgeous and surreal...

Posted by: michelle/tangled wings at April 30, 2008 12:13 PM

I love the Heart Suttra. I've been learning about that lately.

Bob

Posted by: Bob at April 30, 2008 07:50 PM