Yummy Rose~ Canon 30d

I love capturing nature's flaws in a way that might inspire a few to reconsider their relationship with beauty and imperfection. What is beauty? What does it mean to be perfect or imperfect? What exactly constitutes a "flaw"? Can you tolerate them in others? Most importantly, can you tolerate them in yourself? How do you treat yourself when you fail? Do you cut yourself down and throw yourself in the trash the moment one of your leaves gets chewed on, or can you feel an appropriate amount of disappointment, learn the lesson, and choose to focus on the multitude of fabulous qualities you possess that far outweigh any mistakes you've made?

What is perfection? Where can one find it?

How we view the world is a reflection of how we view ourselves. Did you know that? So, what does this mean if, upon finding a flaw on a flower (or a person) you push it away in search of another who is "better"? Just like flowers, people are fragile, beautiful, vulnerable, subject to decay, trauma and wilting. And although most of us last much longer than a delicate flower, we would do well to pay attention to how we consider them, respond to them, relate to and judge them. Can you train your heart to truly see a flower or a person, whether vibrantly in bloom or sadly wilting? Can you find the inherent beauty in all things? Do you realize disowning your own inner beauty will blind you to finding it in everything around you? I assure you, beauty is everywhere! Bursting through your curtains, hiding around every corner, and patiently waiting to be discovered in every chamber of your heart, in every nook and cranny of your being, and in all beings.

The Buddha once said, "When you realize how perfect everything is you will tilt your head back and laugh at the sky!" But wait... I forgot... you're too busy focusing on that little smudge on your sweater, the few extra pounds, that irritating habit of your boyfriend's, and the hole in the leaf that has rendered a formerly perfect rose completely unacceptable. Buddha wouldn't have felt the miracle of breath, the gift of seeing, or the abundant surplus of things to be grateful for either if he thought the way we do.

There are countless qualities you possess which far outweigh the ego's unending search for satisfaction – "imperfection" steals our attention away from what should be a given, solid state of appreciation and happiness.

Let me put it another way...

Consider the lilies of the field, they neither spin nor toil, they neither whine nor complain, nor make impossible requests of the sun, stars and moon. They do not wish for what they do not have, they do not compare themselves to their neighbors. They do not boast of their beauty, but they do not hide it either, they simply are what they are. They simply bloom where they are planted.

People have a hard time with this concept. We're conditioned to find the flaws, scanning the landscape for threatening beasts. Our Neanderthal ancestors had little time to commune with the lilies, if they had, they would have met their demise as a saber-toothed tiger's Blue Plate Special. So what's a little 21st century one in a billion speck on a globally warming planet supposed to do, you might ask? Recondition your mind. Remember your beauty. Educate your eyes, and your heart, and your mind to seek it, uncover, excavate and find it! The ego-based myth of physical perfection has mangled the insides of so many of us, we're in the midst of an epidemic. Paul Gauguin once said, "One eye sees, and the other feels." We must feel our way into beauty, which is a skill the ego alone can not grasp. Feeling one's way into the endless well of perfection is the Soul's work. Call it what you wish – Holy Spirit, Buddha Nature, Higher Mind, True Self, your inner sacred presence, the witness within – that which is THAT – the inner place that is complete and whole and without blemish, untouched by birth or death and continually flowers from within you – let this be the lens, the torch, the keyhole, the sixth sense through which you will find the happiness which so often escapes you.

So, Alice! Fall into to a deeper world. Step into your inner witness' looking glass. Find a flaw. Seek out a blemish. Shrink your small self down, down, down, and step smack dab in the middle of your life's so-called "imperfection". Let go of your limited vision of the world and give way to the intimate beauty of your Soul's embrace. When that miracle of belonging to yourself occurs, the world and its imperfections will melt away and your Big Blue Sky will be filled with a belly-full of laughter.

Photograph ~ May 5th, late afternoon on the grounds of the Franciscan Monastery
in Washington, DC.

Iris Undressing ~ Canon 30d

After a client meeting in Northeast DC yesterday afternoon, I took advantage of my close proximity to the Franciscan Monastery and the incredible weather to capture some images of the flowers. With statues of St. Francis and a mosaic of the Virgin of Guadeloupe looking on, I carried on conversations with iris in various stages of dress, undress, and blossom. No one has to explain to me the reasons why St. Francis spoke to the flowers ~ they're always the ones initiating the conversations.

Port-o-Cherry ~ Canon 30d

It's been awhile since I've posted due to a very dear friend's sudden and serious illness which happened alongside some minor surgery I had scheduled last week. It's been a week or so filled with pain, fear, healing, and the beauty of friendship and active compassion in my life. My sweet friends here in DC have been so supportive and endearing in the midst of sadness and not knowing what to expect as the weeks and months go by for someone I love. I know life is like this – beauty and mess mingled together. I also know it's the mess that allows us to appreciate the beauty, especially when we find them so close together.

I haven't had the energy or time or even the inspiration to post up here until I looked at this image a second time. It's perfect for what I've been going through. A spot-on description of my inner weather system filled with inspirational blossoms alongside quite a bit of... well... shit. If you happen to be in a similar place, just remember shit is incredible fertilizer, and the deeper you think you're in it, the bigger the opportunity you have to GROW.

Please pray for my friend, who will have his kidney removed sometime
in the coming weeks.

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.)

Enchanted Trees ~ Canon 30d

All the radiance of April in Italy lay gathered together at her feet. The sun poured in on her. The sea lay asleep in it, hardly stirring. Across the bay the lovely mountains, exquisitely different in colour, were asleep too in the light; and underneath her window, at the bottom of the flower-starred grass slope from which the wall of the castle rose up, was a great cypress, cutting through the delicate blues and violets and rose-colours of the mountains and the sea like a great black sword.

She stared. Such beauty; and she there to see it. Such beauty; and she alive to feel it. Her face was bathed in light. Lovely scents came up to the window and caressed her. A tiny breeze gently lifted her hair. Far out in the bay a cluster of almost motionless fishing boats hovered like a flock of white birds on the tranquil sea. How beautiful, how beautiful. Not to have died before this... to have been allowed to see, breathe, feel this... She stared, her lips parted. Happy? Poor, ordinary, everyday word. But what could one say, how could one describe it? It was as though she could hardly stay inside herself, it was as though she were too small to hold so much joy, it was as though she were washed through with light.

~ Elizabeth von Arnim, Enchanted April

I may not live in Elizabeth von Armin's world, but mine is nonetheless miraculous. Our capacity for beauty knows no limits when we train the heart and eye to find it everywhere.

Karma ~ Canon 30d

Just as I was about to take a picture of this blossom-laden branch, a male mallard duck suddenly came flying in for a cacophonous landing, marked by much quacking, splashing and disruption of water. Luckily, I had the camera set on high exposure mode (or whatever the official term is) and took about 5 images in rapid sequence as the karmic effect of his landing rippled out across the water. My feathered friend is obscured, but he's in there, just behind the blossoms.

Mallard 1 ~ Canon 30d

Mallard 2 ~ Canon 30d

Cherry Fog ~ Canon 30d

This could be my favortie shot of the season! Shot on Hains Point in Washington.

Water Color ~ Canon 30d

The wind subsides—a fragrance
of petals freshly fallen;
it's late in the day—I'm too tired
to comb my hair.
Things remain but he is gone
and with him everything.
On the verge of words: tears flow.

I hear at Twin Creek spring it's still lovely;
how I long to float there on a small boat—
But I fear at Twin Creek my frail grasshopper boat

could not carry this load of grief.

~ Li Ch'ing-chao (1084?–1151)translated by Eugene Eoyang

Jefferson's Blossoms ~ Canon 30d

The glow of one warm thought is to me worth more than money.
~ Thomas Jefferson

Obelisk Obscured ~ Canon 30d

Although fog renders this image incomplete by postcard standards, I've a unique image of the DC skyline, don't you think? Those unfamiliar with the landscape of my home town might be puzzled... what precisely, is obscured here? Look again, but this time with ancient Egypt in your mind's eye. If that didn't jostle your memory bank, then think of the most phallic of our nation's landmarks.

The Washington Monument, which is the same height as the great pyramid of Giza, played hide and seek beneath a thick cloak of fog last week. Nary a tourist was out and about in such dismal weather, but the moment I looked out the window Thursday morning I knew I had to drop everything to shoot the blossoms everyone wants to see in weather few would consider optimal.

Think again, silly tourists. Experiencing cherry blossoms ensconced in clouds caused such feelings of peaceful elation I couldn't help but cautiously glance backward ~ had angel wings sprouted beneath my shoulder blades in the middle of night? Did I transition to "the other side" in my sleep last night unawares? Such huge allowances for mysterious beauty are reserved only for ghosts and angels, for creatures inhabiting eternal spaces. And then I remembered all are eternal, but all not so aware of the beauty of fog and blossoms and the opportunity to enjoy them melded together so early on an April morn.

To hear a clip of the peal bells, click here.

Bell Ringers ~ Canon 30d

Watching this was somewhat like watching a dance. Note the lady on the right who just yanked her rope.

I imagine this is just a fraction of Quasimodo's overall collection.

Don't try this at home, people. It wouldn't be dangerous for anyone on the rope-pulling level, but in the room above where the bells are actually located, you could kill a person who happened to be standing at the wrong place at the wrong time. I found the impromptu flimsy wire fencing a bit comical, although I must say it did do a wonderful job of keeping the curious tourists and a certain photographer OUT.

By the way, if you live the in DC area, and happen to have your Tuesday evenings free, you could become a bell ringer. They say it takes at least a year to know what you're doing, since there's a delay between pulling the rope and the bell sounding, and the delay varies depending on the the size of the bell that happens to be at the end of the rope you happen to be pulling. Good news is, you can be completely tone deaf to be a part of this rare musical group.

Spiral Staircase ~ Canon 30d

This one will take you to the bell pulling room ~ very cool! (The carillon is on the right side... this should give some perspective on the scale of this instrument.)