number two...

Two reflections.

The fuzziness of minute life is a trip.

An enigmatic element of life...

So Folks... Will we ever see this kind of beach day again? The sky in this shot - rounded by the semi fisheye lens - always strikes me as giving the same emotional experience as if the sky goes on forever... which it does.

and more.

more

The urban view can be colourful, scant, enigmatic or dreary: here's hoping we find a way over time to make it more joyful...

These images were some of how my intervening time has been spent...

LLLLllllllong time no post

This ain't black and white... Interesting - because even in my most depressed times this intensity of colour photograph will still make it part way through my depression - in other words, 'in spite' of the part of me that 'wants' to turn such a vibrancy into blacknwhite...

Given what I just wrote, I HAD to repost this.

A friend of mine struggles with depression - the way I see so many people doing - the same way I do it myself :>( ... We FOCUS on what is seemingly Right in Front of US. In the case of this picture of our 'outside dining table' ( ! ) this means focusing on black and white options for putting self/Self in This Box or That Box. To quote my friend:
"The self limitations of emotions, be it anger / depression /guilt / anxiety or fear can be as debilitating as any addiction or life threatening disease. Feelings of being a complete failure can lead to and result in a powerful journey to self destruction."

He then admitted to: "struggling now on how to continue with this discussion, battling with screams on how it must be done perfectly. I am allowing a reprieve, to attempt to shift to a part of me that is content with muddling along this journey..." To me, that "muddling along" he's speaking of [trying not to be judging himself about] is actually the "Pearl of Great Price" - i.e. that is exactly the way it feels - 'muddling through' the battlefield of giving oneself permission not to be just looking at the immediate blacknwhite non-choices in front of us - but giving myself permission to look up into the greenery of the trees or the blue of the sky above or the warmth of a Spring Sun - which, I stilllll predict - will get to us sometime about now... Blessing All Our Connections, Barry

So this is how I wish it looked here now. I dunno about anyone else but I think I'm just about done with winter. This path in the woods behind where I used to work was a major source of replenishment/rejeuvenation during the warm months. Going out there during my lunch break was consistently healing, even if the sun was not shining as in this shot... but the sun did and will make a big difference - it does even while we still have all this snow. More scheduled for the next couple of days too... :<(
The depressingness of the winter Will Pass, folks, I Declare it so...

Since you asked Mike... Here is Obie in all his RELAXED Glory! This may look like a funny position for a cat but I can tell you he also sleeps with his head literally upside down sometimes...

This is my best friend, sexy partner and wife. I love the brightly coloured red and blue energy coming up out of the back of her head!

This seemed a good companion photo to the piece below. It's of the abandoned house behind our laneway...

I was reading an article on Bs... It attempted to 'academically' address the issue of our current 'culture's' use of 'bullshit' i.e. not the term but the actuality...
My problem with this is that just about anywhere and everywhere I look I see what I would call anything from mild to 'supersized' ( ! ) bullshit. How can I address an issue that I think is crucial to overcome for the continuance of our very existence as a species when the stench of it fills my nostrils and my standing in it makes me feel that I can only be inherently dirty?
My only starting place for typing of this can be in putting out my version of what I figure is it's opposite: QUALITY.
Now the Quality that I refer to is, I think, the same referenced by Robert Pirsig in Zen & the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. In that sense, I choose to believe that there is somewhere in each of us a Knower of Truth. The quality vs. bullshit differences we can note in people are explainable by a combination of how much conscious access as well as how much unconscious access they choose to have to that Knower of Truth.
But what about the free-ranging bullshit in all of our institutions, social and individual frameworks, in our ethnic and national mythologies? Those multilayerings of bullshit do not often seem to be doing what the original stinky stuff is 'supposed' to do - become fertilizer for food or flowers...
Maybe I don't have a sufficiently long telephoto 'lens' on my viewpoint - maybe in 100 more years it'll be clear we were on the verge of a breakthrough in early 2005. News corporations are definitely threatened by the questioning of net writers. Those emperors may yet be seen 'sans frocks'... Blogs do feel like a revolutionary medium - my writing has no-one but me - at least at the moment (!) it has to account to. To touch my sense of the possiblity of a Quality Self (in this brief note here) has helped challenge my belief that bullshit is pandemic. And maybe it works for you too.

Here's one from England in August of 2003 - neat because the land and houses in the background give you some perspective on the size. This one was only of moderate size: some have been intricate designs of say 900 feet...

Boy, I must have a big need for colour and spring these days! Find myself choosing shots from the last couple of years that yell Vibrancy - as there is not much of it around... Next I'll post a crop circle - that'll Do It more...