Memories

I was looking for a photo I made many years ago and while I was looking a found some early photos that I made that I love. Thought I would share them with you today since they sort of fit the season.

Memories

When I look back on my photography it brings back all kinds of memories. Sometimes I look at my photographs and wish that I could go back in time to re-take the image knowing what I now know about photography.

But then other times I am gobsmacked by some images that I made and I wouldn’t change a thing. It’s funny how even when I knew so little about what I was doing in the early days every once in awhile I would create something that I still love today. The same thing happens when I make watercolor paintings.

Where Does the Dance Begin, Where Does It End?

 

Don’t call this world adorable, or useful, that’s not it.
It’s frisky, and a theater for more than fair winds.
The eyelash of lightning is neither good nor evil.
The struck tree burns like a pillar of gold.

But the blue rain sinks, straight to the white
feet of the trees
whose mouths open.
Doesn’t the wind, turning in circles, invent the dance?
Haven’t the flowers moved, slowly, across Asia, then Europe,
until at last, now, they shine
in your own yard?

Don’t call this world an explanation, or even an education.

When the Sufi poet whirled, was he looking
outward, to the mountains so solidly there
in a white-capped ring, or was he looking

to the center of everything: the seed, the egg, the idea
that was also there,
beautiful as a thumb
curved and touching the finger, tenderly,
little love-ring,

as he whirled,
oh jug of breath,
in the garden of dust?

   — Mary Oliver

Though I feel like I fail more often than I succeed, every so often a picture I’ve painted makes me smile. And when I look back through my stack of paintings it brings back memories of what I have learned along the way.

What memories bring you joy?

I hope you’re having a good day.

May you walk in beauty.