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« December 2009 | Main | February 2010 »
'The most I can do for my friend is simply be his friend. ~Henry David Thoreau'
Love, peace, softness, light. Flurry and beguile.
Rosy tinted cheeks and an inner glow.
A sparkle and a shimmer and a glint.
Mischief; magic; spirit and dazzle.
Merriment and mirth. Cheer and delight.
Brightness and brilliance.
This post is dedicated to Lou, 'cos she had a bad day and needs cheering up. And to Katie, 'cos she made my day out there in the snow.
Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. (Marcus Aurelius).
For years I have worried that I didn't have the certainty of opinion that me to say- this is how it is. I know I am right. I would envy those I worked with who carved a soapbox of stone right where they stood and didn't budge from their adopted position. How can the need to be 'right' more important than the need to listen, and learn, and even change? Nowadays I relish the thought that the little certainties of life are constantly challenged. In photography, especially. Vignetting? Bring it on. A bit of grain? Love that. Focus, schmocus. There are no rules. On my (expensive) camera I have placed the (relatively cheap) little plastic, selective focus lens, my Lensbaby, (never was a lens more aptly named) and once again I am looking at the world with a different perspective. The focus of life will fall where you choose.
These cold winter evenings have been brightened with this project and the house is littered with spidery lengths of red thread that cling to any passing body. And offcuts of paper, fabric, lace and ribbon. Nothing is safe from my scissors. (It reminds me of the time my mother, on preparing to go out for an evening 'do', circa 1970, and following one of my 5 year old fabric scavenging sessions, took a large print evening skirt - like I say, it was 1970...- from her wardrobe, to find a doll-shaped sillhouette cut from the very middle of it. Not a good look for a dinner party. How, or why she didn't kill me I'll never know! I think the long skirt ended up as a mini, and my dolls were thereafter very well dressed, so all was not lost.)
I love the fat chunkiness of it, paper bursting, threads hanging. Scrappy indeed.
pages, waiting to be filled. I think it may last me the year, but I'm already planning the next one. I am addicted, for sure.
...it's just a state of mind.
Schooldays have turned into snow days and the landscape has shrugged off the grey and the brown and shouldered a cleansing, muffling shroud of winter white. It's beautiful! We find beauty in different things, don't we. Some like to observe and preserve and reflect and record; (me); others (him) like to get in there and experience it from within- to feel it and throw it and roll in it and disrupt the crystal smoothness of it...
And taunt the dog with it...
...but the dog is just as bad...
Meanwhile, I observe, and record.
Sophie is kind of in between. She appreciates the beauty, but she still knows how to have fun!
Ollie rises to the challenge of how to achieve the most spectacular wipeout,
whilst I ponder the challenge of how to get Sophie to wear a coat on the coldest day I can remember.
I fail, and wander off to find new challenges.
Picture-perfect days; no-one's hurt, and home before sunset for tea and toast.
...of Dad being home for a few days...
..of sunshine and frost and clear skies...
...taken on our icy puddle jumping expedition...
Just look at that sun! So low in the sky even near noon and piercing straight to the heart with an injection of vitamin D and endorphins. Snow forecast tonight though!
I wonder if there is psychological test to analyse one's interpretation of patterns in frozen puddles? Like the old inkblot tests. What would the scientists make of me? I see whole landscapes and microcosmic worlds. I see hope and destiny, and yet elsewhere I see hopes shattered and destiny thwarted. Lines on a battlefield, on a face, on a page. Symmetry and chaos, aliens and jellyfish and daggers and diamonds and deep sea monsters. Ice does so much more for the imagination than mud.
Happy- because so many of these images make me smile. Sad- because I had to leave so many out. But you don't want to watch a 3500 picture slideshow, do you? Thought not! I can't believe how much fun and love and happiness we've packed into a year.
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