something new

feel like i have got back to myself, whatever that is,  and the other morning i woke at 5:30,  okay that's not a self i'm that familiar with.   anyway,  the mist was thick and i tromped out with my camera and for the first time in ages the inklings of a new project began revealing itself to me.  something about the end of the machine age.   hmm.   we'll see how it develops but here are some beginning images.  i haven't been ruthless with the edit.  that can come later.

the observer/ the observed.

my friend John Nelson,  who has an exellent  blog, www.jrnelsonphoto.blogspot.com,   gave me some good advice regarding editing.  he was referring to my post of the moon images,  and he was absolutely correct. "be ruthless with the photos," he said,  really only put what you really like.   so i am taking his advice and putting only one photo here.  i took it on my recent visit to bermuda.  it interests me because i can construe it in many ways, but primarily,  i am watching myself.    and there are two of me going forward,  the observed and the observer.    in the end the journey is our own and our greatest gift is the potential for awareness. to live in this gift requires ruthless editing.   it requires honesty of oneself that can be hard to look at.  and finally it requires love.   the te amo kind.  and so here we all are,  going forward, ultimately with only that to focus on.   

i am grateful,  deeply grateful,  to all of my people who have my back and  put out their hands to catch me when i falter .  you know who you are and   i hope you know that i am there for you in just the same way.  

and, Dick,  where ever you have gone you will always be in my heart.  We will miss you sorely down here.  i love you so, honey.   

te amo, te amo, te amo!!!

xxx

more about rats, odd as that is!

okay,  see life will always deliver.   i'm at the farm now and the day began with two rats sending rosie and heather shrieking from the barn.   apparently these rats did not obey rat rules at all,  instead of scurrying away,   they just sat in the sink and stared while rosie and heather screamed at them.   

heather said,  "they are so much creepier than city rats!  they are furry like some kind of squirrel or something.  i can't go back in there. you  go, rosie. "  

"no way."  

i thought i should go in and see,  take a photo even,  but now i catch my little lie that i told myself yesterday about preferring one kind of rat over another because totally,   no way was i going into the barn to see those rats.   barn rats or not.   ugh.  

and so we three humans scurried away and the rats are enjoying their time in the sink.   :)  

  

 

 

the conundrum of rats.

okay,  the rat is still really gross

Just returned from Bermuda.  It is an idyll.  and now am in New York.  the difference between the two places is so bizarre I can hardly hold it all. in the city there are so many realities jostling side by side, it's easy to shut down and pay no attention at all.  But if you decide to open, you find that  the veneer is thin. You can lift up the veil and peer underneath pretty easily.  and  this is exactly what i love about the city.  and love it i do, even if i'm done living here for the minute.   

 

I walked to the hudson river and dreamed my way along one of the Jettys.   suddenly a huge swarm of dragon flies descended.  seemingly hundreds of  these creatures,  quite big,  swooping and diving like helicopters around my head and up into the trees.  

a group of school kids aged about  8 or 9 began to scream at the dragonflies and swat them away. i tried to capture these antics on my little point and shoot camera but it wasn't quick enough.  a few feet a way two men fiddled with a movie camera and engaged in deep and serious discussion about something,  the dragonflies and swatting kids didn't exist in their reality.  a little further on  a painfully thin woman posed for a photo with her daughter, a group of tourists moved past, keeping close to each other as if floating through this reality and watching from inside a translucent bubble. and all the while, off in the distance, the statue of liberty lifted  her flame, still  celebrating an idea of freedom, in spite of everything that's gone on in the last 8 years.   

at the edge of the park,  people sat with their dogs reading the paper and lay sunbathing right on the concrete while underneath them, in the river,  float the detritus of modern life.   A single shoe, a HUGE bloated RAT, pale green and hairless now,  a giant feather, a swathe of plastic, bits of wood and garbage.   i focused on the rat.  gagged and began a whole big story in my head  about how gross the city is etc..  then i had to laugh.   so what did i think,  that  the rats in the barn on the farm are somehow easier to deal with than rats running through kitchens and over the garbage and floating in huge polluted bodies of water?

that's the reality i decided to go along with,  that i prefer country rats to city rats.   hey and what about the rats in Bermuda?  they are huge but perhaps less horrifying because they live in that little paradise?   did i decide somewhere along the line that the country rats are cleaner or more honest than the tough packs of rats in the city?   Could there be such a thing as an honest rat? A rat is a rat. It just is. I’m the one with all the thoughts and opinions and judgments of things. And how is it possible ever to judge when in one 30 minute stroll along the Hudson river so many different lives are playing out. Layers and layers of reality, all easily glimpsed if you stop for a second and watch.   if nothing else,  what a divine little game!  

 

moon on the water bermuda

Bermuda

here's the thing,  no matter what i say,  no matter what i think,   in the end it often comes back to bermuda.  i love it here .  i love this house.  i love the ridiculously wet humid air and the narrow roads. i love my friends.  i love the beach.  i love it all.   and  the day we arrived a white dove landed on the roof of the house and now seems intent on staying here at the house with Gini and Berto and Jenny and Anna and Jerry and the kids and me.   she, i think she is a she, like the white tree i wrote about earlier,  is quite friendly and comes close and let me take her portrait.    I have some of her on film but in the meantime here she is in full technicolor, shot with my lovely little point and shoot digital camera.