Contemplative Masters Series - Freeman Patterson

   More than any other photographer, Freeman Patterson has taught me the beauty of the abstract image.  He has given me the permission, in a manner of speaking, to really play with my camera, to see it as a paintbrush more than a machine.

   I have to admit that until quite recently, I hadn't been doing much in this line of contemplative image making but a cheeky frog at the pond changed all that.

   The sudden movement of the frog, and the resulting splash which disturbed the water reflection, caused me to move just as I was releasing the shutter.  I nearly deleted it thinking "Oh, that will be a blurry mess!" but instead, I took the time to look at the resulting image.

   What I saw was a symphony of color and swirling shapes and I thought, "Freeman would love this!  Surprisingly, I do too!"

   When I got home, I took out his book, Photography and the Art of Seeing and re-read the part about "thinking sideways".  He invites you to break the rules while photographing, like the one about always holding your camera steady as you make your photograph.

   Contemplative Masters allow us to perceive our world with new eyes.  They give us the tools to experience the world like we never have before.  The pond, the frog, and Freeman Patterson all conspired to awaken me to the abstract possibilities of what I am seeing.  I will always be thankful to all three of them!

"Seldom do we look sideways, that is, search for other premises or new beginnings.  We avoid introducing new factors, technical or emotional, into our photography for fear that we won't be able to control them.  A good way to break the grip of an idea that controls the way you see and photograph is to pretend that it doesn't exist.  You must break the rules."

   Think about one rule that you always apply to your camera work and then forget it exists!  Go out and spend the day breaking the rules.  You might be as pleasantly surprised as I was!

 

Gathering Breadcrumbs at The Center at Westwoods...

   The Center at Westwoods is an amazing place.  My friend and I spent a lovely hour or so walking the grounds recently.  My fist thought was that it would be an ideal location for contemplative photography.  The landscape is thoughtfully and exquisitely laid out with various locations you can visit and enjoy for their peace as well as their contemplative possibilities.

   Sculptures, like this stone spiral dot the landscape and you can feel the energy flowing everywhere you walked.  The following are a series of "breadcrumbs" I gathered during my short visit.  I wish I had had the time to walk the amazing labyrinth.  Or I should say, I wish it hadn't been so hot in the sun!  I will return on a cooler day for that experience.  In the meantime, I can reflect on the breadcrumbs I gathered this day...

   The breadcrumbs I gathered were all very muted, one even black and white, until I got to the Koi pond.  The sunlight was a bit glaring but I was mesmerized by the color!  The sweet little green frog on the yellow lily pad, the blue water etched with the reflection of the metal sculpture beside the pond and the stunning orange and yellow fish all came together in a riot of color.  This is a place I could return to again and again and never run out of inspiration.  Like my pond here in Maine, I have a very similar experience every time I visit.  Do you have a contemplative landscape that fascinates you?  One you can return to over and over again?  Isn't it time you found one!

  

A Thought for Today: Slowing Down...

   You can see it all around, if you live here in the Northern Hemisphere, things are slowing down.  I haven't had to have the lawn mowed in a couple of weeks and you can almost hear the flowers saying, "Ok, enough already!"  This is the reason for the season...the world takes a collective deep sigh and begins to close its eyes.

   But you shouldn't.  This is a wonderful time for the contemplative photographer.  A time to slow down and notice.  To pay attention to the small and easily overlooked things.  The light on a leaf, the crunch under foot, the smell of wild grapes and that particular woodsy smell of the world that epitomizes the autumn for me here in Maine.

   Nature is sending us a very important message as contemplative photographers...SLOW DOWN AND PAY ATTENTION!   It is so easy to overlook the small wonders of the world.

   Yesterday, I sat on the front porch and watched the yellow leaves fall from my maple tree.  I didn't want to photograph it, I just wanted to watch their gentle descent...the way a small breeze would send them swirling.  I tried to keep from my mind the thought that I will have to rake up all those leaves in a couple of weeks...that thought would rip me away from the present moment.  Now it was the time to simply enjoy the dance...

The Poetry of Place - 23 September 2014

  I hadn't been to the pond in two weeks and I couldn't miss the official first day of autumn!  The shore line from my favorite vantage point is really beginning to warm up.  The sky was a lovely cerulean blue.  The pond level is continuing to drop since September has been particularly dry.

   I remain fascinated with the water reflections.  Whereas a month or so ago, it was all yellow and green, now it is as if Nature is spilling cans of magenta paint into the water!  It reminded me of the poured paintings of abstract expressionist painter, Helen Frankenthaler.

   When I posted this image on my daily photojournal, someone commented that it was part photo, part painting, and part tapestry.  I can certainly see this image woven as well as painted.

   The effect was mesmerizing...vividly rendered and perfectly still until a wind blew it away.  Nature wiping clean the canvas.  It shimmered back into focus a few minutes later.

   I've always thought that autumn was a wonderful gift.  Just when it seems the world is dying, it flares up with amazing color and texture.  Perhaps it is giving us a final image of bold color to hold in our heart as we approach the monochrome days of winter.

Calendar of the Soul: The Year Participated 
by Rudolf Steiner, translated by Ruth and Hans Pusch

Twenty Fifth Week - (22 - 28 September)

I can belong now to myself
And shining spread my inner light
Into the dark of space and time.

Toward sleep is urging all creation,
But inmost soul must stay awake
And carry wakefully sun's glowing
Into the winter's icy flowing. 

   A participant in the Star Island retreat suggested this book and I will be using the poems in The Poetry of Place project, along with Thoreau's words and my humble attempts at Haiku. Every visit brings new poetic expression and I find myself falling in love with this place.  I do hope I can venture out in canoe in a couple of weeks to dip my hand into these colors!

   I offer this image as a counter point to those above.  It was made on the easterly shore in a cove that was deep in shadow.  The light was very different and the wind here rippled the water.  The warm color in the upper half must have come from a large maple tree to the left.  The whole effect of this was quite stunning and this photograph doesn't begin to translate the silver shimmer, the whispering quiet I experienced there.

   'There are quiet places also in the mind', he said meditatively. 'But we build bandstands and factories on them. Deliberately — to put a stop to the quietness.'
- Aldous Huxley
 
 

Living in the Shadowlands...

   There can be no appreciation of the light without an understanding of the shadow.  I've been photographing shadows recently; fascinated by the cast shapes and patterns.  I find them a revealing metaphor.

   The chair's shadow tells us nothing about the chair; not its size, its shape or much else about it.  In fact, you would never be able to guess what the object was if you only had the shadow to look at.

   I was sitting on the observation platform of an old train which I took as a pleasant diversion on a late summer day.  And while the scenery was lovely, it was the shadows on the deck that held my attention.  As the train moved, the shadows changed shape, becoming more elongated and distorted.  By the time we had reached the station, they were gone altogether.

   Time and circumstance bend and twist our realities in many ways, like the shadows, but we remain as we are, regardless of whatever temporary shadows we cast...

Keep your face always toward the sunshine

 and shadows will fall behind you.

- Walt Whitman

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Footnote:

   This post reminded me of a film I haven't seen in a number of years.  Shadowlands tells the true story of C.S. Lewis and his love affair and subsequent marriage to an American divorcee.  The acting is wonderful and it explores the hidden dimensions - shadowlands - that we all have.

    I bought the film, No Greater Love, by Michael Whyte recently. It depicts the cloistered lives of a convent of Carmelite nuns in England.  It is the follow up to Into Great Silence which documents the lives of an order of French monks. (You can read the post I did of it here...)  No Greater Love is like watching a Vermeer painting come to life and I paused it again and again to just savor the light and compositions.   I find myself doing that more and more with films...pausing them and savoring some detail.  Films created by true masters of the medium can be viewed that way...a series of beautiful "stills".

Inspired by Eeyore

  I find much wisdom and inspiration in children's books.  The stories of A.A. Milne being some of my favorite.  I've always held that the characters in his famous Winnie-the-Pooh stories are archetypes for the human condition.

   In general, I think I am a bit like Winnie but we all possess the characteristics of all the friends at Pooh Corner from time to time.  Who hasn't had a down day when the grumblings of Eeyore seem so apropos?   I'm taking these Eeyore quotes for today's inspiration. 

   I am a great fan of weeds.  There stubbornness and persistence and their will to live is admirable.  Perhaps we might wish they would choose to live elsewhere than in the beds of our flower gardens but some I allow to stay, like the wild phlox.

   The lady who helps me with my garden from time to time, a professional master gardener, shakes her head at this but I don't care, "Weeks are flowers too, once you get to know them."

   At the risk of sounding like a complete crack pot, I do talk to my plants on occasion. I always have.  But this final bit of inspiration from Eeyore is equally important and one I try to practice daily during the gardening season.

"I was just sittin' here enjoyin'

the company.  Plants got

a lot to say, if you take

the time to listen."

- Eeyore

  

  Even though the gardening season is at an end here in Maine, there are still plenty of plants you can commune with. The fall asters are still "buzzing".  Makes you want to take a cup of tea out to the garden, doesn't it!  Don't forget your camera!
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A Related Past Post:

A Weed By Any Other Name....

The Landscape as Archetype...

  Sometimes I think my life is one big synchronistic dance!  I have been thinking a great deal about my little meditation garden and design possibilities for it.  I wanted it to be more than just another place with plants.  It triggered a series of connections that ended, as many do for me, with photography. 

  First I got my weekly newsletter from A Sacred Journey where Lacy mentioned a website that allows you to plot out your own archetype chart.  (Which is really fun to do by the way.  Try it here...)

   That got me thinking about the possibility of discovering archetypes in the landscape.  The next thing I knew, I was ordering a book, The Inward Garden by Julie Moir Messervy.   In it, she identifies seven archetypes in the landscape...the sky, the sea, the cave, the harbor, the promontory, the island and the mountain. (Of course, I saw my little meditation garden as the harbor.)

This whole chain of events happened a few days before I left for St. Joseph's Abbey.  It primed me to experience the landscape around St. Joseph's in a whole new way...as archetype.

   As I drove up the one mile long driveway to the abbey I was immediately taken by the rolling green fields that surrounded me.  The monks chose the center of the 2,500 acres, on a crest of a hill, to site their buildings.  From that vantage point you gaze out on vast seas of green.  It was the exact same "oceanic effect" I had on Star Island only now it was green rather than blue.

   In her book, Messervy also equates the sea with "withinness" associated with our first sensation of floating in our mother's womb.  With the immersion effect of the real or symbolic sea of the landscape we experience that inward world which was our first experience of space.  Very powerful and evocative thinking.

   The sky also seemed bigger to me here.  There was a kind of interplay between height and distance going on that was very appealing. Messervy calls it the "transcendent world". Now, I have a lot more reading and thinking to do about this idea of archetypes in the landscape as I immerse myself in this wonderful book but the seed has been planted.  (Oops!  Back to gardening again!)

   One can find connections everywhere you look.  The important thing is to recognize that interconnections exist in the world...visual as well as literary.  Thoughts, ideas, images...all are a great well the contemplative photographer can draw from. (Hmm, could that be another archetype?)

   I found that adults remember vividly their childhood contemplative places, and long for such spaces in their contemporary lives.  These images from our early lives carry strong physical, psychological, and spiritual meaning forever.

 The Inward Garden, page 26

   Do you  have special contemplative places from your youth?  One of my favorites was a tree house my Grandfather and I built in an old apple tree.  It was a place I could withdraw to...pull up the ladder and escape.  That memory has stayed with me all my life.  One of my saddest childhood memories was when my Father knocked down the old tree with his bulldozer as he leveled the backyard.  Something quite special was also leveled that day and I think I have been seeking that place of retreat all my life in some way or another.  My little meditation garden will be my recreation of this youthful sanctuary.