In Praise of Silence...

   If someone forced me to choose just one characteristic of winter in Maine that I love I would say its silence.  During a snowfall everything is hushed.  Even the occasional car that drives by seems muffled.  The world is snuggled under a soft white blanket and it is a lovely place to be.

   It is in the silence
that my hope is, and my aim.

Wendall Berry

    Silence is often thought of as the absence of noise but it is so much more than that.  It is an embracing envelop of calm and serenity that wraps around your heart. Unfortunately, true silence is something most of us never experience.

   I don't so much try to eliminated noise from my life as I try to lessen the effect it has on me.  I try to embrace a silence of spirit that makes the noise tolerable.  Walking in the woods after a snowfall is the closest I have come to experiencing the real fullness of silence and it too is a wonderful place to be.  In the joyous hubbub of the holiday season which is fast approaching, carve out for yourself moments of silence whenever you can.  You will re-join the festivities refreshed.  If you need a bit more convincing, check out these 10 reasons for making time for silence in your life...

10 Reasons to Include Silence, Rest and Solitude in your Life

In Praise of Reflections...

   I've become fascinated by the painterly quality of water reflections lately.  This one I made in Ireland but I've focused on reflections in my pond studies of Little Clemons Pond as well.

   The light on the water does wonderful things with shapes and color. I can really see these as paintings as much as photographs.

   It is the poetic nature of reflections that draws me.  Reality subtly altered and transformed.  I find them exquisitely beautiful.  They can have a strong abstract element to them as well, especially if you remove the source of the reflection from the composition and focus only on the reflection.

   This is an image from my "pond ponderings".  I seem drawn each time I go to the pond to see what reflections I can find...how the weather alters the color and tones of the reflections.

   This might make a nice summer/fall series (imagine the fall foliage spilling reds and oranges in the water!) and if you want to learn a bit more about photographing water reflections, you can visit this link for inspiration:

Photographing Water Reflections

  

In Praise of the Little Ones...

   I haven't done an "In Praise of..." post for awhile and I thought I would acknowledge the wee creatures that share this island in the most gracious and endearing ways.  I will begin with the geckos.

   These little guys are quite literally everywhere on the island.  They feast on the pesky mosquitoes so are naturally a welcome addition in the environment.  Having no eyelids, they must continually lick their eyes to keep them moist and they are very quick but sometimes they just need to hitch a ride....

Gecko Carpooling

   Next we have the incredibly "sweet"  Bananaquits also known as the Sugar Birds that visit our deck everyday.

       I set out a dish of sugar water and they just love it. Sometimes there are as many as 12 of them on the rim of the bowl.  Hummingbirds also visit and await their chance for a sweet drink.

   The little birds will bathe in the bowl as well and let the sugary water dry on their feathers.  They'll later pick off the dry sugar crystals for a sweet snack.

A quick dip...

    And what is my "contemplative" take on these small residents of St. John?  It is very easy.  They are simply doing what Nature intended them to do.  They have no pretensions or egos to interfere with the joy of their daily existence.  The geckos don't wish they were alligators and the Sugar Birds don't envy the flamingo.  They live each day as it comes and they make the best of everything they are given.  Yes, we can learn a lot from the little ones.  Take some time to observe the little ones where you live and marvel at their resilience and courage to simply live their lives.


   I will end with a video by St. John photographer and filmmaker Steve Simonsen.  He has capture the annual migration of the hermit craps that occurs every August here on St. John.  This is another little creature that I've enjoyed so much during my stay....

Hermit Crab Migration 

In Praise of Shaker Stone Walls...

   I'm a huge fan of stone walls.  I've even done two posts praising them...you can read one here and the other one there.  But the stone wall along Shaker Road  at Canterbury is really quite unique...not in the way it looks but in the way it was made.

   This wall, made with smaller stones than the others that surround the property, was built by a man working alone and with one arm!  Sister Bertha, who I had conversed with at length in the late 1970's told me all about him.   His name had been forgotten but his accomplishment wasn't, at least by this lovely Shaker lady.  He adapted by using smaller stones and coming up with devices that allowed him to roll the stones into place with one arm.  She saw it as a metaphor for the patience, flexibility and perfection of effort that characterized the Shakers.  I see it now as a metaphor for the contemplative photographer who sometimes needs to adapt to what she finds and to also practice patience and persistence.  

    When I visited the village last week, I asked a couple of people who worked at the village if they knew about the story of the stone wall and they didn't.  It doesn't take long for stories to slip from memory and be forgotten.  Sister Bertha died in the early 1990's.  Thankfully, it didn't take me much effort when I got home, thanks to the wonder of the internet, to find the story again in an article in the New York Times printed in 1990 and I'm including a link below.  Luckily, she had told the story to someone else who had written it down.  Stone walls, a common sight in rocky New England, have tales to tell, so do contemplative photographers.  One particular wall at Canterbury Shaker Village has a story that should never be forgotten.  If you have limitations this doesn't mean you can't overcome them and they shouldn't keep you from contributing to your community.  You adapt and persevere and you will succeed...simple as that.

Stone Symbols of Shaker Permanence

In Praise of Viriditas...

There is nothing in creation that

does not have some radiance - either

greenness or seeds or flowers or

beauty - otherwise it would not be

 part of creation.

- Hildegard of Bingen

   As I go in search of "remnants", leftovers in the landscape, I am always in awe of Nature's ability to absorb Man's constructions.  Slowly but surely, Nature begins its process of reclamation, obliterating, eventually, the hand of Man.

   On Inis Oirr, there is a place few people visit, tucked away on the back side of the island.  It is the site of a small Medieval monastic settlement, long gone.  It is a place of sheltering peace.  Here you can feel the immense sense of history but also the wonderful presence of ever enduring Nature.  I am reminded of the Mayan ruins in Mexico that lay hidden for centuries, obscured by the lush vegetation. 

   On the Burren, you can walk the limestone and marvel at the way Nature seeks to fill every void with the living.  Nature abhors empty places.  I'll never tire of exploring that area or photographing the "fertile rock".

   This greening of the earth is slowly starting in Maine, as it does every year. (Here in Kentucky it is in full bloom!) What has lain hidden, buried in white, now seeks the light and warmth of the sun.  On this day, when we celebrate the Earth and its greening power (Viriditas is the Latin word for "greenness"), let's hope Man comes to his senses and begins  a new and positive relationship with the natural world for the message is clear.  Man and all his vanities will ultimately succumb.  Nature will endure, one way or another.

In Praise of Islands...

I'll admit it; I'm a HUGE fan of islands! So many of the places I've visited are islands...large and small.  In late June I will spend a week on Monhegan Island here in my home state of Maine and I look forward to re-visiting this charming place. It is a house share with other photographers/artists. I think sharing a house is a great way to stay inexpensively in interesting places with like minded folks.  I have a house share in Down East Maine this September and one in the Burren area of Ireland in May of 2014.  You might consider joining me!

     The photograph in this post was made on the tiny island of Inis Bofin (Isle of the White Cow) off the coast of Connemara in  Western Ireland.  A place not visited as much as some of the other Irish out islands but very beautiful.  I try to make a point to getting to these less touristed islands when I travel and I'm never disappointed.   So....what is it about islands for me?

They Were There That Day - Inis Bofin, Ireland, 2007

   Well, it might have to do with something an old gentleman said to me after I made this photograph that day.  I asked him if those distant mountains were the Twelve Bens in Connemara. "Aye," he said, "When you can see them that is." "And when you can't?", I asked.  "Well, they are not there, are they, so I guess you would say they are nothing."

   When the island is wrapped in fog it is if it is the only place on earth and the islander's comment held a sense of pride in the fact.  Even something as substantial as a mountain range ceases to exist.  It is the splendid isolation of islands that attracts me I think.

  You can't get lost on an island.  When you get to the water you just turn around!  There is a heavenly containment on an island...you know your boundaries and it becomes for you a microcosm of the world. Since I'm a confirmed, dyed in the wool wanderer, islands have a sense of safety to them.

   In yesterdays post I spoke about the magical quality of living on the edge of the sea.  Being completely surrounded by this thin white line makes islands profoundly evocative for the contemplative photographer and, truly, if I could live anywhere in the world it would certainly be on an island.   But I think what I love most about islands are island people...like the old gentleman that shared part of my walk that day.  Island people help each other because they are all dependent on each other.  It is not always easy to rely on the mainland for help at times of trouble.  You have to be able to rely on your own inner strength and the strength of your neighbors.  You have to be a special person to live on an island I think. You have to be able to accept the restrictions island living imposes on you...like not being able to run out to the big box store whenever the mood strikes you...that would be perfectly fine with me!

  

In Praise of Stone Walls, continued...

   I want to do one more post about the stone walls of the Aran Islands.  I just found them so fascinating and they are such wonderful metaphors.

   As I mentioned in my previous post, the stone walls on the Aran Islands are built without gates.  I asked a resident why that was.  It seemed such a lot of work to take down part of the wall just to access the field.  He told me that wood was pretty much non-existent on these treeless isles and iron was too expensive.  They had plenty of rocks though.  Ever practical, they used what they had.  But it also points to another dimension of the Irish character, their relationship with time.  There is a commonly used saying when you travel in Ireland..."Remember, you are on Irish Time".  They don't hurry and rush because, as they say, "When God made time He made a lot of it."  You have to adopt a more laid back attitude when you are in Ireland.  So, making the time to take down a stonewall to create a place to let their horse into the field is a fine way to spend some time...what's the hurry?

   What I get out of all this is obvious on one level.  Use what you have available to you; take the time to "smell the roses" (or build a stonewall).  But as I find with contemplative photography, there is also a deeper level to think about.  If you imagine those tiny fields as individual lives, there are wonderful metaphors you can explore.  Each field shares one or more of its walls with a neighbor...they are all connected.  By not using cement, by keeping the walls dry, they can be re-build and moved easily.  By not having a gate, entrance requires effort. Finally, the walls are really quite low...it's important not to block the view into other fields.  Yes, there is a lot one can learn from a stonewall! 

In Praise of Stone Walls...

   This photograph was made on Inis Oirr, one of the Aran Islands off the West coast of Ireland.  It is a favorite destination of mine when I'm visiting the Burren in County Clare.

    What is amazing for visitors to this tiny island is the hundreds of dry stonewalls that enclosed the small fields.  Without gates, one can enter only by disassembling a part of the wall.  But what really entrances me about these walls is how each and every stone fits together in almost a haphazard way.   It couldn't possibly be strong you think yet these stonewalls endure the winter gales year after year.  They endure because of the spaces between the rocks.  These spaces let the wind pass through. The wall accommodates the wind allowing it to be what it is without fear.  They don't fight the wind, they except it.

   Each stone fits into it's place perfectly and is a part of the whole fabric of the wall.  Big stones, small stones, oddly shaped and thin stones...they all have a place in this wall.  Each supports and lends integrity to the whole...none apologizes for what it is.  If only we human beings could be more like this stone wall...

In Praise of Celtic Pathways...

   "In conversation they speak in

riddles, for the most part hinting

of things and leaving a great deal

to be understood."

-Diodorus Siculus

(ancient classical writer speaking

of the Celts)

The Walls We Build - Ballyvaughan, Ireland, 2009

   I have been drawn to the ancient Celtic world for as long as I can remember.  I blame by father, in part, for this fascination.  Although of a solid Polish/Russian ancestry, my father chose, for unclear reasons, to change is rather cumbersome Slavic surname to "Sullivan".  With no Irish ancestry at all I was, nonetheless, obliged to carry this ill fitting pseudonym.   But what once felt false now feels more fitting given my love of Western Ireland and Celtic Spirituality.

   In my post, "The Path We are On" (January 3, 2013), I spoke about the trepidations in following a given path.  "Pathways" is another of those universal metaphors and it is the word I've chosen for 2013...one I'll reflect on during this coming year.  Choosing a word-guide for the year is something I learned at Abbey of the Arts. (And if you haven't visited Abbey of the Arts, you really should.  There is a link in the side bar.)  Well, strictly speaking, you don't so much choose the word as you allow the word to choose you and "Pathways" chose me!

   Now, some people may see pathways as having a beginning and an end and a clear destination but I take a more Celtic approach.  For me they are constantly twisting and curving, like the Celtic knot design, having no starting or ending point. We each approach our pathways differently and for me it has been through the study of Taoism and Celtic Spirituality.  I've written a great deal about Taoism's connection to my contemplative photography but now I wish to speak about the Celtic influence. 

" The Celtic world is a world that favors

poetry before philosophy, mysticism before

theology and magic before logic.  Storytelling

matters more than the ability to explain something

in dry, step-by-step detail.  The Celts are, and

always have been, a people with one foot

in the otherworld..."

-Carl McColman

   All of this, at least for me, relates very nicely to my style of contemplative photography.  I want my photographs to hint at essential truths but never attempt to explain them, leaving the understanding up to the individual viewer, an understanding that may evolve over time.  I want my images to be more a poetic metaphor that a concrete statement of reality....things are always far more complex and infinitely richer than they may seem superficially.  But I think what most influences my thoughts on contemplative photography is the Celtic belief in the dynamic, living landscape; a landscape which invites you into dialogue; a landscape that is an active teacher and co-creator.

   At my retreat at Glastonbury Abbey over the New Year, I attended prayers with the monks many times.  It was a lovely, quieting experience but I think, for me, the Divine is more easily accessible in Nature than within doors...and that is a very Celtic sentiment.  The landscape is Divine presence and with the pull and push of the seasons, the ebb and flow of the tides, with the inhale and exhale of the wind, that presence is very palpable.  I hope to spend a great deal of time this year in the living, breathing landscape and I am sure it will have much to reveal to me. 

In Praise of a Sunset...

      I went to Vermont last week to seek out one of the venues that I have longed to photograph...one that has been on my "Bucket List" for some time.  But, oddly, this post is not about that place.  As so often happens to me, I  stumble upon something totally unexpected and quite revealing when I go looking for something else. That in itself is a powerful lesson I think.

   Earlier that day I had found the place I had come to photograph and it was a wonderful experience.  I will share that with you at a later date.  For now, I want to talk to you about the appreciation of a sunset...the experience of the glorious beauty we often take for granted.  I had finished my photography for the day and was headed for some quiet time and a nice glass of wine.  I wanted to mull over my days notes and impressions of the place I had driven 3 hours to find.  As I approached the restaurant I saw this amazing sunset reflected in the river that ran behind the establishment.  I ran back to the car and got my camera, delighted with my luck.  For a few minutes I just soaked in the incredible beauty...the peaceful geese gliding across the water oblivious, I was sure, of the beauty that surrounded them.  I made a few images, none of which can truly do justice to what I had just experienced, but mainly I just breathed in the exquisite beauty.  The day had been a gift already, unusually warm for a New England December, and this seemed a final heartfelt token from Nature.

   When I walked into the lounge area of the restaurant, which had a wall of windows looking out onto this amazing scene, I immediately noticed that no one, not one person, was looking at it.  They were all involved with their conversations or watching the news on the television above the bar.  When the bartender approached me I said, "Surely, that is an incredibly beautiful sight!"  He just shrugged his shoulders and said, "Oh, we get that sort of thing all the time; you get pretty use to it after awhile."  I must admit, I was stunned.

    Have we become so cynical that such a simple beauty as a sunset no longer stirs our soul?  Can we truly get so use to such sublime beauty that we can no longer appreciate it?  Are our day to day lives so important, the scores of yesterday's football games so impelling, that we cannot take a few minutes to gaze with awe on what Nature creates before our very eyes?  I went to the window with my glass of wine and watched the geese dipping their beaks into the pools of glorious tangerine and violet and I thought, "Perhaps they have, in their own quiet way, a far better  appreciation of the sublime than we do."  I hope I , and you too my friends, never get too busy or too self-important that we can't find ourselves humbled in the presence of such beauty.

 “If I can put one touch of rosy sunset into the life of any man or woman, 

I shall feel that I have worked with God.”
― G.K. Chesterton

(Click on this link to find out

about this amazing writer.)

In Praise of a Leaf...

   After the inspiration of my latest photography book, "The Garden at Orgeval", which features photographs by Paul Strand made late in his life in his own garden, I went for a walk in my own backyard.  I've written before on photographing the familiar, the close to hand, but, honestly, I wasn't all that familiar with the woods that surround my home here in Western Maine, at least photographically speaking.  After hurricane Sandy blew through this past week, I thought I'd explore my property and see what damage it had done.  More to the point, I wanted to experience what Strand called his "limitless world" in my own backyard.
     

   Now I am sure some people would say that there is nothing drabber than a Maine woodland in November, especially on an overcast day, which today was. There's nothing of value to photograph here; the contrast is too flat.  The old Me, the "pre-contemplative" Me, would have agreed.  Now I know better than to make that kind of assumption.

    I sat on a fallen log, not a victim of this storm but a long past one or perhaps it had just succumbed to old age.  I closed my eyes and breathed in the rich, earthy scents.  I love November in Maine.  The glorious colors of October are gone and the bare bones of the landscape are clear; it feels hushed, waiting for the first snowfall to put it quietly to sleep.  A rustle to my left revealed a pheasant looking for, well, whatever pheasants look for in amongst the leaves.  My presence didn't phase the bird. Its scratching, however, made me look down.  A small, bone toned leaf lay atop a blanket of russet oak leaves and it fairly shimmered in the afternoons diffused light.  For me, it was an astounding sight.  I looked around and found several places where other leaves of this kind lay in sharp contrast to their subdued surroundings.  I made several photographs in praise of those leaves.  Had I said there was no contrast on such a grey day?

   When I looked at my photographs later on my computer screen it made me realize, yet again, why I love the monochrome image so much.  The luminosity of these leaves is wonderful and simply not as evident in the color version.  This leaf, like all its kin, has lived it's life; green in summer, golden in autumn and, now, forever silver in my monochrome prints.  Strand was right, the artists world is limitless and I now plan to make regular visits to the small woodland behind my house.