Why I keep a Journal and Why I throw it Away....

   I've kept a journal for over 30 years but if you ask how many of them I have on my shelf I would have to say only one...the one I'm writing in at the present.

   I use to keep them in the beginning but one day about 25 years ago, I looked at all those journals gathering dust on my bookshelf and thought, "Why am I holding onto these?  I've lived the experiences, I've learned from them, now it's time to let them go."  So, I bagged them up and tossed them in the dumpster.

    Live it, Learn from it, and Let it Go!

   I suspect this revelation coincided with my immersion in Taoist philosophy.  I do know that it had a wonderful and liberating feeling to me.  I know many feel that their journals are such an important part of their lives they just couldn't imagine throwing them away.  My daily photo journal is another way I record my life.  Life lived one photograph at a time.  If I can have a book made of these daily posts I will...these are meant for the "public".  My written journal is too personal and private.

   I write every day in the morning.  It is every bit a part of my morning ritual as that first cup of coffee.  On the rare occasion that I can't write I feel half dressed.  Something is missing.  Writing, whether on paper or on-line, is part of my contemplative practice and I will continue to do it as long as I can hold a pen but I feel no need to save them.  I do re-read them after I fill up a journal.   Some of it makes me laugh and some of it makes me cry but I close the cover with the firm belief that it is past.  Those experiences were then and, well, now is now.

Your past experiences may

 have made you who you are 

today but their don't dictate

 who you will be tomorrow.

   Here is an interesting article on the health benefits of journal keeping that you might find interesting.  Whether you decide to keep those journals or not will be up to you...

The Health Benefits of

Keeping a Journal

Following the Tracks of the Spirit...

I tread in the tracks of the fox which has gone on before me...with such a tiptoe of expectation as if I were on the trail of the Spirit itself which resides in these woods, and expected soon to catch it in its lair...I know which way a mind wended this morning, what horizon it faced, by the setting of these tracks; whether it moved slowly or rapidly, by the greater or less intervals and distinctness, for the swiftest step leaves yet a lasting trace.

- Henry David Thoreau

January 30, 1841

   I woke one morning recently to notice these footsteps in the snow behind my house.  Later that afternoon I was thumbing through some old National Geographic magazines a friend had given me to use for my  photomontage collages.  I came across, in one published in March of 1981, an article on Thoreau and the quotation above which began the article by William Howarth.  It fairly jumped off the page for me.  A wonderful bit of synchronicity to be sure.

   I often speak of picking up "breadcrumbs" as I walk through the landscape...little contemplative tidbits that lead me on.  Now I have another apt metaphor given to me across time by one of my greatest inspirations, Henry David Thoreau...following the trail of the Spirit.  How beautifully put.

   Following the tracks of the Spirit is what we do as contemplative photographers.  We understand each photograph as a footstep along a path of self-wisdom or, as the Concord transcendentalists called it, "self-culture".  We cannot help following along, it draws us ever forward on our internal quest.  

   Thoreau was a visionary and a mystic "who saw God in both man and nature, who believed the earth and our minds are ever intertwined."  A description that would easily apply to this contemplative photographer and many of you as well I'm certain. 

Self Culture...

"Our personal growth can fuel our photography

and our photography can fuel our personal growth."

-Brooks Jensen

   At the very basis of the concept of contemplative photography is the notion, so wonderfully put in this quote by Lenswork editor, Brooks Jensen, that there is a subtle give and take between the image and the "imaginor" (photographer).  As we evolve our need to live a more contemplative life, our photographs will reflect that evolution and, in turn, these images will lead to greater self-understanding and realization.

   The 19th century Transcendentalists called this process "self culture".  It is a wholly individualized process.  In effect, it is a journey we all must make on our own.  Concord Transcendentalists, Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson, practiced self culture through their reading and writings.  Thoreau, more specifically, found the path to self-realization through his on-going study of the natural world.  I often fantasize about the kinds of photographs they would have made had that avenue of expression been open to them! On April 28th I will lead a group of photographers on a contemplative stroll.  We will have the opportunity to practice self culture in a place Thoreau himself walked and commented upon. It is a follow up to my talk last November at the Thoreau Farm and I look forward to our time to "practice what I preach"!

   As contemplative photographers, we all walk this spiral experience; first turning inward to the core of our being and then moving outward to manifest that being in our photographic images.  To the degree we our successful with either process is entirely dependent on our commitment to the entire journey.

"Wherever you go, there you are"...

A Lone Lamb on Inis Oirr

   The title of this post comes from St. Brigid of Kildare, one of my favorite sources of inspiration.  It really speaks to one of my continual themes in this blog...you are your photographs.  It also underscores the idea that we will receive the images we need to make if we keep an open heart and a non-judgmental attitude.

     As I make final plans for my first extended road trip in April, it is good to remind myself that I will bring my own thoughts and struggles with me along with my luggage.  So many people expect travel to be something miraculous, live changing, and are often disappointed when it is - well - not.  We always expect the new place to be somehow better than the old place.  This is especially true when we make big trips overseas.  Ah, the demon of expectation!

   What I have learned over the last 10 years of extensive, round the world travel is that whatever happens, or doesn't happen, you will be where you need to be.  Don't worry about flight cancellations or pouring rain or, in the case of this image, sea sickness that  made me get off the boat at Inis Oirr rather that traveling on to Inis Mor, where I had wanted to go.  I trusted that I would see wonderful things anyway...and I did.  I could have regretted what I didn't get to photograph on Inis Mor or I could be thankful for what I was able to photograph on Inis Oirr....I chose the latter. 

   So, no matter what happens on this trip to Kentucky, what I see or don't see, it doesn't matter.  I will try to pay close attention to whatever does cross my path and leave my "expectations" on a shelf back at home!

"Seeking Souls - Apply Within"

If you search everywhere and cannot

find what you are seeking it is

because what you are seeking is

already in your possession.

-Lao Tzu

   I had to chuckle the other night while I was watching a re-run of The Mentalist. There was Patrick Jane quoting the great Taoist master Lao Tzu!  It was a great quote for the detectives in the story who were looking for clues but it's also a wonderful reminder for contemplative photographers as well.

Looking for Cockles - Barra, 2011

   People who embrace the idea of contemplative photography are seeking souls.  We look for inspiration in the little visual "breadcrumbs" we gather on our journeys.  What I sometimes have to remind myself of is that we already carry a great deal of wisdom within ourselves.  I doubt we give ourselves enough credit for this.  So much better, the logic goes, to seek out a "master", someone who has the wisdom we seek so we can learn at their feet.  

   I think this also applies to photographers in general who are constantly looking to other more gifted photographers to elevate their own images.  While a certain degree of learning-especially in basic technical knowledge- is necessary, we must not discount our own worthiness either in the contemplative part or the photography part.  No one can tell you what images you should make, although some will try.  You must be directed by your own heart...it will lead you to the "right" images.  

    By all means, go in search of what you need but keep in mind the possibility that at your core you already have what you are seeking at least in all the things that truly matter.  The rest you can learn as you need to.  This also reminds me of  another quote, this time by St. Brigid, when she was speaking to some pilgrims intent on making the arduous journey to Rome as a way to enhance their spirituality...

You will not find in Rome what you

don't already carry in your heart.

Retrospective...

   "A photographer's files are in

a sense his autobiography."

-Dorothea Lange

Spinning Hands - 2010

   Photographers write their life story without words.  They speak volumes in a single image.  They encapsulate their personal experience within the confines of the photograph's frame.  When I found this quotation from Dorothea Lange, it was if a light suddenly illuminated my mind.  "Of course," I thought, "I am my images! Now, what do these images tell of my life as a photographer?"

   On this blog I have a small slide show I call, "My Journey So Far".  When I imported the images I gave no thought for putting them in any order, to plot out my "autobiography" in pictures.  But if I were to do that, what would I consider significant images in my development as a contemplative photographer?  And, more importantly, what would these images say about me?

   When you become famous as an artist and have worked for many, many years on your craft, a museum may mount a retrospective exhibition of your work...a visual autobiography.  I've been working on my craft for only eight years now since my "re-emergence" as a serious photographer  (I don't count my college years as a photography major...I did that only to become an art teacher.) and I'm certainly not famous by any definition of the term so it is highly unlikely MOMA will be mounting a retrospective of my work any time soon.  I think that the idea of creating a personal retrospective may be a worthwhile enterprise however. Over the months to come I will play around with this idea and see where it leads.  I certainly know which image I will begin with! (See my post, "The Contemplative and the Photographer.")  In the meantime, look through your photographic files and begin your "autobiography in images".  Here's a quote that may show you a reason to pursue this idea...

"We think of photographs as the captured past.

But some  photographs are like DNA.  In them

you can read your whole future."

-Anne Michaels

Mapping Interior Worlds...

   Thanks to a comment on this blog, I was introduced to a new book and I've found it fascinating.  It is called A Mapmaker's Dream by James Cowan.  It is an historical fiction based on the writings of a real Venetian monk, Fra Mauro who created a map solely from other peoples descriptions of places to which they had traveled.  Without ever leaving his cell, Fra Mauro created a map of the imagination.

"With the help of others I have completed the world.  

It now has a form that is both physical and - dare I say it? -

immaterial at once.  Perhaps, yes, even mystical." - page 147

   This book made me think about the hidden, largely unknown, inner landscape of the human soul.  In contemplative photography we seek metaphor in the world around us to better understand this interior world.  I believe Fra Mauro did the same thing but instead of making photographs he made a map.

    The story also called to mind the ancient maps I had seen that included the phrase, "Here be dragons" for the place that existed at the edge of the known world.  Venture there at your own peril!  Don't we all have such places on the map we carry in our hearts...places we seek to avoid at all costs?

   For it is true, we all have a kind of interior map which is not so much a picture of the known world but an imaginative rendering of our desired world...our created realities.  We come to know this world - and create our maps - through our response to places, people, and things in our lives.  It is through the wonderful vehicle of the photographic image we can gain insight into the shape and contours of this inner landscape.

   Cowan describes  Fra Mauro's striving to create this map of imagination and I can think of no more fitting description of the contemplative photographer...

"His (Fra Mauro) dream is to derive meanings from the perfect use of mystery.  Each place that he evokes becomes a symbol.  Little by little he tries to evoke a country, and entire world, in order to reveal a frame of mind.  In doing

so he often chooses a piece of information, a mere fact sometimes, with the object of causing a new state of mind to emerge.  He is trying to encourage a process of unlimited deciphering, as if these facts are but the tip of an iceberg.  He is asking us to dispense with the ice floe of appearances and plunge ever deeper below its surface." - Introduction

   The map spoken of in the book has, sadly, been lost to us but the one on the right is a surviving example of Fra Mauro's work.  He places South at the top which is more in keeping with Muslim maps of the time and I love the idea of turning the world upside down!  It is incredibly rich in detail and annotation but his lost map of his imaginings resonates more with my contemplative soul...

"The world you are looking for," the astronomer expounded, "includes many things

whose existence most people doubt.  That is because they are expecting those

things to conform to what they already know.  The world I am talking about has been 

created to reflect each person's deepest image of himself.  It follows that wise

men contemplate the world, knowing full well that they are

contemplating themselves."  - page 134-135

   The same could be said of the contemplative photographer....