Tag Archives: photography for self discovery

Trees Looking Up and Down

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trees up-2

Occasionally it becomes obvious to me that I have no idea where I am.  Are my intentions as honest as I tell myself, or are they yet another layer distracting me from something I don’t want to say or know about myself?

It seems I like the obstacles.  White puffs drifting between the tree tops entice my heart upward more than empty blue sky.   Murky water reports the twists of light and dark with tantalizing clarity.  Uncertain which way to look, I see what I think is there and then, fearing failure, look elsewhere.

Eventually I get tired of wondering what it means, how I’ve said and done things.  I open the porch door.  The breeze gets a hold of the curtains, puffing them inward, and outward.  The house is breathing.  Birds and traffic call and respond.  With the door open, sunlight is reaching all the way to the floor, and spreading inward across the golden wood.  The light is very, very beautiful.

Song for Things Lying Around My “Studio”

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studio clearup
It’s not that easy being clean
having to spend the day tidying up all my things
when i think it could be nicer
drinking coffee or reading or thrifting
or something much less responsible like that

but clean is what i had to do
so i would be able to sleep in my room
and not  have to step over laundry on the way
to the window to take a picture
of the things that you see…

so i cleaned, and now its over, and
you still can’t really tell i did it, but i guess
it’ll have to do until i can’t
take it anymore.

Arrival

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Everyone starts with the same things:
One Papa, One Mama
Someplace to rest.
Not everyone arrives
with two hearts
beating not as One but

Always Together.

I love you Pammy!  Happy Birthday!

The Golden Door

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“I lift my lamp
Beside the Golden Door.”
Emma Lazarus

The Thai Pavillion at Olbrich Gardens isn’t subtle.  In the Grey of Spring Delayed, its roofline swoops towards the uncooperative sky in golden flashes between skeletal trees, as if the sun has descended into the clearing just beyond the Wetland Garden.  Despite its whimsy (how incongruous are gold leafed shingles alongside the unassuming, stoic ranch homes of the Upper Midwest?), the unwalled pavilion invites ponderous, attentive steps.  Even toddlers sense you are supposed to BEHAVE around this gem.

To get to the Thai Pavillion, you will cross the muddy wreck of Starkweather Creek.  You will quickly discover that the planks of the bridge reverberate with every step.  Stomp, stomp, stomp is the best way across, sending out reassuring echos of your presence into the world, and incidentally through any traveller who shares the bridge with you.

Here is the view of Starkweather Creek’s outlet to Lake Monona, from the bridge to the Thai Pavillion.  Sometimes the gateway is the mirror.

Fool You April!

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Snowy earth, you can’t hide the garden forever.  I can make flowers and butterflies, too.  All I need is a little light and an open heart and just the right magic words, and here you go….I declare it “SPRING!”

An Emergence of Butterflies – In the Garland of Butterfly

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exuberation of butterflies

Beneath the print of the giant green pear on the cafe wall, conversation bubbles.  Plates chime against each other, the chef’s knife knock-knock-knocks away the part from the whole, and every so often chairs whine against the floor as they change partners. Fiestaware plates make brightly colored polka dots on the tables.  Children too busy to eat prowl the crowded room in a game no one made up, and everyone enjoys.  It’s sunny, and almost spring.  It will always be almost spring when we are together for the last time.

Today, I came here with me, hoping for a chance to be seen by you.  It takes me a while to realize I have no idea what to say about where I have been, to acknowledge that what happens now will be the same-old-nothing-new of beauty and insecurity that it has ever been.

The 29 butterflies always lead me somewhere that is just beyond reach.  I watch the pink one for a while, as it floats along, then I follow the blue one, notice the orange one next.  Pretty soon (but I really can say how long), I find myself at the end of the beginning.  I have butterfly-ed the best I could.

The rest is up to you.

ps here is a slide show of the still photographs:

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An Emergence of Butterflies – Today is Butterfly

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Sometimes I wake up with words in my head.

“Now we are heading into the unknown, which is how things always are.”

Lead on, Butterfly.

An Emergence of Butterflies – Hearing the Butterfly Ocean

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Can you hear the ocean of butterflies, the vibrations of sunshine, the shimmer of leaves and petals?  If you listen, I am sure you can remember how.

An Emergence of Butterflies – Making You a Butterfly

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“I want to give you a butterfly, honey,”  I distinctly heard her say.  “You have done so much to make them for me.”

It made me cry.  I think she sees what I have tried to let grow from my love for her, despite its flawed expression when she was alive.

This is what she gave me.  I do think she made me a butterfly.

An Emergence of Butterflies – Butterflying into the Unknown

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You can hold butterflies in your hand for only so long.  No matter how gently you surround them, you can’t stop them rising into the breeze and floating towards unknown flowers.  It’s natural to want to clasp them to your heart, as if the butterfly’s beauty can be absorbed through your skin and flow through your veins with a new way of seeing the world.  And you know what?  It can.