there are many features of photography that i enjoy, but it is the effortless acquiescence to the compulsion to get close and to feel and to listen and to watch nature that i find the most compelling and that tells me i am in the right place. the poet denise levertov articulated this most clearly in her poem “sojourns in the parallel world” . . .sojourns in the parallel world
we live our lives of human passions,
cruelties, dreams, concepts,
crimes and the exercise of virtue
in and beside a world devoid
of our preoccupations, free
from apprehension--though affected,
certainly, by our actions. a world
parallel to our own though overlapping.
we call it "nature"; only reluctantly
admitting ourselves to be "nature" too.
whenever we lose track of our own obsessions,
our self-concerns, because we drift for a minute,
an hour even, of pure (almost pure)
response to that insouciant life:
cloud, bird, fox, the flow of light, the dancing
pilgrimage of water, vast stillness
of spellbound ephemerae on a lit windowpane,
animal voices, mineral hum, wind
conversing with rain, ocean with rock, stuttering
of fire to coal--then something tethered
in us, hobbled like a donkey on its patch
of gnawed grass and thistles, breaks free.
no one discovers
just where we've been, when we're caught up again
into our own sphere (where we must
return, indeed, to evolve our destinies)
--but we have changed, a little.
here are a few recent pictures of the sky . . .
blossoms in front of my home . . .
and the wonders growing out of the ground . . .
and here’s a beautiful video accompanying steve roach’s music . . . clouds in motion . . .
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