Every Crushing Step

Tags

Black and White, Fall, Floral, Florida, Hope, Introspection, Nature, Photography, Poetry

A humble path,
furry with
emerald moss
and splashed
in blue shadow.

A shiny-backed beetle
suns himself
on a cold
molar-sized stone,
then shuffles off
into a copper sea
of leaves.

So many
roving feet
traverse here.

A horse gallops by
bold and solid
his chestnut sides
heaving.
He is followed
by the stab
of deer hooves
swift in flight.

Now comes
my own restive shoe
hole-pocked
and pebble-filled
to bumble through.

Yet there you grow
tiny purple bloom
as if every crushing step
will always miss you.

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“The World in All Its Tainted Glory”

Tags

Abstract, Abstract Photography, Black and White, Grief, Hope, Literary Quotes, Nature, Photography, Quotes, Sadness, Swan, Water

“Everybody is supposed to be quiet after a massacre, and it always is, except for the birds.”
– Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse Five

“His dislike of mankind, of the mass of mankind, amounted almost to an illness.”
– D.H. Lawrence, Women in Love

“I want to confess as best I can, but my heart is void. The void is a mirror. I see my face and feel loathing and horror. My indifference to man has shut me out. I live now in a world of ghosts, a prisoner in my dreams.”
– Ingmar Bergman, The Seventh Seal

“I had a dream. I was walking a beautiful street. On one side were white buildings with columns. On the other side, a park. And under the trees along the street was a dark green band. Then I came to a high wall, covered completely by roses. A plane came and set fire to the roses. It was not such a bad thing, since it was so beautiful. I looked into the water. How the roses were burning.”
– Ingmar Bergman, Shame

“It takes a great deal of courage to see the world in all its tainted glory, and still to love it.”
– Oscar Wilde, An Ideal Husband

Frozen on a Dog-Day’s Summer Morn

Tags

ALS, Black and White, Cancer, Commentary, Death, Disease, Event, Florida, Hope, Ice Bucket Challenge, Inspirational, Life, Loss, Lou Gehrig's Disease, Motivational, Nature, Ocean, Pete Frates, Photography, Sea, Stephen Hawking, Steve Gleason, Story, Sunrise, Video

In general, I live a life fairly indifferent to social media. Indeed it has many lovely advantages, but I just end up spending a lot more time in Nature…being bullied by mobs of roguish manatees attempting to overturn my craggy old kayak as it wheezes through the silky water; or swamping about through black plumes of swooping bats and amorous mosquitoes, with logs of alligators leering up at me through the glorious green murk with smiling eyes the colour of tea; or being pinched by wee crabbies in the ocean and dragged along in the frothy white wake of a rambunctious torrent of sharks and tarpon.

Bully crab…

Sometimes, too, I just snail along a pale, sandy trail that snivels through the verdant sylvan shadows, looking for the perfect place to nest and paw through an old dog-eared book for a little while.

A mosquito hunter

Through all this, me dear ol’ camera abides with me as my constant companion. Matters of social media rarely invade this photo-snatching wilderness-lifestyle (with occasional bouts of city-noir-grit).

I am not completely, immune, however. The Ice-Bucket Challenge somehow managed to creep into my hushed little tent of a life. And somehow, I found myself capitulating, as my friend, Kayla, of the northern end of the county, splashed me with details.

She had messaged me, and then suddenly a video was shimmering before me, and there was my chum, blathering away at the camera. She challenged two people, her sister and someone other victim, and then, after a pause, she suddenly blurted out, “and BABS!”

“Who on earth is Babs?” muttered the filmmaker, her mum, just before the roar of a gelid waterfall cascaded onto Kayla’s head, rendering her a corpse; and a snickering man quickly bolted from the scene of the crime.

“Er…I am that ‘Babs’ I fear,” I said to the video bleeping on the screen.

“You have 24 hours!” Kayla then bassooned at me, unfurling like a resurrection fern, as she began to recover from the glacial onslaught.

Oh dear.

A prospect more daunting than these logs here

Usually, the fads that scurry across the net are resisted by me. I shun them. If I happen to hear about them. I was going to happily shun this one, too. But then I probed, like a long-billed ibis probing the soft earth for grubs on a soggy morn, and I discovered what was behind it all.

“I have lived over two-thirds of my life with the threat of death hanging over me. Because every new day could be my last, I have developed a desire to make the most of each and every minute.”
– Dr. Stephen Hawking (from the documentary “Hawking”)

This was different. To me, this was an event revealing the best in human beings- their sense of love, compassion and community, and their endless capacity for Hope and Triumph.

“Concentrate on things your disability doesn’t prevent you doing well, and don’t regret the things it interferes with. Don’t be disabled in spirit, as well as physically.”
-Dr. Stephen Hawking

I haven’t known anyone personally, in my life, who was diagnosed with ALS, but I am not unfamiliar to prematurely losing someone close via a vicious disease.

How could I not participate? I decided to accept the challenge.

Naturally, this act of frigid, muscle-paralyzing sluicing had to take place at the Sea. An old brine-faced block of barnacled driftwood like me could have it no other way.

So, this past Sunday, only having known about this challenge for less than a day, I dragged some camera equipment, a bucket with some ice, Sir and another poor victim, Thome, to the beach at dawn.

Poor, poor Sir…

Time to be sluiced in some icy brine.

Sprinkled with quotes from some amazing individuals having been diagnosed with ALS, here is the video I shot at the beach, documenting the cold and salty event.

 Other related links:

– To learn more about ALS or to donate- http://www.alsa.org/
– More about Peter Frates, creator of the “Ice Bucket Challenge”- http://petefrates.com/
– More about Steve Gleason, of Team Gleason- http://teamgleason.org/
– Short ALS “Health Matters” educational video- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1X4Af…
– Beautiful documentary “Hawking” 2013 (also on PBS in HD)- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=shbs13XM3k0
– Doleful short film, “Broken: ALS and How it Hits Home”- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8inVFUAqe1c

Thanks for sluicing by.

Cheers,

Autumn Jade

Embracing the Squirrely Kitten Within

Tags

Beauty, Exuberance, Healing, Hope, Inspiration, Introspection, Kitten, Life, Pets, Photography, Quotes, Reflection, Thoughts, Youth

“Be as a bird perched on a frail branch that she feels bending beneath her, still she sings away all the same, knowing she has wings.”
-Victor Hugo

“Be soft. Do not let the world make you hard. Do not let pain make you hate. Do not let the bitterness steal your sweetness. Take pride that even though the rest of the world may disagree, you still believe it to be a beautiful place.”
― Kurt Vonnegut

“Youth is happy because it has the capacity to see beauty. Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old.”
― Franz Kafka

“What happens when people open their hearts?”…
“They get better.”
― Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood

(Saga captured whilst out kitten-walking amongst a sea of squirrels)

P.S. More of the model, Fyodor Kitten, in Sir’s lovely and charming blog post here:  The Kitten That Rescued Himself)

Many jubilant cheers,

-Smiling Toad

In Afternoon Thought

Tags

Black and White, Hope, Lao Tzu, Light, Nature, Peace, Quotes, Tranquil, Woods

“She does not show herself, and therefore is apparent. She does not affirm herself, and therefore is acknowledged. She does not boast and therefore has merit. She does not strive and therefore is successful. It is exactly because she does not contend, that nobody can contend with her.”

-Lao Tzu

Is This Surrender?

Tags

Bitterness, Hardship, Hope, Inspiration, Optimism

(The following is a small narrative based on true events.)

It was a cold, gloomy February day when I saw the picket signs piercing the sky, rhythmic, up and down, swaying, all around. Ardent, pinched faces screamed into the deaf air. Six weeks into the semester, and the professors were on strike that threatened to consume the rest of the semester.

From a student aspect, this might be a bit disturbing. I had a choice as I returned home. How would I deal with this situation? Would I merely see loss before me? Would I adopt a hardened, cynical, entitled attitude as a result? Would I project these feelings onto others? Onto fellow students? Adopt all the feelings of injustice? Was I going to allow this event to tarnish my spirit? Was it going to be yet another series of traumas to calcify my heart, enhancing the tumor of bitterness within me?

I clenched my jaw as a small, penetratingly calm voice said to me, “No!”

Temptation into the realms of victimization and drudgery and bitterness evaporated. I decided to not go straight home. I drove onward to the prairie, where I could amble in the reticence and somber beauty of this melancholy season ‘neath a granite-grey sky, listening to that inner voice I had been so long estranged with.

I got out and climbed that first knoll of the swaying prairie. I turned my collar up and absorbed the strange beauty all around. The murmur of the town below dissipated, and I was finally alone. That voice returned to me, “I am opportunity, I am Life itself.”

I needed to find something edifying to fill this void with. I had been struggling for so long with “idle time”, as I saw it. I wanted to run away from stillness, as I perceived it as idle. But really…the truth inside said, “You crave chaos, like an addict, to distract, to consume all your time, because, you are afraid, afraid of doing something bold, something powerful and terrifying, afraid of the dramatic change in your life that you need.”

I needed something better. I could not evaporate into the tide of college life this time, to escape the demons, the troubles that have been fraying my life.

“It is time to give,” the voice said, “I am your Opportunity.”

Suddenly I stopped, and watched, marveling, as a tiny wren balanced delicately on the long, brown stem of a dead, decapitated flower. The beauty of that moment filled my heart. The small almond-brown bird was so tiny and so full of life and joy. Her eye shimmered so brightly, and then, with a gust of wind, she was on the wing, yet again, vanishing.

“I will volunteer, I will exude a positive attitude, I will open my mind up to the whole world of possibility,” I said to myself, “I am not a victim, and I don’t crave vengeance and battle. I seek peace, now. I will go out into the community and do all I can to serve, and find myself again. I am not going to be idle, or bored, I am going to do something of substance. I am going to give of myself. I am going to relinquish judgment. Everyone deserves to be helped. I will help the strangers of this town, and see them as friends, even if they are mean and bitter in return. I cannot go through life this way anymore…I am not a victim. I am not unreliable. I am not sick, and weak. I am strong. I am thriving. It is time to work on myself, and find a comfort with stillness again, and find my purpose in life, again, without fear or narrow-mindedness, without distraction or masochism or victimization. It ends now, I am changing, I have changed.”

These new beliefs overwhelmed me, and I felt an onslaught of intense feeling as I fell to the ground, so cold and lovely, and I cried. Suddenly, opportunities seemed to fly into my mind. I had a future! One of my own making! I could do whatever I wanted with this life! There was hope in doing something creative, innovative, and new with my life. I was no longer a victim. I could do something, anything, for the good of my future, and others. I was so excited, I wanted to kiss that dull, brown earth so frozen beneath me. How enthralling everything seemed. How vibrant and lovely was life, now!

“Is this surrender?” I asked, “Is this acceptance?”

The voice merely said again, “I am opportunity, I am Life itself.”