Photography Teaches Tolerance?

Tags

Birds, Black & White, Children, Crab, Florida, Humour, Introspection, Lads, Laughter, Nature, Pelican, Photography, Sea, Sebastian Inlet, Smiles, Sunrise, Sunset, Tolerance

I believe one could be accurately classified as adequately tolerant if one is the sort that will allow onslaughts of slimy, smelly cadavers to be tossed onto one’s head in a great, heaving torrent from the heavens above.

Well, let me back up a bit.

It began as a glorious morn. The sunrise pinching the sky, rosy light playing on the edges of perfect little waves. Seagulls sailed above, pelicans lumbered contentedly along the swell. It was a fine and chipper morn, indeed. 

Then, I became possessed with the idea that we had to go romping to the inlet to get some pelican photos. This struck me as a most fabulous plot. So, after the usual tottling about with errands, we were soon humming along on our way to Sebastian Inlet. And how beautiful it was, smiling away, water scintillating, dinosaur-headed wood storks sauntering up to us like teenagers with their wings jammed in their pockets, hoping that we may be crawling with fish heads to bestow unto their clanking bills. A nice breeze tussled through the palms, and I noticed a gopher tortoise shuffle by, munching on some fresh, sun-baked grass. It was a fine day, indeed, but no sight of pelicans.

I meandered over to the rocks that separate the tidal pool from the channel rushing into the sea. Scrabbling onto the great rocks, camera almost colliding with shattering death as it oscillated back and forth from my neck like a pendulum (I always forget it will do this…), I became conscious of a permeating dead-fish odour. Promising. I clambered along, just below where the fishermen greatly enjoy cutting fish, and poised on the rocks were my lovely brown pelicans, blue-eyes smiling away at me. About 12 of them were clustered there, males, females, and juveniles. I nestled within inches, all crumpled up, and in position. The birds were a bit nervous, but overall, accepting of the giant, black eye clicking in their faces.

Was entering dream-camera-pelican-loving land, delightedly, when suddenly I felt something very small, very wet, collide with my head, and the eyes of a nearby pelican glazed over and seemed to be debating whether to lunge forth and swallow my head. He thought better of this, however. A sea of giggling also fell down from above. I began to gaze up, when another smelly little wet thing slapped me on the shoulder and then spilled onto a rock. I grabbed at it. It was the corpse of a little shrimp. Poor shrimp. I held it out to the pelican. Suddenly, my whole hand was inside pouch of pelican. This was an odd experience. I had always wondered what it felt like in there….rather rubbery…hand somehow made it back to freedom. Hmm…not slimy either. Shrimp was gone. Pelican looked at me with tilted head and backed away slightly. (This is one weird human, mates…) Huge guffaws of laughter spilled down from above. I looked up, only to be met with a sea of dead corpses sailing down, and squabbling pelicans all flopping about frantically to seize the things right off of me. It was fabulous.

“She’s taking photos!” the wee lads chimed from the heavens.

Yes, that’s generally what I do…don’t know why…look at all one must endure…

Harrowing world, photography.

I grabbed some stray corpses and tossed them to my birdly companions. The lads seemed to like this. Nutter crawling around snapping photos on the white-splotched, scale-glazed, slightly blood-stained, fetid rocks doesn’t mind having dead-bodies thrown right onto her head in a torrent at all, and even sticks her hand into pelican pouches- we like this one! Oh bother….

And following that adventure, I endured chattering youths following me about like those cheeping baby chicks that run along behind the harassed hen everywhere she flees. Ended up drenched, of course, rushing after phantom manatees that rush by like champion swimmers, and vanish, then being splashed by grinning dolphins. Almost bitten by a wee crab. Yes, he wanted to bite me, love bite I imagine. A wave nearly took me under as I was snapping away….more laughter from behind, above on the jetty, and all around. I guess I’m an ambulating sack of amusement.

Ah…

No better life than this. And to end it all, the sunset was glorious.

Cheers,

Autumn Jade

One of Those Sorts of Days

Tags

Chaotic, Comic Art, Creepy, Experimental, Glum, Introspection, Line Art, Sepia, Strange

Very experimental for me, this. Does seem to suit the way I was feeling today. P.S. If ever I was able to capture an image of that thing called one’s “Muse”, that fellow in the middle would definately be mine.

Many ebullient cheers.

-Autumn Jade

Pools of Melancholy

Tags

Age, Black and White, Cocoa Village, Discovery, Florida, Gutter, Introspection, Melancholy, Ocean, Photography, Rain, Sea, Street, Youth

I was born a crabby, old man, the biting brush of early autumn a perfect match for this newborn and decrepit soul. Memories of moldered monochrome, thoughts as rugged and harsh as the fissured bark of the ancient oak trees, and a flare for donning the old checkered highland’s cap and an un-fused pipe redolent of walnut tobacco; such was I since the day I first cast these miry eyes unto the unwary world. I found beauty in the withered, poetry in the dead, and my soul in the smooth ripples slipping across those Sepia Pools of Melancholy.

I was born a cantankerous old man, limping along, nefarious, sometimes with a varnished cane, sometimes alone, snarling with a whirling eye of billiard white at any passerby that might happen near. I had crooked teeth to accent trench coats and London Town hats still redolent of acrid cigars. When I flashed those serrated masticators with all my fury, even the bravest squirrels darted for safer ground. What passion I had for instilling terror in my gnarly ways, askew, stomping along those vacant, black and white streets veined with sniveling cracks.

But somewhere along this old man’s crawl through this spare score and some years, I found my way to the ocean, and there, upon that strumming shore, I discovered acoustic melody, and new forms of poetry, and along the swash zone of shattered scallop shells glinting pink and lavender, the waves encasing this craggy visage with the sweet kiss of brine, I became young for the first time.

Accepting the Wilderness Within

Tags

Biking, Green, Hiking, Innovation, Introspection, Nature, Ocean, Photography, Society, Swimming, Technology, Trails, Wilderness

“Society is like a lawn, where every roughness is smoothed, every bramble eradicated, and where the eye is delighted by the smiling verdure of a velvet surface; he, however, who would study nature in its wildness and variety, must plunge into the forest, must explore the glen, must stem the torrent, and dare the precipice.”

-Washington Irving, writer (1783-1859)

I have always adored this quote. Though I love the city, in all her liveliness and her art, bustling with human activity, how deeply I am enmeshed with raw nature. I see change in the cities, more and more, with biking, gardens on the crests of buildings, local farmer’s markets, green expos, solar panels, wind turbines, electric cars. Innovation is alive! Sustainable technology is a thing of beauty, adapted well to the environment- like the weaver bird’s delicate technological creation, his intricately woven nest, shaped like a golden gourd, dangling in the tall reeds of fraying sunlight. So beautiful, aesthetic, with such purpose, and works well with the ecosystem all around.

But how often I must recede out into the depths of the raw weald, and into the salty abyss of the sea. When I go on a run or bike ride, I prefer the torturous winding paths of roots, hills, ruts, sand, rock, and moss. When on a swim, how much I prefer to battle and brave the waves, rather than monotonous strokes echoing through the lonely pool house. There is a thrill in fighting the undertow, to feel the tickle of the swash, the slap of the cold brine, and the spitting droplets that feel like bullet rain as I punch through the backside of a crest, colours splintering emerald and tangerine inside the glass visage as she sweeps over.

I am surefooted in the thick of woods, but I tend to stumble on level ground.

Raw nature has always been my greatest teacher. I have learned more from cracking a rib after being slammed by a wave, or from learning to walk soundlessly through dried grasses and leaves in order to approach a fawn, than I have in most classrooms. I have learned the greatest of life’s lessons living in a tree, tracking animals, seeing the fear in a rabbit’s eye after I have run him down, and knowing the love and compassion I felt letting him go, feeding spiders, working the land and growing strawberries and tomatoes and onion…the forces of nature, the laws of nature, and the tenderness and harshness of her have all been my most affecting teachers.

I have come to accept my own inner wilderness, my untamed, uncivilized, and imperfect self. I don’t want to conquer it, I want to learn from it, foster it. The energy taken to tame and conquer far exceeds accepting, and going forward. I don’t want to flatten the forest ahead into a level, staid path of monotony. I want to explore and discover. I want to fall down, get battered, survive, and learn. I want to be a better person. I want to challenge myself. Everyday. I do not want to bulldoze my inner being in order to conform to societal pressures. I do not want to anesthetize myself, and lose my inner voice. Aye…I can live in a city, and be content, with the open mind for opportunity, for creating, but the wilderness must always live in me.

And as Emily Dickinson wrote so beautifully-

“Assent, and you are sane,

Demur, you’re straightway dangerous

And handled with a Chain.”