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

“The free bird thinks of another breeze”

Tags

Birds, Black and White, Caged Bird, Life, Loss, Maya Angelou, Nature, Photography, Poet, Poetry Link, Quotes, Sparrows, Tribute

“The Caged Bird sings with a fearful trill of things unknown but longed for still” – Maya Angelou 1928-2014

“Life is pure adventure, and the sooner we realize that, the quicker we will be able to treat life as art.”

― Maya Angelou

“I can be changed by what happens to me. But I refuse to be reduced by it.”
― Maya Angelou

Dragonfly Shadows and a Harried Sky

Tags

Abstract, Black and White, Forest, Grief, Loss, Nature, Nikon, Pain, Photography, Quotes, Reflection, Sadness, Thoughts, Toad, Video, Videography, Wandering, Water, Woods

Some stills from the wee forest video below. 

“One thing you can’t hide – is when you’re crippled inside.”
― John Lennon

“Here I am trying to live, or rather, I am trying to teach the death within me how to live.”
– Jean Cocteau

“Given the choice between the experience of pain and nothing, I would choose pain.”
― William Faulkner

Thank you for drizzling by,

Jubilant cheers,

Autumn Jade

In the Ivory Light of Winter

Tags

Abstract, Black and White, Drear, Droplets, Florida, Light, Lonely, Loss, Monochrome, Nature, Pensive, Photography, Quotes, Rain, Sky, Stark, Sunset, Urban, Water

“But what we call our despair is often only the painful eagerness of unfed hope”
-From “Middlemarch” by George Eliot

“When I left my home and my family
I was no more than a boy
In the company of strangers
In the quiet of the railway station running scared
Laying low, seeking out the poorer quarters
Where the ragged people go
Looking for the places only they would know”
-From the song, “The Boxer” by Simon and Garfunkel

“Even death has a heart.”
-Markus Zusak, “The Book Thief”

“We are like butterflies who flutter for a day and think it is forever.”
-Carl Sagan
“The old ones called it ‘the hour of the wolf’. It is the hour when the most people die, and the most are born. At this time, nightmares come to us. And when we awake, we are afraid.”
-Ingmar Bergman, film “The Hour of the Wolf” (“Vargtimmen”)

Last Flare of Afternoon

Tags

Black and White, Florida, Grief, Hiking, Landscape, Loss, Nature, Nature Photography, Photography, Poetry, Scrub Trails, Thoughts

I stopped by the roadside

To roam the silken sky

Prairie hawk and starling

Leering down at me

Razor wire glinting in blank Sun

Bombilating Life

With the sound of Death

Transformed

Shadow of your splayed soul

Spilled and spread like blood

In the bleached, rippled sands

And so in a splash of Amber Glow

Your Twilight arrived too soon-

The last Flare of afternoon

Morn’s Pale Apparition

Tags

Black and White, Dew, Florida, Flower, Loss, Morning, Nature, Photography, Poetry, Thoughts, Words, Yearning

The sweeping of Wings

Into candent Dawn

Welkin of turbid yellow

Punched with feathered fists of cloud-

Morn’s Pale Apparition lifts

Sorbile gems gleam in garland light

Kicked by creaking shoes-

Black starlings scatter

Beyond- a school bell’s keening

Slathered in mid-morning sun

Donning the Dew- slumping, careworn

Drenched in its memory

Eyes red with exhaust

Concrete dust and sun-baked blooms

Barbed thoughts pulsating-

Desiderium

A December Walk with My Delitescent Self

Tags

Abstract, Abuse, Black and White, Introspection, Loss, Melancholy, Nature, Night Photography, Personal, Photography, Sea, Thoughts, Writing

December. The Sea has cooled, a bit. The sand feels like chilled velvet ‘neath my stumbling toes. Rubigenous seawrack trickles in. The seethe crackles and I suddenly catch a wee glisk of my delitescent Self abiding there in the reflection on the glass sand. It is the meek, quiet one within, the one that harbours all the pain and grief I have ever known.

An intangible being created long ago, and like a gentle chum, has ever-remained. It is there when I go sprawling, overturned, writhing in the spitting sand, rabid wind flinging shards of broken sea glass and shattered scallop shells into my eyes. It flits in and swallows every splinter of chaos, calmly, silently, so I may clamber back to my feet and stagger on. And then, I am reminded, Chaos is a Choice.

This service performed without complaint, little shamrock-infused Soul. Nothing spoken, lurking reticent and Daphnean- alone, without yearning. But I can feel it, ever-present, and am zapped with its vital energy- how can something dormant feel so ardently alive? Is this where Passion is derived? Attitude and Perception? Is this what converts Grief into Peace? Agony into Understanding? Despair into Art?

I amble on, in Memory, gazing through the Abstract: the hum of the fluorescent lights hovering over an infinite hallway; the sharp light polished on the gossamer surface of a muddy puddle; the buzz of a drill in the background, staring up at the pocks in the grey ceiling, tracing constellations of galloping stallions and peculiar faces; and the keening sound of the groaning flowers as they die on the frozen prairie, brushed by the aching wind-

Abstract memory has a way about it, washing things in a thrilling,
pensive kind of melancholy. Even the hideous and the terrifying can become
beautiful. The fracid and sulfuric scent of Death, black-red, sticky on the
sheets, is an oil-painting-flashback, a sad observation. Her vitative laugh, unique and impossible to replicate, is no cultellated recollection, but evokes joy recalling having known such a gorgeous Soul.

There is damage, but no distortion, feeling pain, but no torment; stumbling crippled, but not suffering. The wounded and mangled inner being that smiles coyly through the detritus of childhood abuse, of loss, and pain- I see it in the flicker of a blue shadow, the crunch of a dead leaf, and I know, I can feel it all, euphorically.

It provides Peace. It reveals fragile humanity, even in those others have named Monsters. Understanding comes, fear being vanquished. Is it the breath of Forgiveness?  How could it be, if I first do not feel wronged? Compassion and Love, the Beast with Gentle Eyes?

I wander on into the now dark, December night, Sea a distant hum behind me. Christmas lights and stars illuminate the way. I think about my brother, his addiction, our differences. I wonder if he has a hidden Self within to absorb the blows. I have seen him staggering in obscurity- searching for Beauty and relief in drugs, self-esteem in crime, atonement in masochism. I see him for what he is- a beautiful human being, worthy of forgiving himself. Aye, I think of him, as I ooze along, deeper and deeper into the lovely December night.

Thrive

Tags

Cocoa Beach, Florida, Gandhi, George Eliot, Hurricane Leslie, Inspiration, Life, Loss, Memory, Mourn, Nature, Photography, Quotes, Rain, Sea, Sebastian Inlet, Surf, Surfing, Waves

“Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.” -Mahatma Gandhi

These moments eternal, abiding with you, to Memory now transformed; but never I, to mourn, knowing, onward shall they thrive, a part of this emerald sea that is the life in me.

“It is never too late to be what you might have been.” -George Eliot