PSYCHOSCAPES

Tuesday, December 27, 2011

Dreaming of the return of the light – and garden catalogs

I took this photograph today, a close-up view of fruit stacked on a market stand, creating a bold pattern of repeated forms and colors, a delicious treat, especially on this unusually drab and dark, overcast and rainy day stuck ignominiously between the shortest day of the year and the beginning of the New Year.

Because this produce looks so lush and succulent – plus guaranteed to be 100% organic – you yearn to just grab a piece and take a big bite, but you can't. The fruit displayed on this stand was painted by Gustave Caillebotte 130 years ago and it was his painted images I photographed today at the MFA in Boston.

Gustave's vibrant painting instantly transported me back to sun-filled days in our own lush garden last summer. And triggered happy memories of visiting similarly spectacular food stalls at the Common Ground Fair in Maine. (See blog entry from 4/4/09).

Common Ground Country Fair

Sunday, December 25, 2011

The Times They A-Changin'

Come gather 'round people

Wherever you roam

And admit that the waters

Around you have grown

And accept it that soon You'll be drenched to the bone

If your time to you

Is worth savin'

Then you better start swimmin'

Or you'll sink like a stone

For the times they are a-changin.

Come writers and critics
Who prophesize with your pen

And keep your eyes wide
The chance won't come again
And don't speak too soon
For the wheel's still in spin
And there's no tellin' who
That it's namin'
For the loser now

Will later to win
For the times they are a changin'.

Come senators, congressman
Pleas heed the call
Don't block up the hall
For he that gets hurt
Will be he who has stalled
There's a battle outside
And it is ragin'

It'll soon shake your windows
And ratte your walls
For the times they are a-changin'.

Come mothers and fathers
Throughout the land
And don't criticize
What you can't understand
Your sons and your daughters

Are beyond your command
Your old road is
Rapidly agin'
Please get out of the new one
If you can't lend your hand
For the times they are a-changin'.

The line it is drawn

The curse it is cast
The slow one now
Will later be fast.
As the present now
Will later be past
The order is
Rapidly fadin'
And the first one now
Will later be last
For the times they are a-changin'.

Bread and Roses

Imagine World Peace

* The lyrics obviously from Bob Dylan's For the times they are a-changin'.
* The photographs are all by me, except for the last one, which is of me talking to new friend, Dave.

Friday, December 23, 2011

Return of the light after Winter Solstice

First sun over Jenness Pond after Winter Solstice*

Darkness can't drive out darkness;

only light can do that.

Martin Luther King

* photograph taken 12/23/11 and polarized in photoshop.

Thursday, December 22, 2011

Winter Solstice Greetings

Polarized version of a 27 year-old photograph I took of my son,
marveling at the new ice forming in Jenness Pond at dusk

To all my readers on this, the Winter Solstice:

May you be happy

May you be healthy

May you live with ease

Wednesday, December 21, 2011

We are all one at Winter Solstice

Sun setting over newly formed ice on Jenness Pond: 12/21/11 J. Stimmell

“The first peace, which is the most important, is that which comes within the souls of people when they realize their relationship, their oneness with the universe and all its powers, and when they realize that at the center of the universe dwells the Great Spirit, and that this center is really everywhere, it is within each of us.” – Black Elk