Weekly Photo Challenge: Escape

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Don’t get me wrong. I love to escape to a new place and explore the food, the sights, and the culture of another land.

Wind Star

On this trip, we sailed from Rome to Barcelona on the Wind Star–a breathtakingly beautiful sailing ship with decks made of teak wood and gracious staff that wanted to indulge us–with food, drink, and creature comforts.

Jiuwn, Wind Star

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We explored glittery Monaco, climbing the steep, winding streets.  In Elba, we walked along the sandy beaches.

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And visited the mansion where Napoleon was exiled–
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But honestly, escape means more to me than travel.  In fact, this is not my preferred method of escape. I hear your cries of protest. “What? Are you crazy? This is the perfect escape!”  I must disagree.  For me, the ideal escape is into the world of imagination–

Walking into the movie theater and sinking into the velvet seats, watching a story unfold.  Or, devouring books, swallowing them whole, and in the process entering the minds and hearts of the characters. (For a while as a teenager, I only read books about the sailors, the sea and their superstitions–like the figure head at the prow.  It is not simply an ornament.  Its purpose is to  ward off evil and appease the fickle gods of the sea who apparently love voluptuous women.)

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Or, picking up a camera and capturing the essence of a moment, or a place, or a particular slant of light.  Or, listening to music, which triggers an emotional response in the brain and can link the present to a past memory or emotion.  What can be better than that?

Art is enduring.  It transcends the ordinary.  It can uplift our spirits and link us to the eternal.  It can mitigate pain and suffering and transport us to another place.  For all these reasons, it is the perfect escape.

This statue erected in the lobby of a municipal building in Amsterdam reminds us of that fact.

The musician-honoring the spirit of those Jewish artists who continued to create even within the prison camps during World War II

Honoring the creative spirit of Jewish artists who played even within the prison camps during World War II

It honors the Jewish artists who continued to play and create new works even within the walls of prison camps during World War II.  Their art endures, just as all art.  It was an escape from the harsh realities of prejudice and war, but it was also a testament to the power the creative human spirit.

Do you agree?

Other Interpretations of this week’s theme:

Word Press Weekly Photo Challenge: Pattern

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After twenty days in a hotel, we returned home to our highrise this week.  The vestiges of the flood lingered in the garage, which smelled of fish and salt.  The walkway by the river was filled with sand, swept ashore and piled into drifts.   Thankfully, our apartment was far from the flood waters.  But still, I spent hours on Wednesday evening, cleaning the refrigerator, washing the floors, vacuuming.  It was my way of creating order from the chaos of evacuation.  As I put shoes back in closets and dusted bookshelves, I was recreating my little corner of comfort and predictability.

That’s what patterns do for us.  The repetition creates a visual rhythm.  Even if there is no message intended in the sequence of lines, circles, squares, we look for one and find comfort in the predictability and orderliness.    That’s what I was searching for this week.

The photos I selected are full of patterns–all created by human hands.  They decorate a bus shelter in Chicago, a window display along Michigan Street, also in Chicago, a foyer in the Brooklyn Museum, and and a herring truck, parked on Zandvordt Beach at the fringe of the North Sea in the Netherlands.

Do you like any of these patterns?  Which one?

Great posts on this week’s theme:

Weekly Photo Challenge: From Above

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One afternoon a few years ago, my son and I took an elevator to a balcony above Grand Central Station.  Peering out over the main terminal, we caught a glimpse of a conductor, walking leisurely, while passengers dashed around him.

Looking down at the conductor at Grand Central Station, New York

Looking down at the conductor above the main terminal, Grand Central Station, New York

I love the view from above.  It calms me and brings clarity to my unruly thoughts.  It also brings  order to events that seem chaotic at ground level.   When I was a restless teenager, I took flying lessons with the Civil Air Patrol.  I  loved hovering above the waves of Long Island Sound, looking down at my diminutive city, miniature cars and roads.  It reminded me that the world was much larger than my little suburban house and my family–with all its strife.  It also confirmed that I had the power to rise above, create my own orbit in a very different path.

To succeed it is necessary to accept the world as it is and rise above it.
Michael Korda

These days, I get that same perspective from looking out the windows of our apartment on the 27th floor.  I gaze at the city sprawling below or the river rushing past.  I miss that view, now that we’re displaced from our home because of the floods two weeks ago.  Yesterday, I climbed back upstairs to get a few things and immediately soaked in the light and airiness of our space–as if we were in a plane coming down for a landing.  We’ll be back in a few more days and I promise myself not to take that view or perspective for granted.

How do you rise above?

To see other interpretations of this week’s theme, click:

Weekly Photo Challenge: (Michigan) Culture

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So the Midwest nourishes us (…) and presents us with the spectacle of a land and a people completed and certain.  And so we run to our bedrooms and read in a fever; and love the hardwood trees growing outside the window and the terrible Midwest summers and the terrible Midwest winters (…) And so we leave it sorrowfully, having grown strong and restless by opposing with all our will and mind and muscle its simple, loving, single will for us:  that we stay and find a place among its familiar possibilities.  Mother knew we would go;  she encouraged us.”

― Annie Dillard, An American Childhood

This quote captures my impressions of the Midwest.  It is a very strong culture that is confident and sure.  It celebrates its traditions, its history.  It remembers the past.  The Dutch Americans in Holland, Michigan still teach their children clog dancing and celebrate their ties to the Netherlands in their annual tulip festival.  Families still pause to bow their heads and pray over a meal even if they are eating in a Bob Evans restaurant.  Church-going is the norm;  so is conservative politics.  The image of Richard Nixon as a villain would hardly get a second glance in New York, but here it is unusual.  Patriotism and football are the cornerstones of the society.  So is a love of the local heroes, Gerald and Betty Ford.  When Betty died a year ago, people wrote notes and bought flowers, and left them by the Gerald R. Ford Museum wall.

This same certainty of religion, family, tradition, and country rankles some–especially the young, who chafe against it.  And so, the 20-somethings leave when they graduate college, but they never forget home and family and Michigan.  Above all, they are loyal, coming back to marry, to have children.  The tug to return is strong, so strong that over and over we hear, “I came back because I want to raise my children here.”   The rebels who stay must carve out their own identities–separate from the norm, like the banjo player who drives around in his vintage VW bus–singing Bob Dylan ballads.

Annie touches on the weather-the terrible summers and winters.  I beg to differ.  She obviously hasn’t lived in New Hampshire where the winter begins in November and ends on Memorial Day!  For us, the spring was the hardest month.  The floods of the past week sent my husband and I and thousands of others fleeing from our homes.
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But still, this place has its beauty and joys.  It startles us with the unexpected–the stunningly beautiful Meyer May House, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright and lovingly restored by Steelcase, Inc;  the magnificent Lake Michigan beaches, and the annual Art Prize Festival which brings thousands of creatives from all over the world to Grand Rapids in for a week-long celebration of the visual arts.

What are your impressions of the Midwest?

See other Interpretations of this week’s theme:

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One Minute and 12 Seconds of Local Fame–Oh My!

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After the flood waters from the Grand River filled the basement of our high rise in Grand Rapids, and the heat and power went out, we were evacuated.  A local reporter climbed up the stairs to our apartment on the 27th floor and interviewed us as we packed some clothes and prepared to leave the building for a few weeks.   This includes our moment of thanks because in comparison to the tragedy this week in Boston, we are lucky.

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Up

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We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.  Oscar Wilde
 
I love this quote by Oscar Wilde, which reminds us (me) that it’s easy to get mired down in our little worlds and petty concerns.  This is entirely human.  But if we stop to look up, we can break free of our self absorption, and our tiny and limiting orbits.   In that moment, we are uplifted and taken beyond ourselves, our egos, and our little lives.
 
This is especially true today.  An hour ago, we were evacuated from our apartment because the Grand River flooded its banks and is filling the basement.  Elevators are out, water is shut off.   We all tramped downstairs with backpacks and suitcases.  Residents are huddled in the lobby, pacing, on cell phones, trying to figure out what to do next.  We escaped.  Our terrific neighbors invited us to their cottage on Lake Michigan.  We’ll head up there later this morning. 
 
Here are some photos taken at various points in my life when I stopped to look up–at the sky behind Westminster in London, at the dome of a building in Paris, at the stained glass windows soaring above the nave in Riverside Church in New York, at a little girl on a ride with her father on the Navy Pier in Chicago, at the dome soaring above Grant’s Tomb in New York, and a funky metal fish on the roof of a marine repair shop in Boston Harbor.  Enjoy!
 

Here are some great posts and interpretations of this week’s theme–Up:

After Days of Rain…

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View out my apartment window tonight

View out my apartment window tonight

This was our reward tonight after days of torrential rain, flooding, and thunderstorms.