Tag Archives: change

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.)

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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?

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Change

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Sometimes I feel like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, overwhelmed by a tornado of change.  I want to stay in my bed, clinging to my mattress, while my house whirls high above the ground.  But it’s a fact of life that change is the norm. Stasis is an illusion.

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“There is nothing permanent except change.”    Heraclitus 

Many of us try to escape change.  My country friends claim there is too much chaos in the city;  they contend that nature is calming and tranquil.  But I beg to differ.  For a year, I drove to work to Fremont, Michigan past farms and barns, dodging trees that crashed to the ground in severe wind storms.  In the winter, I drove home in wild snowstorms that humbled powerful trucks and SUVs and left them sprawled in ditches.  Even the supposedly serene landscape changed on a daily basis.  One day the corn stalks were just stubble in the fields, barely pushing through the dirt, and then almost overnight, they were several feet high, dwarfing the tractors.

Even the subtle shifts of light and shadow at sunset are driven by the huge engine of the earth, which is ever turning, ever spinning, and always evolving in an expanding universe.

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I find comfort in the fact that physicists like Mitchell Feigenbaum of the Los Alamos National Laboratory say there is order even in chaos.  The trick then is to find it!  Like all humans, who crave order and stability, I find comfort in the constants.  Some people find it in prayer, others in meditation, yoga, or music.  I find it in the arts with pen or camera in hand.  Or in the kitchen, stirring a pot of soup.  Or, in the love of those who are dear to my heart.  How do you find it?

For other interpretations of this week’s theme, click on:

Weekly Phoneography Challenge: Future Tense

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High school students walking towards a future in business, hospitality, and management

The other evening we came across hundreds of high school students who were in town to attend the DECA conference.  This organization prepares teens for future careers in marketing, finance, hospitality and management.  Dressed in  their best business attire, they were heading towards the auditorium in DeVos Place for an awards ceremony.  As they rushed towards the auditorium, I paused to take this shot from the second floor balcony.

They remind me of the fragility and eagerness of that age.  And how for teens, hopes and ambition can soar or be ruthlessly crushed.  My wish is that their futures be bright and filled with opportunities.  And when they face disappointment–as they most certainly will because no one can avoid it–may they rise to the challenge and be tenacious in the pursuit of their dreams

Other interpretations of this week’s theme:

Weekly Photo Challenge: Surprise

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Twin rainbows over Sedona, AZ.

Twin rainbows over Sedona, AZ

After a rare day of rain in Sedona several months ago, I had a hunch that there might be a dramatic sunset.  So, I hauled my camera and tripod up a steep road above our hotel, and watched the sky turn dramatic shades of purple. Remembering the wise words of one of my photography instructors, I stopped shooting to the west and turned around.  “Sometimes is the best shot is behind you,” he said and in this case it was absolutely true.  That’s when I saw the first rainbow.  My heart racing, I fired off as many shots as I could.  Then, the second rainbow appeared.  Feeling like I had won the lottery, I kept shooting until the rainbows faded.  Passing another photographer on the way down the hill, he grinned and said, “That was something else, wasn’t it?”

Related Posts:

Weekly Photo Challenge: Changing Seasons

Street Drummer

The seasons change and we change with them.  This talented street performer in Chicago was anticipating winter, even on a summer day.   Enjoy!

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Weekly Photo Challenge – Northern Narratives

Under Pressure?

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Do you wish there was a worry cure?  Are you tired, like me, of senseless worrying?  When you are in the grip of worry, are your thoughts racing, out of control, interrupting your sleep?  Are your worries exhausting?  Do they settle into your back or head (or other parts of your body) and cause pain?

If you said “yes,” to some of these questions, you may be interested in the following article, written by Paul Ingraham, a Canadian massage therapist and science journalist.  His article describes what happens when we worry both from a physiological and psychological perspective.  His advice gave me an immediate “aha” flash of insight.  This is how he describes it:

In the anxiety state, our mind (thoughts) are not in sync with our bodies.  Our mind is racing out of control, and our bodies go along for the ride, settling into the familiar “flight or fight” pattern of hyper alertness and tension–clenched hands, tight jaw, and elevated heart rate, for example.  The “secret cure” is to reunite the mind and body with simple exercises which “ground” or “center” us.  They can be done anytime–at your desk, or by your bed in the middle of the night when you cannot sleep.  I’m happy to report that I tried some of them this week and they work!

Here’s the link to the article:   http://saveyourself.ca/articles/anxiety.php

 

Blink

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All this week on my drive to work, I reveled as the dry, matted grass and stubbled corn fields turned a vibrant green.  Trees started to bud, daffodils burst into bloom, and birds trilled in the trees.

The glorious spectacle of an early spring, totally unexpected in March, but welcome nonetheless.  As I passed the orchards, some trees were starting to bud.

By the end of the week, the cherry trees in front of my apartment were in full bloom.  And yet, something else was registering on my drive to work.  Something I hardly ever noticed for more than a millisecond.

It was the animals.  Not one or two.  But maybe even a dozen.  I started counting along the 45-mile stretch of highway through my mid-sized city, along the suburban 4-lane thoroughfare heading north, and leading to 2-lane country roads traversing farms and fields.  Chipmunks, raccoons, possums, and even a deer.   Guess how many I counted?

Twenty-one on the way to work.  Deciding that couldn’t be right, I counted on the return trip.

Twenty-four.

How many times had they passed in and out of my awareness for a second or two, barely registering?  Or if they had registered, when they sped out of my range of vision, they disappeared from my thoughts, forgotten in a blink of an eye.   It made me wonder what else I was not seeing.  What else were my eyes glossing over?

In the rush from here to there, in the rush to fulfill the demands of the day, I have become de-sensitized.  So have we all.  It’s a fact of life.  We do not have enough time or emotional energy to register all the suffering, pain, and death we are exposed to on a daily basis.  It surrounds us like a wall of sound– on the news, on the web.  It is simply impossible to feel that much and that deeply.  But in this reality, there is a danger too of simply losing our humanity, the connection to other living creatures and even our deepest selves.

In the news this week, we learned of other atrocities, committed overseas and closer to home.  Although our minds turn to the victims and dwell on the pain of their families, I also wonder about the environment (psychic, emotional, familial) that turns “ordinary” people into weapons of mass destruction, of the wrong turns they make, allowing them to justify the death of innocent people.

This is a time of metamorphosis–in nature, in the seasons, in our personal lives, and in the greater world.  So, for a moment, I am taking the time to pause and remember the risks of rushing headlong to our destinations, without thought, without feeling. And the risks of forgetting our connection to all living things and how our lives are wonderfully, beautifully connected and intertwined in a delicate web.

One Step Forward, Two Steps Back

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One step forward.  Two steps back.

That is what I remind myself this week, as I log in many hours on the couch, laid low by a nasty respiratory virus.  It has stopped me in my tracks, forcing me to push aside my work and wait, surrendering to my body and its needs.  Still, my mind leaps ahead, struggling with the delay, with my lack of progress.  I am not a good patient.

One step forward.  Two steps back.  This is our journey through life.  My time on the couch reinforces this bit of knowledge.  In my rush through daily life I had forgotten it again.  But as I linger on the sofa, I am forced to remember it.

This bit of wisdom was illustrated beautifully on our last trip to Paris.  We took the train to Chartres to visit its Gothic masterpiece.  Pushing open the heavy oak cathedral doors, we stepped into the shadows and were whisked back to the Middle Ages.  Dozens of flickering candles and magnificent stained glass windows scattered shards of light and color across the walls and floor.  We were dwarfed by the soaring majesty of its vaulted dome.  As we wandered around the perimeter of the nave, we found a space where the chairs had been cleared away to reveal a labyrinth inlaid in stone on the church floor.  Intrigued, my husband, son and I followed the path, falling into step behind two barefoot pilgrims, their feet moving in an odd ritualized dance.  One step forward.  Two steps back. Jubilant smiles flooded their faces with light and hope. Intrigued, we kept walking.

Unlike a maze with several alternative routes, the labyrinth has just one path, leading inevitably towards a goal at the center—in this case an engraved copper plaque, which was melted down during the French Revolution.   It pictured a six-petaled rose, the symbol of Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love and beauty.  In the spirit of adventure, we followed the path as it wound through 4 quadrants, each with 7 turns.  As we walked, my mind skittered from thought to thought and then slowed.  I felt like a child again, playing a game, lost in the moment.  My son, who obediently followed the rules, moved in step behind the pilgrims, his eyes fixed on the path, a look of intense concentration on his face.   Even my husband, who is usually in a rush, lingered along the 666-foot path, called “Le Chemin de Jerusalem” or Road to Jerusalem, symbolizing the belief that walking the labyrinth was akin to making a sacred pilgrimage.

One step forward and two steps back.  I didn’t share the pilgrim’s faith or their religion.  But still, I followed the path, looping back and charging ahead, so unlike the arrow-straight highways and train lines, which I am familiar with.  The pilgrims’ odd dance went against the grain of my American upbringing and way of thinking–that human life and progress are linear, based on a straight progression from birth to death, from rags to riches, from oblivion to fame.  But as I grow older, I know the ancients are right.

The pilgrims’ odd dance illustrates a truth about life—that it is a circuitous route with blind alleys, double backs, and moments of confusion when we feel like we’re traveling in circles.   Progress is never linear.  It’s a series of false starts and even failure before eventual success.

Perhaps it is enough to simply recognize that we are all walking the labyrinth.  With patience and time, the answers to our questions and worries will come.  Only then, can we make sense of the roadblocks and detours.  It might take years of blindly stumbling one step forward and two steps back as we reach the goals we have set for ourselves.  For me, I have set myself with the goal-of staring down the blank page or staring through the lens of my camera and summoning my courage to reveal little bits of light, of truth.  With patience and tenacity, I’ll stumble through the darkness and find my way.

The same as true for you, I am sure of it.  Someday our paths will be as clear as the one inscribed on the church floor.  And when that day happens, we’ll look back and know the journey was worth it.  This is what we must believe, no matter what our religious beliefs.   We have to have faith that we will understand some day, just like the pilgrims who walked the path and found meaning in the journey, not just the destination.