taking a walk and shooting the clouds. the autumn sky in the morning causes pause.
I seek a vantage point to admire the clouds, to observe the trees, and appreciate the lake; as I breathe, nothing is more important than this moment. who am I to call for inner peace when the tools for concurrence already exist?
disambiguation: "who ami I to call for inner peace"? I can't just turn inner peace on or demand inner peace on queue. The caption for the photo was partly inspired by a quote from Harry Emerson Fosdick "No one can get inner peace by pouncing on it."
Note: The more I look at this photo, the more I realize how important it was for me to "pause" that moment. I did not pounce, I did not demand anything. and I did not instantly relax. I merely stood still, took a deep breath, held it and then took a picture when it felt good.
I never planned for or imagined that the top of an outhouse would be included in one of my favorite photo/moments. But there it is tucked away in the subtle edge of darkness. I suppose at some point in the big picture, no matter what we're doing where ever we are, we must take care of business in order to be able to relax. For me this photo is the evacuated movement of stress.
This day was strange because I didn’t intend take all these photographs of the sunrise and the light house and put them together in a time lapse. I just needed to do something different that day. You know, and I ask myself; what do a lake, a sunrise, and a lighthouse have to do with my grief? Nothing. What do a lake, a sunrise, and a lighthouse have to do with my grief? Everything.
I routinely and ritually have been exhibiting and dealing with grief and dealing with acceptance of the loss of my brother the same ways throughout the years. It’s still hard, it still hurts and it’s still difficult. And I found myself being routine in my grief. You know, grieving the same way every anniversary doing pretty much the same things and going through the same feelings. Every anniversary seemed similar. I went through the same moods, the same feelings, and used the same coping mechanisms. It is possible to become complacent or stagnant with my grief.
Grief is a perspective on the state of mind for a particular section of my life. It sounds odd sometimes I guess, but you have to grow even in grief. Grief is something requiring growth. In order to change it, I must practice it. It’s an ever evolving mood, feeling, and thought process. It is a growing outlook on life. Except, I can never outgrow the grief.
Someone once asked me “How did I get so good at dealing with grief?” I don’t think I’m so good at it. I just happen to struggle with it for a few decades. Struggle with something for most of your life and you’re bound to obtain different perspectives on it at times. Without growth I would always be in the same spot. To think that I would forever be in a state of shock and disbelief is something I cannot fathom. An introvert striving for the situation to harmony is not like that.
This year I just felt like doing something different. I went down town by the harbor pier-head light house and parked a tripod with a camera on it. I had no method. I just took a picture when I thought it looked cool or when I thought the view changed enough. I imagined that one or two pictures are bound to turn out.
Then, I went and had a large coffee because I was freezing cold. A large Bullfrog they call it; to be exact. What else would I be drinking?
I never intended to time lapse the photos as I took them. But, after seeing them all in a row I did. I dropped the song Blue Water behind the video to have some audio to the video. It was like the morning stood still. So I set forth to document my thoughts for that morning during the sunrise. The words that came out of my pen were just notes and feelings at the time. This was an odd process because it was different from the way I have usually written things. I soon arranged the words into the poem.
It just felt different. You know the, the blue hour is twilight. It’s neither full darkness nor complete daylight and there there’s about an hour before the sun rises above the horizon. They call that the blue hour and, and things are a bit different that hour. That’s when it kind of all came together and I, I felt a bit, well, it just came together. Um, it’s not like I have this new grief coping gizmo that I’m going to pull out all the time and fix it. It was just something different outside of my routine, and I, even after decades uh, there is still room for growth in grief. You know it, it can become stagnant.
The day began different than usual, and finished different than usual due to the new morning, or is that the new mourning. ??
