...see you in September...

I've decided to join the bloggers who close "shop" in August for a little R&R.  Another photo/image or two will surely appear during the month, but there will be no reflections from me as such.  At least that is my current intent.  We'll see if I am able to restrain my impulses to babble on about this or that, or visit and comment on your wonderful blogs!  Delaying gratification has never been one of my strong points.  :)

Have a great August, and I'll see you in September.

P.S.  I will still post now and then on my other blog, Pixel Dust Photo Art.

P.P.S.  No, I don't have a strange form of measles in the image above - I am supposed to be basking in cool waters and a shimmering sunset.  And, no, I don't have skimpy, straight bangs - those lines on my forehead are reflections of tree trunks. Guess an image really doesn't work when you feel you have to explain it! 

Oh well......   :)

...the day the music died...

Don McLean's 1971 song "American Pie" seemed to define and give a voice to a generation.  For years there has been debate on the meaning of McLean's cryptic lyrics - and I suppose we have all come to our own conclusions after having listened to it for 40 years.

After watching talking heads debating the sad state of affairs in Washington (that could create a sad state of economic crisis throughout the world), I found myself spontaneously humming Don McLean's iconic tune.   As the lyrics floated through my head I couldn't help wonder if they not only defined and had meaning for one generation, but were now somehow prophetically describing another.   

I have taken the liberty of only sharing parts of the song that I feel apply to the current crisis ...  See what you think.

I realize some of you may legitimately counter that as a Canadian, I should mind my own business and not make pronouncements about the situation south of our border.  Would that it were none of my business!  For as the economy goes in the U.S. so go the economies (national and personal) of the rest of the world.  The world is watching in dismay and consternation because we all have a stake in the resolution of this political and economic crisis.

(Four dots at the end of a stanza indicates there are stanza(s) that are about to be omitted.  Bolding was added by me.)

A long, long time ago...

I can still remember

How that music used to make me smile.

And I knew if I had my chance

That I could make those people dance

And, maybe, they’d be happy for a while.

But february made me shiver

With every paper I’d deliver.

Bad news on the doorstep;

I couldn’t take one more step....

So bye-bye, miss american pie.

Drove my chevy to the levee,

But the levee was dry.

And them good old boys were drinkin’ whiskey and rye

Singin’, "this’ll be the day that I die.

"this’ll be the day that I die."....

Now for ten years we’ve been on our own

And moss grows fat on a rollin’ stone,

But that’s not how it used to be.

When the jester sang for the king and queen,

In a coat he borrowed from james dean

And a voice that came from you and me,

Oh, and while the king was looking down,

The jester stole his thorny crown.

The courtroom was adjourned;

No verdict was returned.

And while lennon read a book of marx,

The quartet practiced in the park,

And we sang dirges in the dark

The day the music died.

We were singing,

"bye-bye, miss american pie."

Drove my chevy to the levee,

But the levee was dry.

Them good old boys were drinkin’ whiskey and rye

And singin’, "this’ll be the day that I die.

"this’ll be the day that I die.".....

Now the half-time air was sweet perfume

While the sergeants played a marching tune.

We all got up to dance,

Oh, but we never got the chance!

`cause the players tried to take the field;

The marching band refused to yield.

Do you recall what was revealed

The day the music died?

We started singing,

"bye-bye, miss american pie."

Drove my chevy to the levee,

But the levee was dry.

Them good old boys were drinkin’ whiskey and rye

And singin’, "this’ll be the day that I die.

"this’ll be the day that I die."....

....I went down to the sacred store

Where I’d heard the music years before,

But the man there said the music wouldn’t play.

And in the streets: the children screamed,

The lovers cried, and the poets dreamed.

But not a word was spoken;

The church bells all were broken...

And they were singing,

"bye-bye, miss american pie."

Drove my chevy to the levee,

But the levee was dry.

And them good old boys were drinkin’ whiskey and rye

Singin’, "this’ll be the day that I die.

"this’ll be the day that I die."

They were singing,

"bye-bye, miss american pie."

Drove my chevy to the levee,

But the levee was dry.

Them good old boys were drinkin’ whiskey and rye

Singin’, "this’ll be the day that I die."

...even though...

I am participating in Mosaic Monday hosted by Mary of the Little Red House.

P.S.    I guess my previous post (just scroll down to see it) "...and crown thy good..." was too cryptic to decipher.  I was referring to the impasse in American politics with both the title from the 'anthem' "America!  America!" and by asking if you could hear the fiddling as an era collapses - referencing the oft-used quote about Nero fiddling as Rome burned.  I'll try to be less mysterious in future posts!

...and crown thy good...

Can you hear the fiddling?

... parallel worlds ...

Sojourns in the Parallel World

We live our lives of human passions,

cruelties, dreams, concepts,

crimes and the exercise of virtue

in and beside a world devoid

of our preoccupations, free

from apprehension--though affected,

certainly, by our actions. a world

parallel to our own though overlapping.

We call it "nature";  only reluctantly

admitting ourselves to be "nature" too.

Whenever we lose track of our own obsessions,

our self-concerns, because we drift for a minute,

an hour even, of pure (almost pure)

response to that insouciant life:

cloud, bird, fox, the flow of light, the dancing

pilgrimage of water, vast stillness

of spellbound ephemerae on a lit windowpane,

animal voices, mineral hum, wind

conversing with rain, ocean with rock, stuttering

of fire to coal - then something tethered

in us, hobbled like a donkey on its patch

of gnawed grass and thistles, breaks free.

No one discovers

just where we've been, when we're caught up again

into our own sphere (where we must

return, indeed, to evolve our destinies)

--but we have changed, a little.

~Denise Levertov

I am entering the first photograph in this post in Lisa Gordon's "The Creative Exchange".  If you have a photograph you would like to showcase, simply click on her button below.

...tips for staying cool...

Is it hot enough for you?   What an unbelievable heat wave in the central and southern States!  We've had a beautiful July in the northeast - while hot and sunny, still falling within the range of what one would expect for summer.  The weather channels say the heat wave is moving this way.  Seems we will all get our turn frying eggs on the pavement.


Do you have any tips for staying cool?  We are blessed with air conditionning, but when I was a kid growing up with a single mom in a tiny apartment we had to improvise ways to stay cool during extraordinary heat. 


One way my mother improvised was to use cold wet (well wrung-out) tea towels and wrap them around our arms and legs while lying in bed.  She would make sure the cold towels covered as many pulse points as possible.  She claimed it would cool the blood as it travelled through our body.  If we were willing, she would also cover our bare belly, thighs and groin area with cold tea towels.  When they first hit your body it is a bit of a shock, but it was heaven once the shock was over.


Another way was while watching television, we would each have our own bucket/bowl of cold water in which we would immerse our feet.   I can still recall the full body relief that provided.


And what about you?  What do you do to keep yourself and your family comfortable in such intense heat?  Wouldn't it be great if your tip affords some relief for even one of our blogging buddies?

...powerful emotions...

 

We must let go of pain.  Ideally, by entering into it we become able to breathe so much freedom from within the pain that the deepest letting go can truly occur.  For this to happen, the naming of the pain, the letting it be pain for a while, is essential.

~Matthew Fox

 

 

Let yourself be in the emotion.  Go through it, give into it, experience it ... Then the most powerful energies become absolutely workable rather than taking you over, because there is nothing to take over if you are putting up no resistance.

~Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche

I am linking these collages with "Mosaic Monday"
hosted by Mary of The Little Red House.

...not another pretty flower...

Sometimes you just have to post something other than pretty flowers!  I created this image from brushes, textures and images in my archives.  I have purposely not tried to decipher what this might represent for me, if anything.   I just play with what is available to me and shake my head and giggle at what emerges.

What, if anything, do you take from this piece?  (Click on the image to enlarge it.)

...a little sparkle...

These are some exotic impatiens in my garden.  To achieve the vivid color of the petals and sparkle of the water droplets I added one of my new textures.  You can download the texture for free on my other blog, Pixel Dust Photo Art.

This is the SOOC photograph.

Have a cool, safe weekend everyone!

:-)

a piece of digital photo art

"The function of the imagination is not to make strange things settled

but to make settled things strange."

~G.K. Chesterton

This is a photograph of the grand entrance to The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (La Musee de Beaux Arts) on Sherbrooke Street in Montreal.  I have edited the photograph, applied one of my textures and ended up with a rather surreal-looking image.

...just hanging out...

So how is everyone making out with the new Blogger in Draft Interface?  I've finally found many things I thought were missing in it, but have to say I do not enjoy how many of the functions are hidden in drop-down menus.  Plus, if you have more than one blog it is really awkward to find and post your comments.  Things seem to take longer to load and I have encountered "Service Unavailable - Error 503" several times.  What about you?   Are there features you really like?  Are there things you haven't figured out yet?  I'd be very interested to hear what you think about it!  Do tell ...

Hope you are enjoying this beautiful summer weekend.  Well, it is beautiful, perfect in fact, here in the Northeast, but I did notice that there are some scorching temps in the central and southern States.  Hope you all manage to stay cool and find an inviting spot where you can just relax. 

What is better for pure relaxation than a hammock?

This hammock is strung between two large shade trees and is just a couple of yards from a babbling brook. 

Same hammock with a couple of textures and processed in PSE to achieve a vintage look.

I'll be checking for your comments on the new Blogger in Draft Interface - when I'm not in the hammock!  ;-)

'Artspiration'

My friend, the kind and incredibly talented Brian Miller of WaystationOne has included three of my digital images in his "Friday Poetically with Brian Miller" at One Stop Poetry.  Thank you Brian - for thinking of me. 

Participants in Friday Poetically with Brian Miller are asked to use one of the images as inspiration (Brian calls it 'artspiration') for a poem.  It's been very interesting to read all the diverse interpretations that can come from one piece of work.  If you want to enjoy some great poetry or include your own poem in the link-up, hop right on over to One Stop Poetry. 

If you have not yet been enjoying the daily poetry of Brian Miller at WaystationOne, you must click on the link and check it out.  You will not be disappointed.  His poems and prose are exquisitely crafted, topical, relevant and always cut to the heart of any matter.  I cannot go without my daily dose of Brian!

...open...

"If your everyday practice is to open

 to all your emotions,

to all the people you meet,

to all the situations you encounter,

without closing down...

then you will understand all the teachings

 that anyone has ever taught."

~Pema Chodron



This post has been linked to A Rural Journal's:

Happy Fourth!