STONE AND WATER


There are river rapids, that transcend their condition and become more than their own matter..

There are rock formations that inhabit their space with such perfect solidarity and assurance that they bring a sense of confidence and rightness..

(Arthur Ollman in John Sexton Photography Book)

Photograph was made with Hasselblad 501C, 80mm Carl Zeiss Plannar lens and using yellow filter. The film is Kodak Tmax 400 rated at 320, developed with Pyrocat MC with N process using semistand agitation. Printed in MGIV FB Ilford paper developed in Dektol, archival processing, and selenium toning

LISTEN TO THE TREES

Forests are sanctuaries. Forests are like a room, with luminous white trunks for walls. The green leaves quaking in the wind… toward the ceiling of thunder clouds passing by. In the distance, thunder rolls through the valley… the sound of birds singing within the forest mingles with the remote whisper of a creek as it rushes over the rocks in its path.

And as with people, trees have body language. Each tree is unique, has its own posture and gesture. Each has quality that makes it an individual.

(John Sexton, photographer)

THE CATHEDRAL OF BRISTOL

Bristol Cathedral began as the Norman St. Augustine's Abbey in 1140. The chapterhouse, still standing, dates from 1165, and the Elder Lady Chapel from 1220.

The Norman abbey church was rebuilt from 1298 onwards, but the new church was still incomplete at the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1539 when its nave was demolished.
In 1542 the church was made the cathedral of a new Diocese of Bristol and was dedicated to the Holy and Undivided Trinity.

The nave was eventually built during the 19th century and the building was completed by two towers at the west end in 1888. It is a hall church with nave, aisles and choir all at the same height, and the most significant example of a hall church in Britain.

Photograph was made with Hasselblad 501C, 50mm Carl Zeiss Plannar lens and using yellow filter. The film is Kodak Tmax 100 rated at 64, developed with Rodinal in N process using semistand agitation. Printed in MGIV FB Ilford paper developed in Ansco 120 and Ansco 130, 3 minutes, archival processing, and selenium toning

The Flying Buddha

On the fifth year of his Enlightenment, when the Buddha was dwelling in Kutagarasala in Vaishali, he saw his father on the death-bed by his divine eyes. He felt the urgency of preaching his doctrine to his father for his spiritual evolution, as he was just about to attain the arahatahood. Furthermore, a war had broken out between the Sakiyans of Kapilavatthu and the Koliyans of Kolanagara (also called Vyaghapajja) over the water-dispute of the Rohini river – which demarcated the territories of the two kingdoms. As the Khattiyas of the two neighbouring kingdoms earlier enjoyed pleasant relationship; and intermarried and dined with each other, the Buddha wanted to protect the two countries as well.

The Buddha therefore, flew to Kapilavatthu to visit his father, and preached him to become an arahanta. Soon, Suddhodana became an arahanta and died.

After the death of Suddhodana, he became the peace mediator for the Sakiyans and the Koliyans. He thus averted the bloody feud between the two neighbouring tribes. Both the tribes then encouraged their men to join the Sangha as a token of gratitude for his mediation; and each extended hospitality by inviting him as its guest. The Buddha accepted both the invitations and dwelt alternately in Kapilavatthu and Koliyanagara.

See Samyutta Nikaya iv.341; Majjhima Nikaya i.387; Theragatha Atthakatha i.318.

SHADOW DANCING

Wednesday, March 21st, 2007

Shadows in an empty room, not seen,

Nor heard, not touched, nor smelt, unknown to sense

Dancing dimly beneath my sight, a sheen

Sheltering tears torn to earth they evince.

Suns, bright stars beneath my feet, silent formed

Dreams, shades dancing beneath my words in time.

An endless dance. shadows silently born

By one, and two, my heart shadowed in thine.

A shadow dance, but real as true, a life

Shared between me and you. Shadows streaked by

Tears reclaimed. Shadows short as a breeze, strike

A spark of stars. Dreams dreaming dreams that cry.

Strike once, twice, thrice. Then still, silent verbs shout

Shadows shorn of emptiness, spiral out.

http://www.shardsofconsciousness.com/category/poetry/

DEATH'S VALLEY

By Walt Whitman

NAY, do not dream, designer dark,
Thou hast portray'd or hit thy theme entire:
I, hoverer of late by this dark valley, by its confines, having glimpses of it,
Here enter lists with thee, claiming my right to make a symbol too.

For I have seen many wounded soldiers die,
After dread suffering—have seen their lives pass off with smiles;
And I have watch'd the death-hours of the old; and seen the infant die;
The rich, with all his nurses and his doctors;
And then the poor, in meagreness and poverty;
And I myself for long, O Death, have breathed my every breath
Amid the nearness and the silent thought of thee.

And out of these and thee,
I make a scene, a song, brief (not fear of thee,
Nor gloom's ravines, nor bleak, nor dark—for I do not fear thee,
Nor celebrate the struggle, or contortion, or hard-tied knot),

Of the broad blessed light and perfect air, with meadows, rippling tides, and trees
and flowers and grass,
And the low hum of living breeze—and in the midst God's beautiful eternal right
hand,
Thee, holiest minister of Heaven—thee, envoy, usherer, guide at last of all,
Rich, florid, loosener of the stricture-knot call'd life,
Sweet, peaceful, welcome Death.

Photograph was made with Hasselblad 501C, 50mm Carl Zeiss Plannar lens and using yellow filter. The film is Kodak Tmax 100 rated at 64, developed with Rodinal in N process using semistand agitation. Printed in MGIV FB Ilford paper developed in Dektol

THE PLACE OF THE GREY ROCK

Literally Necropolis mean the city of the dead. However there are many interpretations of the origin of the name Glasgow Necropolis, the most common being ‘the dear green place’. However many scholars have argued that it actually means ’the place of the grey rock’ – being the Fir Park, now known as Glasgow Necropolis. This site is as old as Glasgow itself and overlooks the Molindinar stream where St Mungo baptised his Christian converts in the 6th century. In earlier times a druidical grove is said to have crowned the brow of the Grey Rock. At a subsequent period, tradition assigns this sylvan vale as the scene where Aymer de Valiance and Menteith met to plot the treacherous betrayal of Sir William Wallace at Robroyston.

The Necropolis has been described as a ‘unique representation of Victorian Glasgow, built when Glasgow was the second city of the empire. It is a memorial to the merchant patriarchs of the City and contains the remains of almost every eminent Glaswegian of its day. The Necropolis remains one of the most significant cemeteries in Europe, exceptional in its contribution to the townscape, its symbolic relationship to Glasgow Cathedral and to the medieval heart of the City.

http://www.glasgow.gov.uk/en/Residents/Parks_Outdoors/Parks_gardens/GlasgowNecropolis/glasgownecropolishistory.htm

FROZEN TREES

As if these were
frozen trees in light
that know neither day
nor endless nights.

As if, time
decided not to pass
and for a little while,
left this place to be.

As if I were still
whom I used to be
with dreams to follow
and this light to see.

Text taken from http://flickr.com/photos/tamaar/

Photograph was made with Hasselblad 501C, 50mm Carl Zeiss Plannar lens and using yellow filter. The film is Kodak Tmax 100 rated at 64, developed with Rodinal in N process using semistand agitation. Printed in MGIV FB Ilford paper developed in Ansco 120

THE CHURCH OF CHRIST THE KING

The Church of Christ the King is on Gordon Square, Bloomsbury, London. The church is Neo-Gothic in style and cruciform in plan, it was designed by Raphael Brandon in 1853 for the Victorian sect of the Catholic Apostolic Church (known as the Irvingites). It is built of Bath Stone, with a tiled roof. The structure is incomplete, lacking 2 bays on its liturgical west side (which prevented the construction of a planned façade - the west end remains unfinished, in brick apart from entrance in stone) and (like the Abbey) a crossing tower (including a 150 ft spire - the tower base that was built has mostly blind arcading). Its cruciform plan (Westminster Abbey in miniature) is made up of a nave with full triforium and clerestory, side aisles, and a sanctuary and Lady Chapel. All of the church's exterior corners have octagonal corner turrets with gabled niches and terminating in spires with gablets.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_of_Christ_the_King,_Bloomsbury

Yesterday upon the stair


Yesterday upon the stair
I saw a man who wasn’t there
He wasn’t there again today
Oh how I wish he’d go away.

Author © Unknown

THE CORONA

The Corona is the east end of Canterbury Cathedral named after the severed crown of Thomas Becket (St. Thomas the Martyr). Becket was murdered in the quire (choir) of the cathedral on 29 December 1170. Four years later a disastrous fire destroyed the eastern end of the church. After William of Sens had rebuilt the Quire, William the Englishman added the immense Corona as a shrine for the crown of St. Thomas (with a new shrine for the main relics in the form of the Trinity Chapel between the Corona and the Quire). Later, Redinald Cardinal Pole and William Temple were buried there.

Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Corona,_Canterbury_Cathedral

Photograph was made with Hasselblad 501C, 50mm Carl Zeiss Plannar lens and using yellow filter. The film is Kodak Tmax 100 rated at 64, developed with Rodinal in N-3 process using semistand agitation. Printed in Ilford paper developed in Ansco 120

SNOW
by Archibald Lampman

White are the far-off plains, and white
The fading forests grow;
The wind dies out along the height,
And denser still the snow,
A gathering weight on roof and tree,
Falls down scarce audibly.
The road before me smoothes and fills
Apace, and all about
The fences dwindle, and the hills
Are blotted slowly out;
The naked trees loom spectrally
Into the dim white sky.
The meadows and far-sheeted streams
Lie still without a sound;
Like some soft minister of dreams
The snow-fall hoods me round;
In wood and water, earth and air,
A silence everywhere.
Save when at lonely intervals
Some farmer's sleigh urged on,
With rustling runners and sharp bells,
Swings by me and is gone;
Or from the empty waste I hear
A sound remote and clear;
The barking of a dog, or call
To cattle, sharply pealed,
Borne echoing from some wayside stall
Or barnyard far afield;
Then all is silent, and the snow
Falls, settling soft and slow.
The evening deepens, and the gray
Folds closer earth and sky;
The world seems shrouded far away;
Its noises sleep, and I,
As secret as yon buried stream,
Plod dumbly on, and dream

Photograph was made with my lovely Hassy, a yellow filter to reduce the blue cast of the sky light, Kodak Tmax 100 rated at 64, and the lens was 50mm Carl Zeiss Plannar. The film was developed at Rodinal 1:50, 21 minutes with semistand developing method. The paper was developed with Ansco 120, and the magic came to live in the Ilford paper. It's an amazing experience, indeed.