winter’s sun casts long shadows on the shortest day creating contrasting values of shape between objects and the wall in turn capturing my eye as darkness wins
— kenne
(Nōtan (濃淡) is a Japanese word, meaning dark-light, there is no English language equivalent. It embodies an ancient Eastern concept, in which all things exist as inseparable and in perfect harmony.)
View Above Hutch’s Pool In the Santa Catalina Mountains — Image by kenne
“In those vernal seasons of the year when the air is calm and pleasant, it were an injury and sullenness against nature not to go out and see her riches, and partake in her rejoicing with heaven and earth.”
“In our finest hours…the soul of the country manifests itself in an inclination to open our arms rather than to clench our fists; to look out rather than to turn inward; to accept rather than to reject. In so doing, America has grown ever stronger, confident that the choice of light over dark is the means by which we pursue progress.”
― Jon Meacham, The Soul of America: The Battle for Our Better Angels
“What if our religion was each other. If our practice was our life. If prayer, our words. What if the temple was the Earth. If forests were our church. If holy water–the rivers, lakes, and ocean. What if meditation was our relationships. If the teacher was life. If wisdom was self-knowledge. If love was the center of our being.”
“The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing that stands in the way. Some see nature all ridicule and deformity… and some scarce see nature at all. But to the eyes of the man of imagination, nature is imagination itself.”
Mt. Lemmon, San Pedro Valley Vista Before the Big Horn Fire — Image by kenne
“You can’t divide the country up into sections and have one rule for one section and one rule for another, and you can’t encourage people’s prejudices. You have to appeal to people’s best instincts, not their worst ones. You may win an election or so by doing the other, but it does a lot of harm to the country.”
— Jon Meacham, The Soul of America: The Battle for Our Better Angels
Truth never dies. The ages come and go. The mountains wear away, the stars retire. Destruction lays earth’s mighty cities low; And empires, states and dynasties expire; But caught and handed onward by the wise, Truth never dies.
Though unreceived and scoffed at through the years, Though made the butt of ridicule and jest, Though held aloft for mockery and jeers, Denied by those of transient power possessed, Insulted by the insolence of lies, Truth never dies.
It answers not. It does not take offense, But with a mighty silence bides its time. As some great cliff that braves the elements And lifts through all the storms its head sublime, It ever stands, uplifted by the wise, And never dies.
As rests the Sphinx amid Egyptian sands; As looms on high the snowy peak and crest; As firm and patient as Gibraltar stands, So truth, unwearied, waits the era blest When men shall turn to it with great surprise. Truth never dies.
My good friend Tom Marley recently introduced me to Cavafy’s poetry.
“The poet makes a personal yet universal confession about the walls that bring suffocation to his life.
These walls are related to the social structure, the economy, religion, and much more.
The worst thing is not the existence of these walls, of these limitations of the free development
but the fact that the walls were created before us, so we cannot even notice
their existence and fight against them.”
Walls
With no consideration, no pity, no shame,
they have built walls around me, thick and high.
And now I sit here feeling hopeless.
I can’t think of anything else: this fate gnaws my mind –
because I had so much to do outside.
When they were building the walls, how could I not have noticed!
But I never heard the builders, not a sound.
Imperceptibly they have closed me off from the outside world.
Suffering occurs when we want other people to love us in the way that we imagine we want to be loved, and not in the way that love should manifest itself — free and untrammeled, guiding us with its force and driving us on.
I went to the [desert] because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.
Cathedral Rock Panorama by kenne
Catalina Foothills Sunset — Image by kenne
“Global Warming” — Photo-Artistry by kenne
