Tuesday, January 6, 2009
The horizon of a new year always holds so much promise.
Just by its very being, another chapter begins, and whether the time spent moving forward meets a fresh horizon or merely visits a known corner, every thing seems different, and even unseemly original.
Many of the people I know could not wait for 2008 to be over. The twists and turns of our cultural lives seemed to be almost too much to handle. Numerous days, even months, in my own year were lived as a chain of hapless events each trumping the other in distraction and distress.
I realized even as I was walking in my world, my eyes, more times than not, were cast down. They saw, on some miserable days, only the movement of one foot going in front of the other. Slow progress this, for one used to running into the promised land.
So this year, I’ve decided to simply raise my head. Chin up. Stiff upper lip, all that. If things weren’t looking up around me, so what. There was plenty I seemed to be missing by merely taking measure of my feet.
On New Year’s day, I was assigned to take pictures of a group of bicyclists who were riding early in the morning to celebrate really nothing more than sheer optimism. It was a very glacial daybreak; why would so many would leave the warmth of their bed and home and go to the cold cold edge like this.
But even as Lake Michigan was arctic, crackling, it beckoned with a beauty that could not be seen any other way than to be merely present.
Looking.
Enjoying.
Here were some of the colors that most fascinated me anywhere at all. Glimmering lightest seafoam, translucent pale aqua, and rounding and uniting, the colors of stone wearing moss and earth in an ingenious mantle of color.
It was several moments at this icy edge before I noticed that my gloves were off. My fingers were painfully telling just how frigid it was where I was standing. Cool. I was so outside myself, in beauty and peace, that it was even more of a grace to simply feel the warmth of my fleecy fingers when I went back into gloves and about my way.
So I’ve decided to chase the Muse.
To simply find in my life, and record the small (and not so small) visual cues that surround me. Things that are outside myself to rescue what’s inside myself and lift it up. Join me and show me what you find.
For some reason this post made me tear up. Apparently I need to pay more attention too.
Right behind you girl. Thanks for the beautiful pics.
Thanks for the inspiring post–both words and images.
The other day I was walking in the late afternoon and began to notice all the shades and hues and shapes in the winter woods. Snow on boulders. Lacy patterns of ice in the streams. Shadows. Even though I am no photographer, I wished i had a camera with me:) Even so, I emerged from the woods feeling better about the world.
Best wishes for 2009.
Kathleen
Great post and pics! Gotta walk over to the beach this week! Hope to see you more often in 2009.
Thanks for the inspiration, Bonne. And yeah, sometimes lifting one’s head is all one can do. And it can be enough. Hugs.
That is beautiful. I’m with you 100% :)
I noticed the same frozen lake as we flew back from Toronto on New Year’s Day. The difference is that we were at 20,000 feet and the whitecaps were unbroken and still. It seemed so. Unreal.
Yes.
Wouldn’t those colors make a beautiful sweater? enjoy!
The light in your pictures is simply beautiful – and your words well set!
Thank You!
THank you. I needed a reminder to look up. I will happily join you this year.
The color of the ice reminds me of shards of beach glass worn by the sea. Really a beautiful photo Bonne and thanks for the reminder to look up and see what else is out there… Smell the roses, the coffee and what ever turns ones mind on…. gets them creative, thinking, and just doing.
I often see the oddest little things, like a leaf on the side walk wet with rain… I snap these with my camera phone and send them to my friends phones… I need to take more photos. Im in need of three really cool photos for my kitchen. I have a spot and frames for three photos, I just don’t know what I want to display… On my porch I have three portraits of my dogs… Just so the mail man knows who’s barking at him…. hehehehe
All right. Let’s do it.
What a wonderful insight. Thank you, and you are right on. I think we all need to quit dwelling on the humdrums and look up. I need to get out more. That’s what I need to do, thanks for the inspiration.
Thanks for a beautifully inspiring post. I needed that this morning.
Thanks Bonnie. I have been trying to find myself I mean my place since I closed my shop last June, I haven’t found a job and have way toooooooooo much time..Your words helped..
Thanks for sharing the insight. I do need to be more mindful of the little things. So often I just rush right by. My intention today is to see the little lovely things all around me. Colors, shapes, textures & people known and unknown.
Thanks for this. I’ve been heading in the same direction.
Bonnie, I moved south from Chicago in 1995. I don’t miss the cold, but I sure do miss the Lake and all the beauty of it. . . thanks for both the “looking up thing” and the photos of my favorite water front.
P.S. will be in Chicago in early Feb. plan to shop the loop yarn stores.
peace and happiness
Thanks. Yesterday morning I was cloud watching. There was a formation to the west, but not quite over the Rockies–a horizontal band of cloud with ripples on top that as the day progressed became cresting waves. This morning I figured out how to capture it–a vertical series of panoramas to show the evolution. Hopefully I’ll remember that.
My husband runs by the Lake often, he choose Sunday to drive me down and show me how beautiful it was in winter. We just moved to the North Shore after a lifetime in the western suburbs. Beautiful, Awesome, Glorious, the fingerprints of G-D.