Photoshop Fun

A Compass With No North

Like the Minotaur lost in the labyrinth I search. The path doubled back, the way elusive. For me the pen is heavier than the sword. A man who starts but rarely finishes. Not a firebrand, a dud match.

Tried for the warrior-poet, I am neither. Notebooks, journals full of words pressed together in the dark. Words words words. A mouth full of clichés. A lifeboat caught in a maelström, a compass with no north. Memory closets cluttered, the bone dry rattle dancing in the dust. Hallways that lead nowhere, barred doors, opaque windows. Too much seeker, never enough doer.

I think often on death. Not death as an abstract concept, death as absolute/concrete reality. My own death. To what greater purpose have I put my life while waiting for the deus ex machina to show? We cannot all do great things, but the little things count.

I feel it
Perched high up on vision’s periphery
The blue black bird,
Stranger to me.
Down drops death
The drop fast, the trauma blunt.
A controlled fall
The hammer blow
The shock to the system.

Beauty Lurks

Lately I find myself seeking out photographs of industrial objects or objects deliberately taken out of context (See photos below). Some objects if framed/cropped correctly appear to not be what they are and conversely may appear to be what they are not. With the proper (improper?) perspective different shapes/forms/colors/textures/visions emerge. Many times the beauty, the separateness lurks in the everydayness. Sometimes it is simply that I/we see things that I/we have seen innumerable times before but never really acknowledged. It is that initial moment of confusion, that epiphany that I seek. Objects that are somewhat familiar to the eye and things that never get even a second glance get their moment of exposure. The beauty is there, I simply seek to bring it into sharper focus. This narrowing of my/our vision allows me/us to expand my/our horizons.

Railroads, rail cars and rail yards are rich with targets of opportunity for these out of context and industrial encounters. In the midst of a railroad yard, in this chaotic place full of rusting trains and rusting equipment there are patterns, repetition, beauty. Fortunately there is a short line railroad in our county that once served the local paper mill and still serves the submarine base. When the mill finally closed (that’s a whole different story) the railroad began its long slow slide toward oblivion/obsolescence. Much of the mill’s paper making equipment, infrastructure and much of the railroad’s rolling stock are being dismantled and sold as scrap. Ironically it is the railroad that carries out the bulk of the scrap iron.

At the railroad office was an old flatbed rail car laid over on its side with the wheels and undercarriage removed. The first photos I took were of the railcar when it was for the most part still intact. Lame and stranded but still intact. Like a pack animal it offered its underbelly, demonstrated its submissiveness, acknowledged its defeat. It has no place in the development to come.

The next photos were after about half of the ribs had been removed. At my last visit most of the car had been cut into pieces and carried away. The dismemberment was over. But the train will have the last laugh. Through the smelter it will go on to be resurrected and enjoy life after death, perhaps as another train, or its track, or an I-beam, or a set of pots and pans. The metal made anew will once again take on a beauty of its own.

Click on photos for additional detail.

To Eat You I Must Kill You

No arrow of enlightenment fletched with the feathers of truth,
No ruthless predator preying on the slow, pruning the herd
No metaphorical eternal struggle
And nothing like a simile.

No mustachioed Marlin Perkins,
No battered Range Rover,
No tawny lions of the Serengeti,
No howling hyena bitches.
No circle of life.

Just one hawk,
One dove,
In my front yard.
The dove lost.

Serpent, Steel, Flora, H2O

Winter Of Discontent

Now/This/Mine is a melancholy time. Days repeat themselves. Up, then out we go. Back in, then down we go. One bland day blending into the next, each like a precious stone dropped forever into the well of time.

I do not miss the barren trees, the frozen toes, the steady stoking for warmth, the slush and the mush, the deep cold shadows as old Sol skates across the western sky. But the breath visible, the scarlet cardinal caught in a sea of white, wood smoke still clinging in the frigid air, fields of untrodden snow, hot chocolate and cold noses, children and mittens, these I miss.

Eventually winter wanes into Earth’s verdant eruption. But here winter is only a name , a pretense, a mockery with palm trees draped in twinkling light coats, St. Nicholas on water skis, mowing in January and February. More like a brown lull between the flaming days of autumn and the voracious green of spring.

Never feeling winter’s bitter bite leaves me longing. The rhythm is broken, the cycle of the seasons comes unchained. Memories of cold days so long ago, butchering hogs after the first hard frost, outdoor plumbing, frozen creeks, pneumonia, even death.

Time rubs smooth the jagged edges of memory.

Riding Lightning

Last night and tonight my eight-year-old daughter (I’ll refer to her as “J”) and I took our dogs (a greyhound and a terrier mix) for a long leisurely walk around our neighborhood (check out the socks). What makes this mundane fact remarkable is that on these walks J was riding her horse named Lightning. While Lightning is an imaginary steed she is very, very real to us. As we walked we talked about why horses have to wear shoes. Indian horses didn’t need shoes because they never had to walk on the road. We decided that wooden shoes would be better than metal or plastic and they should be glued on and not nailed. We learned that a person who makes horseshoes can be called a blacksmith or a Ferrier.

I learned that Lightning likes to sleep standing up and she likes to eat apples. Lightning is gold/yellow/orange colored and began her life as a wild horse. She was tamed enough to ride by slowly increasing the load on her back until she was comfortable carrying a person.

As we walked J pointed out Orion standing his long cold vigil in the southern sky. We saw a cluster of stars that might have been the Little Dipper or the Seven Sisters. The Big Dipper was still hidden by the trees/horizon. We learned that the North Star (which you can follow north!) is also called Polaris. I told J that there were many more stars than we could see because of the street light glare. We also learned that another name for the Big Dipper is ursa major or Big Bear.

As we walked tonight the ride on Lightning was often interrupted by J’s dance. She would spontaneously twirl and skip, happy to be out with Daddy on a nice cool evening. We let Lightning graze while we talked and followed the sidewalk around the field to meet her on the other side. I found out that Lightning has a bridle with her name on it.

These are magical walks, time to suspend disbelief and treat imagination as fact. A time to dance and to laugh, a time to share a made up game that does us both a great deal of good. She is eight now and I know that all too soon she’ll think taking a walk with her boring old Dad won’t be cool. But for now, while she is still a child and before the innocence fades we’ll be out riding Lightning and dancing in the street. And I’ll be pretending it will last forever.

Bird Play

We soar like an eagle,
We sing like a bird,
We waddle like a penguin,
We feel the hawk blowing,
We wear an albatross necktie,
We are sometimes vultures,
We are sometimes chicken,
We sometimes eat crow,
We are free as a bird.
Maybe.

We have two small brown birds living in our living room. In a cage. We lock them in and grant them only a small universe. Instead of soaring free they perch. And they sing. They can see beyond their bars. They cannot escape.

To us they are pets, pretty amusements. To them we are jailers bringing bread and water. In what gilded cage do we live? Where do we get our bread and water? What is our song?

Pricked by pride we grasp and hold onto that which we cannot keep. Better to humble ourselves, to let go, to let God. Only then are we wise owls.

Tuesday's Children

Very busy day. Old Glory in cloudy sky. Blustery day at the dock. Monsters among us.

Monday's Misfits

These were all taken today. It was one of those days when everywhere I looked my mind was framing photos.

My World

We have had visitors from Virginia. Meanwhile here a few photos I took last week. Also, there were some portions of the story I was posting that were inappropriate, therefore they were deleted.

The Truth Liberally Dispensed

I found a link to this over on Orthodixie's place. This is a well written and straight to the point summation of the liberalism infecting many/most of the other faith traditions. The issue for me always comes down to being able to love as we are commanded without giving up the ship.

Bishop Hilarion Alfeyev: Liberal Christianity will not survive for a long time

Intervention at the opening session of the Central Committee of the World Council of Churches, Geneva, 13 February 2008

I would like to draw your attention to the danger of liberal Christianity. The liberalization of moral standards, initiated by some Protestant and Anglican communities several decades ago and developing with ever-increasing speed, has now brought us to a situation where we can no longer preach one and the same code of moral conduct. We can no longer speak about Christian morality, because moral standards promoted by 'traditional' and 'liberal' Christians are markedly different, and the abyss between these two wings of contemporary Christianity is rapidly growing.

We are being told by some allegedly Christian leaders, who still bear the titles of Reverends and Most Reverends, that marriage between a woman and a man is no longer the only option for creating a Christian family, that there are other patterns, and that the church must be 'inclusive' enough to recognize alternative lifestyles and give them official and solemn blessing. We are being told that human life is no longer an unquestionable value, that it can be summarily aborted in the womb, or that one may have the right to interrupt it voluntarily, and that Christian 'traditionalists' should reconsider their standpoints in order to be in tune with modern developments. We are being told that abortion is acceptable, contraception is agreeable, and euthanasia is better still, and that the church must accommodate all these 'values' in the name of human rights.

What, then, is left of Christianity? In the confusing and disoriented world in which we live, where is the prophetic voice of Christians? What can we offer, or can we offer anything at all to the secular world, apart from what the secular world will offer to itself as a value system on which society should be built? Do we have our own value system which we should preach, or should we simply applaud every novelty in public morality which becomes fashionable in the secular society?

I would also like to draw your attention to the danger of a 'politically correct' Christianity, of a Christianity which not only so easily and readily surrenders itself to secular moral standards, but also participates in promoting value systems alien to Christian tradition.

We are facing a paradoxical situation. British secular politicians who share Christian convictions are concerned about the rising Christianophobia in the UK and initiate a debate on this issue in Parliament, calling for recognition of the country's Christian identity. At the same time the primate of the Church of England calls for 'a constructive accommodation with some aspects of Muslim law.'

I am sure I will be told that Christianity must become more tolerant and all-inclusive, that we Christians should no longer insist on our religion as being the only true faith, that we should learn how to adopt other value systems and standards. My question, however, is: when are we going to stop making Christianity politically correct and all-inclusive; why do we insist on accommodating every possible alternative to the centuries-old Christian tradition? Where is the limit, or is there no limit at all?

Many Christians worldwide look to Christian leaders in the hope that they will defend Christianity against the challenges that it faces. It is not our task to defend Sharia law, or to commend alternative lifestyles or to promote secular values. Our holy mission is to preach what Christ preached, to teach what the apostles taught and to propagate what the holy Fathers propagated. It is this witness which people are expecting of us.

I am convinced that liberal Christianity will not survive for a long time. A politically correct Christianity will die. We see already how liberal Christianity is falling apart and how the introduction of new moral norms leads to division, discord and confusion in some Christian communities. This process will continue, while traditional Christians, I believe, will consolidate their forces in order to protect the faith and moral teaching which the Lord gave, the Apostles preached and the Fathers preserved.

http://orthodoxeurope.org/#19-2-445

Evil Weed

This photograph has not been retouched or modified in any way. I was observing the destruction of some illegal drugs this morning and this is the last photograph taken before I left the scene. While looking through the photographs this afternoon with a co-worker he noticed the image in the flames. I have often looked at photographs that supposedly contain strange images with a great deal of skepticism, but not this one. I took this photograph and I am stunned by what it seems to contain. I have no doubt that there are creatures that inhabit our world with us that we cannot see. The Holy Scriptures are full of stories of visits to our reality by heavenly creatures.

I am NOT saying that this is some otherwordly creature but I will go out on the proverbial limb and say that this looks to me very much like some sort of skeletal creature either in or fleeing from the flames.

Witnessing the destruction of so much cocaine and marijuana was a sad yet joyful experience. Glad because we are able to take so much of this poison out of our community and out of the hands, bodies and minds of our children, our neighbors and even our friends. And yet sad because there is so much available here in our little corner of the deep South. It took the better part of two hours to burn it all. And a few months down the road we'll do the same thing again. We stand in the breech only to see the walls crumbling around us. So many families split asunder. So many lives ruined.

Every year I have the honor to speak to several classes of students who are graduating from the D.A.R.E. program. I try to emphasize to these fifth graders that most of the people in our county jail are there because of some tie to drugs or alcohol. Either from stealing and burglarizing to feed a habit, or from beating and/or abusing an innocent (and sometimes not so innocent) bystander.

Recently I have taken an orange jail jumpsuit and a set of leg irons with me as a visual aid. I tell them that this lovely orange one-piece jumpsuit will be their duds and the leg irons will be their bling-bling. It always gets a laugh but I think it also makes the point. Sadly I know that in some cases I am preaching to the choir. Some of these children are already intimately familiar with what drug and alcohol abuse does to a family.

As for the figure in the flames, it may just be a photographic fluke. Most likely it's just an interesting conversation piece. But I know that the destructive demon that hides in the marijuana, the cocaine and all their kin is all too real, all too ready to burn all who dare to accept their seductive embrace.

Lord have mercy, Lord have mercy, Lord have mercy.

Monsters Among Us

Postcards From Georgia