Posted in creativity, from the dark room, photography on April 7, 2015| Leave a Comment »
What I like about this photo is how the hedge looks like it has been lit up by the lamp behind it, but in fact the lamp is unlit.
The only light source in this scene is the sun, but it lights both the lamp and the hedge quite differently.
I do enjoy capturing these little tricks of the light – showing the light itself somehow, not just what it is lighting up…..
Posted in creativity, from the dark room, from the living room, from the reading room, life, narrative, personal growth, philosophy, photography, science on April 6, 2015| Leave a Comment »
Andreas Weber, who coined the term “enlivenment” (to follow the “enlightenment”) describes how biology is changing to a more life-focused understanding, than the till now dominant reductionist parts-focused one –
Such eminent biological and systems thinkers as Lynn Margulis, Francisco Varela, Alicia Juarrero, Stuart Kauffman and Gregory Bateson have opened up a picture in which organisms are no longer seen as machines competing with other machines, but rather as a natural phenomenon that “creates” and develops itself in a material way while continuously making and expressing experiences
I like that. It captures a lot in a few words. We are self-making, self-developing creatures who are bodies (not who have bodies). And we continuously make (co-create) and express (not least through our stories and our art) our experiences.
Posted in creativity, from the dark room, from the living room, life, photography on April 5, 2015| 1 Comment »
We are makers.
Make it happen. We take actions. We interact with each other and with the world.
Make a difference. We bring our uniqueness to every situation. Conscious engagement is the way to make a difference which only you can make.
Make it up. Our imagination is active all the time, both in waking life, and while we are asleep. Reflecting on what our imagination makes for us, and playing with active imagining deepens our experience of life. Tell stories.
Make music.
Make art.
Make someone happy. Today.
Make love not war. Couldn’t resist that one! The more we love in this life the better, in my opinion, and yes, many people choose instead to make war, to make acts of violence and to destroy. But you can choose, and my choice is love.
Posted in from the dark room, from the living room, life, personal growth, philosophy, photography on April 4, 2015| 1 Comment »
What are your favourite symbols? Which symbols mean the most to you?
i wear a yin yang symbol around my neck. I love what it represents, that flowing balance of darkness and light, the harmony of the male and female energies, and the subtle hint that each opposite contains the other.
But I am also a fan of the more Celtic type of triple spiral, the triskele. I took this photo of buttons when I visited an exhibition at the Musée des Arts Decoratifs in Paris because in all the variations of triple spirals I have seen, this is a new one on me.
As far as I am aware, human beings are the only creatures to create and use symbols. Choosing to have around us symbols which are personally meaningful can deepen the quality of every day experiences.
Posted in from the dark room, from the living room, life, photography on April 3, 2015| 1 Comment »
Posted in from the dark room, from the living room, life, personal growth, photography on April 2, 2015| 1 Comment »
Well, this young woman on the right is dressed in a way which is not unfamiliar to me because I’ve visited Tokyo a number of times.
But I didn’t take this photo in Tokyo. I took it in Paris!
I definitely did not see anyone else in Paris dressed this way. Her different style was eye catching, remarkable.
But would she stand out the same way in Tokyo? Or isn’t this style of dress typical of a certain genre?
I think it is often this way for us. We dress to express our individually but also to say something about what we have in common with certain others.
It’s an interesting paradox, uniqueness and difference, which expresses both our separateness and belonging in the same moment. But we humans carry that trick off so successfully, don’t we?
We’re good at handling paradoxes….
Posted in creativity, from the dark room, from the living room, life, personal growth, philosophy, photography on April 1, 2015| 2 Comments »
I’ve been posting a series on re-enchanting life over the last few days. Scroll down through the last few posts from here to read them, or put “re-enchanting” into the search box on the top right of the site.
What, specifically, will be re-enchanting for you, may well be different from what works for me, or someone else, but there is a common underlying key.
That key is emotion.
What quickens our heart, what stirs our soul, deepens our experience.
If you would like to explore how to develop your heart feelings, check out “Heartmath” (I have written a simple introduction to this practice on this site – put “Heartmath” in the search box to find it). It’s a simple basic technique which can be developed to increase your awareness of how you process life from your “heart centre”. I mean that both from a neurobiological physical perspective, as well as from a metaphoric subjective one.
If you would like to explore stirring your soul, then I suppose I need to be clear what I mean by soul. Thomas Moore who wrote The Care of the Soul opened up my understanding of soul when I heard him speak in Glasgow a few years ago. He said we can understand what soul is by thinking how we use the word – soul music, soul food, soul mate.
Life can be lived on autopilot. That’s the theme of “heroes not zombies”, a theme you will find throughout this blog. An autopilot life, a zombie life, is thin and superficial. It isn’t nourishing. It isn’t satisfying. And it can drop us into a place of alienation and disenchantment very easily.
I believe we can re-enchant our lives, making them deeper and richer, more meaningful and satisfying. We can do that by choosing to experience what stirs us most strongly in our hearts and souls.
Heroes Not Zombies 