(I took this photo today with my phone
through large glass windows at work.)
“Remember to be gentle with yourself and others. We are all children of chance and none can say why some fields will blossom while others lay brown beneath the August sun. Care for those around you. Look past your differences. Their dreams are no less than yours, their choices no more easily made. And give, give in any way you can, of whatever you posses. To give is to love. To withhold is to wither. Care less for your harvest than for how it is shared and your life will have meaning and your heart will have peace.”
“After a while you learn the subtle difference between holding a hand and chaining a soul, and you learn that love doesn’t mean leaning and company doesn’t mean security, and you begin to learn that kisses aren’t contracts and presents aren’t promises, and you begin to accept your defeats with your head up and your eyes open, with the grace of an adult, not the grief of a child, and you learn to build all your roads on today because tomorrow’s ground is too uncertain for plans. After a while you learn that even sunshine burns if you get too much. So plant your own garden and decorate your own soul, instead of waiting for someone to bring you flowers. And you learn that you really can endure… that you really are strong, and you really do have worth.”
Scribbles after my new art class... learning to see.
"Drawings are not simply things to look at; they are a direct form of positive communication. Part of the reason they communicate so directly is that drawing belongs to everyone. Acts of drawing occur all the time -- someone applying eyeliner, doodling whilst on the phone, or making someone a map on the back of an envelope. We are all mark makers."
You ask me how I became a madman. It happened thus: One day, long before many gods were born, I woke from a deep sleep and found all my masks were stolen, --the seven masks I have fashioned and worn in seven lives,--I ran maskless through the crowded streets shouting, "Thieves, thieves, the cursed thieves."
Men and women laughed at me and some ran to their houses in fear of me.
And when I reached the market place, a youth standing on a house-top cried, "He is a madman." I looked up to behold him; the sun kissed my own naked face for the first time. For the first time the sun kissed my own naked face and my soul was inflamed with love for the sun, and I wanted my masks no more. And as if in a trance I cried, "Blessed, blessed are the thieves who stole my masks."
Thus I became a madman.
And I have found both freedom and safety in my madness; the freedom of lone- liness and the safety from being under- stood, for those who understand us enslave something in us.
But let me not be too proud of my safety. Even a Thief in a jail is safe from another thief.
"My work is a way for me to go to the planets without the physical trip, and to meet myself when I get there." Paula Rice
This collection hails from a planetary art exhibit at Lowell Observatory during the summer of 2009, in Flagstaff, Arizona. Entitled "The Planet Series: Figurative Interpretations of the Planets Around the Sun -- A Sculpture Project" by artist and professor Paula Rice, evoking the human sense of the mysterious and desire to grasp the universe surrounding us.
Rice’s humanlike planets not only set out to capture her experience of the universe as “loving, intelligent and harmonious,” they also incorporate the empirical evidence of planet surfaces provided through photos from the Hubble Telescope.
“My new work is a way for me to imagine a reality incomprehensively vast and bring it down to human size,” Rice explained. “The series is about us here on Earth. For the first time in human history, our sense of place and the size of our imaginations have to stretch to include new information about these worlds.”
She said each ceramic planet features new landscape and surface information from the space photography.
I visited this art exhibit and fell in love with the Greek-like forms of planets as human figures. The text below each photo was taken from the exhibit itself.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Mercury Ceramic; oxidation-fired and smoked
Mercury is the closest planet to the sun and the smallest of all the planets in our Solar System. Its surface is pocked with impact craters. Mercury is a world of fire and ice, with temperatures reaching 750 degrees Fahrenheit (400 degrees Celsius) during the daytime, and dropping down to -200 degrees Fahrenheit (-129 degrees Celsius) during the planet's long nights.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Venus with Asteroid Ceramic and cast iron; oxidation-fired and smoked
Known as Earth's sister planet, Venus compares with our home planet only in size and mass. Our closest planetary neighbor is shrouded in a dense cloud cover containing sulfuric acid droplets and an atmosphere that consists almost entirely of unbreathable carbon dioxide. These clouds produce a greenhouse effect that drives temperatures to an average of 900 degrees Fahrenheit (483 degrees Celsius).
Most features on Venus are named for real and mythical women; examples are craters Eve, Sacagawea and Cleopatra.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Earth Ceramic with glazes; metal; oxidation-fired and smoked
The third planet from the Sun is the only body in the Solar System where water exists in all three phases: solid, liquid and gas. Two-thirds of the Earth is covered with water, but even the driest deserts on our home planet harbor life.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Mars Ceramic with glaze; oxidation-fired and smoked
The most-studied planet in the Solar System, Mars is both familiar to us and mysterious. Streaky markings and dusky patches change with the Martian seasons; dust storms occasionally cover the entire planet. Water was once abundant on the Red Planet, as indicated by ancient shorelines, channels and lakebeds.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Jupiter Ceramic with slips and glazes; oxidation-fired and smoked
This giant among the planets is eleven times the diameter of Earth. Its hydrogen and helium composition, in combination with other elements, lends vivid colors to Jupiter's dense clouds. The Great Red Spot, a huge whirling cloud system, has been in existence for at least several hundred years. The four largest of Jupiter's 63 known moons (called the Galilean moons) can be seen with binoculars from Earth.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Saturn Ceramic with lusters; fiberglass (by Ivan Bronston); oxidation-fired
Like Jupiter, Uranus and Neptune, Saturn is gaseous with no solid surface. It is characterized by its brilliant rings, a complex system comprised of billions of chunks of ice, each in its own orbit around the planet. Its average density is less than that of water; in a large enough ocean, Saturn would float.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Uranus Ceramic; fiberglass (by Ivan Bronston)
The first planet discovered with a telescope, Uranus is twice as far from the Sun as Saturn and four times larger than Earth. Methane gas imparts a greenish-blue color to an almost featureless globe. Uranus and its ring system are "tipped over," likely the result of a cosmic collision billions of years ago.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Neptune Ceramic with underglazes and glazes; fiberglass (by Ivan Bronston); oxidation fired
Although similar in size and composition to Uranus, Neptune reveals unique features. High winds drive prominent cloud belts and blue storm systems around the planet. Like the other gas giants, Neptune has a ring system and many moons.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Pluto with Kuiper Belt Objects Stoneware with underglazes and glazes
Pluto was discovered in 1930 at Lowell Observatory by Clyde Tombaugh, a young research assistant. It was officially reclassified as a dwarf planet in 2006. Small, cold, and icy, Pluto orbits the Sun on the fringes of the Solar System along with thousands of Kuiper Belt Objects.
“A book is good company. It is full of conversation without loquacity. It comes to your longing with full instruction, but pursues you never.” Henry Ward Beecher
Stump of petrified wood (stone, now, in the shape of a stump), Petrified Forest on a cloudy day. Before I visited here (this was taken in 2009), I thought I might see some standing trees too, but not so much.
“It seems to me we can never give up longing and wishing while we are thoroughly alive. There are certain things we feel to be beautiful and good, and we must hunger after them.”
"All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy, for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another."
"Do you want me to tell you something really subversive? Love is everything it's cracked up to be. That's why people are so cynical about it. . . . It really is worth fighting for, being brave for, risking everything for. And the trouble is, if you don't risk anything, you risk even more."
If you’ve not been alone much, or if when you were, you weren’t okay with it, then just wait. You’ll find its fine to be alone once you’re embracing it.
We can start with the acceptable places, the bathroom, the coffee shop, the library, where you can stall and read the paper, where you can get your caffeine fix and sit and stay there. Where you can browse the stacks and smell the books, your not suppose to talk much anyway so its safe there.
There is also the gym, if your shy, you can hang out with yourself and mirrors, you can put headphones in.
Then there’s public transportation, because we all gotta go places.
And there’s prayer and mediation, no one will think less if your hanging with your breath seeking peace and salvation.
Start simple. Things you may have previously avoided based on your avoid being alone principles.
The lunch counter, where you will be surrounded by “chow downers”, employees who only have an hour and their spouses work across town, and they, like you, will be alone.
Resist the urge to hang out with your cell phone.
When you are comfortable with “eat lunch and run”, take yourself out for dinner; a restaurant with linen and silver wear. You’re no less an intriguing a person when you are eating solo desert and cleaning the whip cream from the dish with your finger. In fact, some people at full tables will wish they were where you were.
Go to the movies. Where it’s dark and soothing, alone in your seat amidst a fleeting community.
And then take yourself out dancing, to a club where no one knows you, stand on the outside of the floor until the lights convince you more and more and the music shows you. Dance like no ones watching because they’re probably not. And if they are, assume it is with best human intentions. The way bodies move genuinely to beats, is after-all, gorgeous and affecting. Dance until you’re sweating. And beads of perspiration remind you of life’s best things. Down your back, like a book of blessings. On LYBIO.net you can find - The Largest community of social networking with text-script-video blogging service. http://www.lybio.net
Go to the woods alone, and the trees and squirrels will watch for you. Go to an unfamiliar city, roam the streets, they are always statues to talk to, and benches made for sitting gives strangers a shared existence if only for a minute, and these moments can be so uplifting and the conversation you get in by sitting alone on benches, might of never happened had you not been there by yourself. SOURCE: LYBIO.net. Copyrights: Tanya Davis
Society is afraid of alone though. Like lonely hearts are wasting away in basements. Like people must have problems if after awhile nobody is dating them.
But lonely is a freedom that breaths easy and weightless, and lonely is healing if you make it.
You can stand swaffed by groups and mobs or hands with your partner, look both further and farther in the endless quest for company.
But no one is in your head. And by the time you translate your thoughts an essence of them maybe lost or perhaps it is just kept. Perhaps in the interest of loving oneself, perhaps all those sappy slogans from pre-school over to high school groaning, we’re tokens for holding the lonely at bay.
Cause if you’re happy in your head, then solitude is blessed, and alone is okay.
It’s okay if no one believes like you, all experiences unique, no one has the same synapses, can’t think like you, for this be relived, keeps things interesting, life’s magic brings much, and it doesn’t mean you aren’t connected, and the community is not present, just take the perspective you get from being one person in one head and feel the effects of it.
Take silence and respect it.
If you have an art that needs a practice, stop neglecting it, if your family doesn’t get you or a religious sect is not meant for you, don’t obsess about it.
You could be in an instant surrounded if you need it.
I took this photo of yellow flowers in Arizona last August (and applied a watercolor effect).
"Many of us spend our whole lives running from feeling with the mistaken belief that you cannot bear the pain. But you have already borne the pain. What you have not done is feel all you are beyond the pain."
The reason lightning doesn't strike twice in the same place is that the same place isn't there the second time.
~Willie Tyler
Inspired by recent summer thunderstorms, I went to Flickr to look up some of its most striking lightning photos (like my reverse pun? ;). Here are my favorites, condensed from 15 pages of pictures. I specifically chose photos that were not too manipulated; some shots were incredible but consisted of multiple lightning strikes condensed from various layers into one image, which, though incredibly-impressive, didn't truly represent the storm. (At least most photographers seem very honest about their methods of capture and editing and thus mentioned when photos were altered, so this wasn't difficult.)
Clicking on a photo will take you to the original source on Flickr; each photographer is credited (by their Flickr name), and locations, if known, are given.
Onward into the storm!
Florida west coast, by Duane Schoon
Cloud-to-ground lightning over Waratah Bay. (South East Victoria, Australia), by Diamond Hoo Ha Man
Lightning in Perhentian Island, Terengganu, Malaysia, by Fadzly @ Shutterhack.
Lightning on the Columbia River, by phatman. "In the middle of the night we had a lightning storm, so I decided the smart thing to do was to go take pictures of it. Little did I know the lightning was less than a mile away; the strike you see here was certainly hitting the water. The sound of thunder followed almost immediately."
Lightning crossing the border between Minnesota and Wisconsin. Looking down the St. Croix River towards the I-94 bridge from Hudson, WI. Image by ottergoose.
Lightning striking near the Hampton Roads Tunnel by shoebappa
Lightning Striking Pinnacle Peak Mountain, Arizona. North Scottsdale. Maricopa County. High sonoran desert, by striking_photography
Navajo Indian Rock house with lightning striking behind, also by striking_photography
by DDFic (Dayton, Ohio?)
Lightning photographed in central Oklahoma in May 2001 driving back from a day of storm chasing in the Texas Panhandle, by michaeljames ("you can see that the stroke easily overexposed the film in places." <-- a="" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/paulcory/3674359686/" neat="" shot.="" still="" title="Lightning and Pier HDR2 by Paul Cory, on Flickr">
Lightning strikes off the Surfside Beach Pier in Surfside Beach, South Carolina, by Paul Cory
Lightning strike in field in Wyoming, by cultr.sun
Lightning in Thailand, by Petri Lopia
cavemanz (Larry Zimmer) (location unknown)
A poet is a man who manages, in a lifetime of standing out in thunderstorms, to be struck by lightning five or six times.
