Memorial Day

R.I.P. Sean

Never above you, never below you, always beside you.

Marine Sgt. Sean T. Callahan, whose remains rest in the casket above, was killed by an IED in Afghanistan two years ago. My son was in the same battalion and really liked Sean for his quick wit and straightforward sensibility. I came to know Sean’s parents that year as our small group of Marine Moms and Dads supported each other through the long days and nights of our sons’ deployment.

As Sean’s father said the other day, Memorial Day is not just about beaches, BBQ’s and beer. Before he lost his son that idea was lost on him, as it probably is on most of us. If you don’t take a moment today to remember, do it soon. And don’t forget all the men and women who have suffered and are living with serious physical and mental injuries as a consequence of their involvement in this war.

This week’s Daily Post Weekly Photo Challenge, “In the Background” is to take a photograph of yourself or another person, putting the emphasis of the image on a different area, not on the person. This photo, which I took two years ago during Sean’s funeral at Arlington National Cemetery, is my response to the photo challenge.

It also serves as a reminder of what Memorial Day was intended to signify. The young Marine in the foreground was part of the Honor Guard on that difficult day. What was he thinking?

More responses to this weeks photo challenge can be seen here.

West

I’m glad I moved west. Open space

suits me.

I’m closer

to a land of many shapes,

closer

to a sky whose blue-domed clarity and

mysterious talent for manifesting

a grand mountain,

only to shut it away

for weeks,

enchants me.

In this western land

I’m learning to think differently

about trees.

They are holy.

They are a resource.

And sometimes, they impede

“progress”

and become like

fallen

gods.

Nails in fences,

knots of barbed wire.

Wood, metal,

water and sky –

sing songs of working

the land.

Old soul-face

presides.

Mount Rainier floats serenely in the distance at a sod farm in the Sammamish Valley, 15 miles east of Seattle and a stone’s throw from the Cascade foothills. The rail line that ran up the east side of the valley is defunct. Rusted irrigation lines sit gracefully at the edge of the fields, unused. There is great beauty here.

Douglas fir, the ubiquitous evergreen that draws its jagged silhouette across so many Pacific northwest horizons, is being cleared from a Botanic Garden outside Seattle to make room for “a new visitor center, expansion of the current parking lot, and landscape improvements.” It’s hard to wrap my head around that load of logs, but I’m trying.

Ambling down a path built on an old rail bed in the Snoqualmie Valley, I feel grounded and refreshed. The way cuts a straight path alongside wet fields dotted with sagging barns, tall trees, cattle, and swallows. Old fences hem quiet pastures where wild ducks hide in the puddles and mountain vistas command the horizon. The marks we leave on the land out here seem lighter, more reasonable. I cruise a narrow farm road that dead-ends in wide fields. It’s quiet on a weekday afternoon, touched with lambent light and sweet, earthy odors.

A garden Buddha smiles at a local nursery, where most of the thousands of flowers, trees and vegetables are grown on site. It’s good to live in a place where all I have to do is take short drive to see some of the products on view in city markets growing in the ground.

ESCAPE: RETURN

A small escape – to a local garden at the height of spring – can also be a return. A return to your senses and a grounded feeling of being-in-world.

It’s not really necessary to travel far in order to escape, is it? What’s important is that your escape nudges you back towards the primordial ground of existence and returns you to a body-mind that allows wonder at the vastness of this world.

***

These photographs were taken a few days ago at Bellevue Botanical Garden in Bellevue, Washington.

My brief escape did the job. I returned to my senses and left my worries behind.

***

In order, the plants are:

Allium ‘Globemaster’ (two photos)

Iris laevigata ‘Variegata’

Iris sibirica ‘Viel Schnee’

Iris confusa

Peony; unknown cultivar (two photos)

Papaver orientale; unknown cultivar (Oriental Poppy)

Iris ‘Rosario’

Iris x hollandica ‘Symphoy’

Allium ‘Globemaster’ and Berberis thunbergii ‘Aurea’ (Ornamental Onion and Japanese Barberry)

Polygonatum; unknown cultivar and (?) (Solomon’s Seal and ?)

Iris sibirica; unknown cultivar

Meconopsis ‘Lingholm’ (Himalayan Blue Poppy)

Hakonechloa and Hosta; unknown cultivars (Japanese Forest Grass and Hosta)

Iris sibirica ‘Penny’s Worth’

Hosta; unknown cultivar

Allium christophii (Star of Persia Ornamental Onion)

Iris sibirica ‘Blue King’

Peony; unknown cultivar

***

A plethora of other notions of what escape means can be found here.

PATTERNS

This week’s Daily Post Weekly Photo Challenge is Pattern. It’s everywhere.

Ponder this:

Does the key to the ubiquity of patterns in our world lie within our perceiving brain, or outside of us? Both? Is there any way to know?

And this:

“How is it that a man made, artificial, technological system is behaving like a natural system? The more efficient it becomes, the more it looks like nature…” From a video by Jason Silva called, TO UNDERSTAND IS TO PERCEIVE PATTERNS.

Watch it – it’s only 105 seconds long, and it will set your brain spinning.

Read about Jason Silva, who’s been called and “Idea DJ” whose short videos are “shots of philosophical espresso.” Hey, no wonder I liked that video!

Patterns have always motivated artists. Whether you locate them inside your perceiving brain, or outside in “nature” (however you define that), they’re ubiquitous. I need to narrow down this vast subject, so I’ve chosen patterns in leaves and branches, because they have interested me as long as I can remember. I’ve abstracted these photographs in Photoshop, mostly using the Posterize and Cutout filters. It’s clear that the patterns I perceived here are at least partly inside my head. I suspect some will resonate with patterns in your head, too.

More PATTERNS await discovery at the Daily Post Weekly Photo Challenge.

To spin your mind harder, try googling “Pattern perception brain” and then add “Philosophy.” The two links below look interesting, but it’s warm and sunny out, it’s spring, and I think my brain’s telling me it’s had enough of the computer screen. For now.

http://nivea.psycho.univ-paris5.fr/Synthese/MyinFinal.html

http://www.newdualism.org/papers/J.Smythies/Perception_1-1.htm

ABOVE IT ALL – BUT JUST A LITTLE

Another Photo Challenge is sparking ideas and sending photographers hunting for images taken “FROM ABOVE.”

Here is a collection of images, almost all from nature, that I have taken while looking down on my subject.

Since I was young I’ve liked looking down. Sometimes looking down flattens the space and creates interesting abstractions.

Sometimes looking down just keeps me anchored to the earth, or affords a view I hadn’t seen before.

Or, when there’s water involved, it’s a roundabout way of looking up.

***

These photos were taken between January, 2010 and a few days ago, on Captiva Island, Florida, on the High Line in New York, at Bellevue Botanical Garden in Bellevue, Washington, at Snug Harbor Botanical Garden in New York, at Anthropologie in Philadelphia, in Spring Lake, New Jersey, near Tannersville, New York, along the Dosewallips River in Washington, in the Marckworth Forest in King County, Washington, in the Quinault Rainforest in Washington, and in old Robe Canyon on the South Fork Stillaguamish River in Washington.

More interpretations of this challenge can be found here.

Seattle’s Pike Place Flower Market

Since 1907, growers have been bringing produce to Pike Place Market to sell. 76 stalls were built that first year, and now hundreds of farmers, businesses and craftspeople sell goods at Pike Place Market to millions of people every year. Residents and tourists wander the market for fresh food, fresh flowers, interesting crafts, books, foreign newspapers…it’s a concentrated mix of ingredients. Perched along a steep hill overlooking the water and loaded with specialty food stores, musicians, fishmongers, and crowds snacking on anything from felafel to freshly made cheese, it’s a great place to spend the afternoon in early spring, when rows of flower stalls packed with a brilliant riot of tulips and daffodils are adding their bright colors to the scene.

Many of the flowers you see at Pike Place are grown and sold by Hmong immigrants, some of whom have been here since the early 80’s.

***

Outside the market, a flower cart loaded with buckets of tulips rests on the brick street. If it weren’t for the plastic buckets this could almost be a scene from a hundred years ago, but surprisingly, the brick roadbed was installed in the 1970’s to slow down car traffic.

***

Plastic tarps create a wall between the market stalls and the street in warmer weather. When workers slide buckets of flowers back on the work tables, the flowers are pressed against the tarp. From the outside, the effect makes me think of an Old Master still life, its colors slightly obscured by centuries of dust and grime.