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April 22, 2017

Afternoon Walk - A Churned Landscape

In the coziness of our cottage comfort is the warmth of silence.  Always there are house sounds,  the refrigerator motor humming quietly, an electric heater whirring as it spreads warmth across the room. The 4:30 alarm of a gentle music refrain, repeating every minute, rising in volume until it is tapped off.

Now comes the espresso, sipped, swirled around the mouth as the intense flavor licks this tongue and lips. A thyroid pill tickles the tongue, washed down easily with the espresso. Being up this early one remembers to change the cover photo too.

In the busy activities of a workday, it is easy to forget a few simple pleasures. Cozy sox, a warm bathrobe, instead of work clothes, a few scans of news articles, and a moment of doing absolutely nothing. Thoughts of others close to us slowly seep into the mind. A loved one, friends, relatives, and the peace of living in solitude.

It is the last workday of the week. One relaxes his grip on this morning with no urge to ‘get things done.’ Time will manage without activity for at least a half-hour. One needs to savor a quiet morning pause.

Such a jumble of life sometimes breaks the gate and the outside world stampedes into the meadow of quiet space. Like a frightened herd of buffalo running wildly with great abandon, distractive thoughts crowd the mind and rush the blood. Leaving behind a churned landscape of mutilated words and sentences. 

Later, there will be time to find all the scattered thoughts, phrases, metaphors, and expressions of tranquil ideas. Breath deep, inhale quietly and expel all but those dreams still humming their tune of relaxation. Now is the time for a slipstream of transition into a working mode.

In the busyness of workdays, one forgets to become this moment. The blur of days becomes a string of beads all of the same color, a blur of blue. Rest and quiet are warm and gold. Like rosary beads, those golden days are separate but connected. 

As age creeps into one, a desire for more days of gold and fewer blurs of blue becomes prominent. Not yet, not yet, whispers this scrooge of time. Our day will come, but now, it is time to work, to push your limit, and look to the sunrise of rest. But rest comes with a ticket one must use in the search for golden days.

The late afternoon walk of April 19 was such a ticket of searching. This hunt for this quiet, outside of our cottage, in the world of the Rim Trail, began. A search for some significant image of satisfaction. Too late the day, too slow the exposure. 

At least one broke the comfort zone and explored an old trail with a new perspective. A cliche of effort foot stepped the same trail, finding a new version of exposure. Though not realized that day, the idea and the vision of new images emerged.

Tweaking the exposure, time of day, and use of shadow and light shall produce images of abstraction one has been searching. Lloyd’s admonition, which has rattled this brain on its own, rang like a bell and vibrated within the self: Get out! Get out of your comfort zone!

Though no images of note were captured, a lump of coal became a diamond of a goal sought haphazardly for some time. Thank you, Lloyd. Future images will test the clarity of this hardened rock of sparkles.

Thank you. I am grateful for your visit.