“The sea, the snotgreen sea, the scrotumtightening sea.”
―
photography
Ireland, a photograph
“The heart of an Irishman is nothing but his imagination”
―
Here, a photograph
“The world is quiet here.”
– Lemony Snicket
Floods, a photograph
“The moment we begin to fear the opinions of others and hesitate to tell the truth that is in us, and from motives of policy are silent when we should speak, the divine floods of light and life no longer flow into our souls.”
– Elizabeth Cady Stanton
Kismet, a photograph
kis·met
ˈkizmit,-ˌmet/
noun
-
destiny; fate.“what chance did I stand against kismet?”
Above – Native American Sweat Lodge
Below – Self Portrait
Fate, a photograph
“Amor Fati – “Love Your Fate”, which is in fact your life.”
– Friedrich Nietzsche
Life, a photograph
“It’s a little embarrassing that after 45 years of research & study, the best advice I can give people is to be a little kinder to each other.” – Aldous Huxley
Even more, a photograph
“Don’t think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it’s good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art.”
– Andy Warhol
Hazy shade of winter, a photograph
Ahhh, seasons change with the scenery
Weaving time in a tapestry
Won’t you stop and remember me
But look around, leaves are brown now
And the sky is a hazy shade of winter
Look around, leaves are brown
There’s a patch of snow on the ground…
-Simon and Garfunkel
One’s entire life, a photograph
“How concrete everything becomes in the world of the spirit when an object, a mere door, can give images of hesitation, temptation, desire, security, welcome and respect. If one were to give an account of all the doors one has closed and opened, of all the doors one would like to re-open, one would have to tell the story of one’s entire life.”
– Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space
The dog, a photograph
“A Native American elder once described his own inner struggles in this manner: Inside of me there are two dogs. One of the dogs is mean and evil. The other dog is good. The mean dog fights the good dog all the time. When asked which dog wins, he reflected for a moment and replied, The one I feed the most.”
– Geroge Bernard Shaw
Every day, a photograph
“Dead, your Majesty. Dead, my lords and gentlemen. Dead, Right Reverends and Wrong Reverends of every order. Dead, men and women, born with Heavenly compassion in your hearts. And dying thus around us every day.”
– Charles Dickens
All we might, a photograph
“The price we have paid for expecting to be so much more than our ancestors is a perpetual anxiety that we are far from being all we might be.”
— Alain de Botton
Solitude, a photograph
“Solitude gives birth to the original in us, to beauty unfamiliar and perilous – to poetry. But also, it gives birth to the opposite: to the perverse, the illicit, the absurd.”
― Thomas Mann, Death in Venice and Other Tales
Cheap medicine, a photograph
“Always laugh when you can, it is cheap medicine.”
― George Gordon Byron
Candy, a photograph
“Youth is like having a big plate of candy. Sentimentalists think they want to be in the pure, simple state they were in before they ate the candy. They don’t. They just want the fun of eating it all over again.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald
Tiny, a photograph
“Once we lose our fear of being tiny, we find ourselves on the threshold of a vast and awesome Universe which dwarfs — in time, in space, and in potential — the tiny anthropocentric proscenium of our ancestors.”
― Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot
Guitar, a photograph
“The guitar is a miniature orchestra in itself.”
― Ludwig van Beethoven
Technological sublime, a photograph
“For thousands of years, it had been nature–and its supposed creator–that had had a monopoly on awe. It had been the icecaps, the deserts, the volcanoes and the glaciers that had given us a sense of finitude and limitation and had elicited a feeling in which fear and respect coagulated into a strangely pleasing feeling of humility, a feeling which the philosophers of the eighteenth century had famously termed the sublime.
But then had come a transformation to which we were still the heirs…. Over the course of the nineteenth century, the dominant catalyst for that feeling of the sublime had ceased to be nature. We were now deep in the era of the technological sublime when awe could most powerfully be invoked not by forests or icebergs but by supercomputers, rockets and particle accelerators. We were now almost exclusively amazed by ourselves.”
― Alain de Botton, The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work
Creative, a photograph of life
“The truly creative mind in any field is no more than this: A human creature born abnormally, inhumanly sensitive. To him… a touch is a blow, a sound is a noise, a misfortune is a tragedy, a joy is an ecstasy, a friend is a lover, a lover is a god, and failure is death. Add to this cruelly delicate organism the overpowering necessity to create, create, create — so that
without the creating of music or poetry or books or buildings or something of meaning, his very breath is cut off from him. He must create, must pour out creation. By some strange, unknown, inward urgency he is not really alive unless he is creating.”
― Pearl S. Buck
Reds, a photograph of Rome
“Love does not consist of gazing at each other, but in looking outward together in the same direction.”
— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Yellows, a photograph of Roma
“Life is for the living.
Death is for the dead.
Let life be like music.
And death a note unsaid.”
― Langston Hughes, The Collected Poems
Arrangement, a photograph
“Technology is the knack of so arranging the world that we do not experience it.”
― Rollo May, The Cry for Myth
Together, on a lazy Saturday afternoon, one experiences the warmth of the sun on his face, the other the warmth of the phone in her hands.
Art, a photograph of the MAXXI Gallery
“Architecture is the alpha principle of all arts.”
― Louis-Ferdinand Céline
Today I visited the MAXXI gallery for the Letizia Battaglia exhibit. The oddly out-of-place modern exterior architecture of the MAXXI aside, the interior exhibit space is superb. And as a lover of photography and photo-journalism, I cannot recommend the exhibit enough. I must’ve spent at least three hours in awe at her work, not only in photographs, but her publishing house dedicated solely to women writers.
People, a photograph
“Religion. It’s given people hope in a world torn apart by religion.”
― Jon Stewart
Off the track, a photograph of Rome
“Remember that it’s only by going off the track that you get to know the country…And don’t let me beg you, go with that awful tourist idea that Italy’s only a museum of antiquities and art. Love and understand the Italians, for the people are more marvelous than the land.”
― E.M. Forster
I’m in Rome visiting my dear friend and editor while working on my book. Between writing and editing, I try to find some time each day to get out and about to both walk and photograph.
Strange contrasts, A photograph of Rome
“It is a place that ‘grows upon you’ every day. There seems to be always something to find out in it. There are the most extraordinary alleys and by-ways to walk about in. You can lose your way (what a comfort that is, when you are idle!) twenty times a day if you like; and turn up again, under the most unexpected and surprising difficulties. It abounds in the strangest contrasts; things that are picturesque, ugly, mean, magnificent, delightful, and offensive, break upon the view at every turn.”
― Charles Dickens, Pictures from Italy
The Beginning, A Photograph of Rome
“Tell me about
your Italian journey
I am not ashamed
I wept in that country
beauty touched me
I was a child once more
in the womb of that country
I wept
I am not ashamed
I have tried to return to paradise”
― Tadeusz Różewicz, They Came to See a Poet: Selected Poems
Up ‘n down, A Photograph
Up ‘n down
Ferris wheel
Tell me how does it feel
To be so high…
Looking down here
Is it lonely?
-Norah Jones
Roots, A Photograph
“You can’t hate the roots of a tree and not hate the tree.”
― Malcolm X
One Street Shy 