“Without music to decorate it, time is just a bunch of boring production deadlines or dates by which bills must be paid.”
– Frank Zappa
Complete with back-up singers…
Spain
Alone, A Photograph
“Many people suffer from the fear of finding oneself alone, and so they don’t find themselves at all.”
– Rollo May
Earth with Robert Francis
I follow Plato only with my mind
Pure beauty strikes me as a little thin
A little cold, however beautiful.
I am in love with what is mixed and impure
Doubtful, dark and hard to disencumber
I want beauty I must dig for, search for.
Pure beauty is beginning and not end
Begin with the sun and drop from sun to cloud
From cloud to tree, and from tree to earth itself
And deeper yet to the earth dark root.
I am in love with what resists my loving
With what I have to labor to make live.
– Robert Francis
Everything, A Photograph of Love
“I fell in love with her courage, her sincerity, and her flaming self respect. And it’s these things I’d believe in, even if the whole world indulged in wild suspicions that she wasn’t all she should be. I love her and it is the beginning of everything.”
– F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Restless Artist, A Photograph
“I see myself forever and ever as the ridiculous man, the lonely soul, the wanderer, the restless frustrated artist, the man in love with love, always in search of the absolute, always seeking the unattainable”
– Henry Miller
This, A Photograph of Travel
“I was here, I saw this and it mattered to me.”
– Alain de Botton
It did.
Although it’s time to go home.
For now.
Moment, A Photograph of Thought
This is what I have.
The dull hangover of waiting,
the blush of my heart on the damp grass,
the flower-faced moon.
A gull broods on the shore
where a moment ago there were two.
Softly my right hand fondles my left hand
as though it were you.
-Mary Oliver
I and You, A Photograph of Salamanca, Spain
“I know what I have given you…
I do not know what you have received.”
– Antonio Porchia
I am spending some days exploring/driving inland Spain – away from the busy coastal cities. I like being inland. As when on my road trip through the Cote d’Azur region of France last year, I find myself surrounded by farms, medieval towns and lovely people.
More, A Photograph of People
“People are more than just the way they look.”
– Madeleine L’Engle
Waters, A Photograph of Men
“I heard the old, old, men say ‘all that’s beautiful drifts away, like the waters.”
– W.B. Yeats
The Path, A Photograph of Spain
“Let each man take the path according to his capacity, understanding and temperament. His true guru will meet him along that path.”
– Sivananda Saraswati
This church, sitting on a hill in the middle of a small neighborhood, was possibly the prettiest place I found on Ibiza. I can’t remember where it was as it was found during an exploratory drive. The beaches, coves and sunsets were lovely too, but I’ve found them other places as well. However, this church on the hill, with all its white walls and cobbled pathways was special.
Rare, A Photograph of Barcelona
“Those who create are rare; those who cannot are numerous. Therefore, the latter are stronger.”
– Coco Chanel
I much prefer to be rare than numerous, an individual than part of the collective.
Self Contained, A Photograph
“I think I could turn and live with the animals, they are so placid and self contained;
I stand and look at them and long.
They do not sweat and whine about their condition;
They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins;
They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God;
Not one is dissatisfied-not one is demented with the mania of owning things;
Not one kneels to another, nor his kind that lived thousands of years ago;
Not one is responsible or industrious over the whole earth.”
– Walt Whitman
Time, A Photograph of Spain
“The memory of everything is very soon overwhelmed in time.”
― Marcus Aurelius
Door, A Photograph of Madrid
“A very little key will open a very heavy door.”
– Charles Dickens
Mirror, A Photograph
“We discover that we do not know our role; we look for a mirror; we want to remove our make-up and take off what is false and real. But somewhere a piece of disguise that we forgot still sticks to us. A trace of exaggeration remains in our eyebrows; we do not notice that the corners of our mouth are bent. And so we walk around, a mockery and a mere half: neither having achieved being nor actors.”
– Rainer Maria Rilke
Life, A Photograph of Spain
“Let life happen to you. Believe me: life is in the right, always.”
– Rainer Maria Rilke
Upward Glance, A Photograph
“That love is reverence, and worship, and glory, and the upward glance. Not a bandage for dirty sores. But they don’t know it. Those who speak of love most promiscuously are the ones who’ve never felt it. They make some sort of feeble stew out of sympathy, compassion, contempt, and general indifference, and they call it love. Once you’ve felt what it means to love as you and I know it – the total passion for the total height – you’re incapable of anything less.”
– Ayn Rand
Orange, A Photograph
“Oh Paris
From red to green all the yellow dies away
Paris Vancouver Hyeres Maintenon New York and the Antilles
The window opens like an orange
The beautiful fruit of light
– Guillaume Apollinaire
Little by Little, A Photograph
“Well, now
If little by little you stop loving me
I shall stop loving you
Little by little
If suddenly you forget me
Do not look for me
For I shall already have forgotten you
If you think it long and mad the wind of banners that passes through my life
And you decide to leave me at the shore of the heart where I have roots
Remember
That on that day, at that hour, I shall lift my arms
And my roots will set off to seek another land”
― Pablo Neruda
Punctuation Mark, A Photograph
“Smoking had come to be an important punctuation mark in the long sentence of a day on the road.”
– F. Scott Fitzgerald
The photo below is one I could’ve taken a dozen times while in Spain — men relaxing with cigars, watching the world go by. It’s hard to take photos and not be obvious. It’s different when you take them of street performers as they welcome them, however, taking them of everyday people doing everyday things….is much more challenging.
Human Nature, A Photograph
For the next several weeks I’ll be sharing some of my photos from Spain. While there I visited Madrid, Sevilla, Cordoba, Granada and finally Barcelona.
I’ll be heading back in late spring to the Catalan region to attend (and be a part of) a wedding and will surely take many more. Along with the photographs, I’ll try to share a few thoughts about each place. My girlfriend, who is the one getting married, was born and raised in Barcelona. She is perhaps one of the proudest people I know with regards to her mother country. When I first met her in Verona, Italy, she explained in detail that she was not Spanish, but Catalan. I like that about her – her knowledge of her people and country. Among many things we have in common, while having been raised in polar opposite countries, is our love of books. The photo below is of a little shop, filled literally to the ceiling. Needles to say, it was hard to leave…
“Where is human nature so weak as in the bookstore?”
– Henry Ward Beecher
Personal Tragedy, A Photograph
“It was in Spain that [my generation] learned that one can be right and yet be beaten, that force can vanquish spirit, that there are times when courage is not its own recompense. It is this, doubtless, which explains why so many, the world over, feel the Spanish drama as a personal tragedy.”
– Albert Camus
One Street Shy 