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Trailed with clouds

The layered memories

Of time forever gone

Stands between us now

This spring dawn

100days...doubleexposure

“Sometimes it’s best to not talk…to keep away from people…my words, twisted and turned…misunderstood.”

My mother came to visit this morning as I read the news often filled with subjective narrative built upon passing responses to thrown at you questions.

She shared with me the anxiety hidden behind exchanges with others…within her words. Words often misunderstood…mis-translated. Words I, as a resistant teenager, often dismissed as ill-informed or un-founded.

It was mid-morning when told me that in a few days she would begin work at the hospital as a dietitian. A week ago an unknown woman came to her home – unannounced – to interview her for the position. During the interview, a written question, “Can you cook?”

“I invited her into the kitchen and showed her my stove…’of course I can cook! I raised a family!’ Did she think because I am deaf I cannot cook!”

Her history of negation, marginalization, inequality, and misunderstood awakened by the question. My anger was triggered by the fact that a job interview took place within her home … an unannounced visit. The invasion of her home…the broken boundary between work and family.

Today within this journey of remembrance is a new seed of understanding..it was my perspective of human rights, of equality, of what is right and what is wrong which blocked me from the golden moment of opening myself to her truth…to the her of who she was behind her deafness.

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Today my mother came to visit within an unexpected memory…long forgotten…time faded.

my mother came to visit

As if in a movie theatre, I silently watched as she cover her Crown Braids with a triangle-folded scarf.

She then covered a straw broom with a frayed-gray rag…held in place with two baby diaper safety pins. One with a yellow tip, the other blue.

Then a remembered sigh as she turned the broom upside down and began to slowly sweep the ceiling with special attention to living room corners. “Hidden spider webs,” she mumbled.

Spring cleaning had begun…

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I have seen a road that wanders in green shade, that runs through sweet fields of flowers. My eyes have traveled there, and journeyed far along that cool fine road.

But I will never really walk that road; it does not really lead to where she lives.

When she was born, they bound her little feet with leather bands; my beloved never walks the road of shade and flowers.

When she was born, they bound her little heart with leather bands; my beloved never listens to my song. 

~Anonymous (cited: Various Authors, The Jade Flute Chinese Poems in Prose.  The Project Gutenberg
Double exposure…Nikon D750 f/5.6 1/400s 170mm

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“One day he sent word: ‘Maple trees of the mountain are very beautiful. Come! let us go together to see them.’ She answered, ‘I shall be glad to do it.’ But the appointed day came and his Highness wrote: ‘To-day I must confine myself for a religious service.’ But that night it stormed, and the leaves were all gone from the trees. She waked and wrote to the Prince how sorry she was that they could not have gone the previous day.

His answer:

In the Godless month it stormed– 
To-day I dream and dream 
And wonder if the storm was within my heart.

horsetooth reservoir now vs horsetooth reservoir then

She returned: 

Was it a rainstorm? How my sleeves are wet! 
I cannot tell–but muse profoundly.

After the night storm there are no more maple leaves. O that we could have gone to the mountain yesterday!”

~The Diary of Izumi Shikibu (cited: Diaries of Court Ladies of Old Japan)

Amy’s (The World is a Book) Lens-Artist’s challenge this week is to share our perspective of now vs then

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Fighting climate breakdown is about much more than emissions and scientific metrics – it’s about fighting for a just and sustainable world that works for all of us.

https://globalclimatestrike.net

On Sept. 20-27, climate action organizers are planning a Global Climate Strike, with hopes that massive and consistent turnout will make a difference. If you’d like to join the 2019 Global Climate Strike, there are lots of ways you can get involved. And if there isn’t a strike planned in your city, the organizers want to help you plan one yourself. 

“The climate crisis is an emergency but we’re not acting like it,” the strike’s official website reads. “People everywhere are at risk if we let oil, coal and gas companies continue to pour more fuel on the fire.” And yes, though past strikes have focused on students, adults are welcome and absolutely encouraged to take part, too.

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…facts alone hardly put an end to [political] arguments. People embrace the facts they want to hear.

‘We don’t behave at all like the ideal picture of engaged citizens neutrally and dispassionately analyzing the evidence before casting their ballot…It’s not how people work.’

…the ‘backfire effect’ [is when] people with deeply held political beliefs double down on those beliefs when presented with facts that contradict them.

Human beings, it seems, have a tendency to engage in ‘directionally motivated reasoning’ – roughly, to draw conclusions based on the evidence that supports the conclusions they want to draw. And in politics those conclusions…seem to be rooted in allegiances as expressions of identity. Your desire to believe, despite the overwhelming evidence to the contracting…isn’t about what’s true. It’s about who you are.*

weneedtruth

*cited:
2016 Could Be Fact-Checking’s Finest Year – If Anyone Listens, 9/13/16
http://www.wired.com

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“HiveMind” created by Mark Leichliter is found in front of the Old Town Library in Fort Collins, Colorado.  It is made from fabricated Stainless Steel measuring 9.5’H 4’W 10”D. It   consists of a central monolith with two sides faced with polished stainless steel hexagons. On one side these hexes are flat, in essence creating a mirror. The opposite side has hexagons which are rolled to make each one slightly convex – also creating a mirror, but one where the reflected subject is broken up into multiple images.

hivemind

This double exposure image of “HiveMind” is submitted to Dutch Goes The Art!‘s photo challenge: Art.

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Song of Chugen

My parents departed long ago.

How often I grieve in sadness!

I had only two aunts left:

…

100days95Last year I went to Kyoto and sobbed.

This year I moved to the shore of a lake and river.

My grief multiplies as I move through space and seasons.

…

Monks perform an urabon ceremony* after cleaning the temple.

The chanting of sad voices resounds to the red banners.

Then a cool breeze arrives;

cleansing and darkening showers merge with the dust.

Rain over, plantain shadow under the leaning sun-

the spirit of my father appears before me.

100daysbutterfjlydoubleexposure

After the ceremony I return to the monks’ quarters,

making a silent dedication for his liberation:

“Spirit, do not stay sunk forever.

Quickly prepare a boat and cross to the other shore.”

~Ryokan**

*Since the early days of Buddhism,

the Urabon Ceremony is a time set aside

for people to pray for the

peace and happiness of the deceased.

**cited:

Sky Above, Great Wind

Trans: K Tanahashi