Magic and stories in photos

Photographs are stories in light and air. Every photo has a story, some you will never know, some you may not want to know but they all have tales to tell. So I thought I’d tell some visual tales.

I used to enter a lot of my jewelry that I made in the LA County Fair. I won ribbons on just about everything I ever entered and this gave me my only blue ribbon. I got red/second and white/ thirds and a bunch of pink fourths. I’m still proud of it.

This is my first camera and the start of my joining the family obsession with picture taking. I think I was 6 or 7 when  I got it and it went with me every where and hardly still has a scratch on it. It lives with my Nikon FM who no longer works in the tiny hope chest my Great Uncle Winn made my cousin and I one Christmas where my treasures live.

This is a plant I always dreamed of seeing. It was in my first wildflower field guide by Golden Books. I had a full collection of their field guides by the time I was 5 and was allowed to lecture grownups for some reason on what they contained. I used to stare at the picture for hours because I thought it was so cool. It doesn’t grow in Southern California so I never thought I would see one. The first time I went up to see Mary and Denise in Oregon, Denise and I went to the Leach Botanical Gardens for a few hours as it was already too hard for Mary and her purple chariot to move around. This was the first plant I saw getting out of the car and I’m sure Denise thought I was nuts. It was just a wildflower that was on the driveway but for me it was a long time dream to see one and it was just as pretty as I hoped.

This was a bit of serendipity at the Self Realization Fellowship Shrine in Palos Verdes. A mushroom in a mini Stonehenge lintel surrounded by shamrocks. You just know there is a faery close by.

 

A spring morning prayer

Lady, I see the beauties of this spring day

And ask that these blessings surround me this dat

The shining glow of our white roses

The dawn song of the phoebe

the whirr of the mourning dove’s wings

The pink of the rose echoing the colours of dawn

The furious chatter of the bushtits in the trees

The flick of the kitty’s tail as she flees

The early green shine of the new plants in the fields

The sleepy peep of baby birds

The chilly caress of the morning breeze

May they be with me through this day

And may they be there in the twilight hours

And in the dark of night.

Kat Robb 2016

 

A prayer for a peaceful evening

I pray for

Just one night of peace

All over the world

I pray for just one night

Of healing for people

Whose hearts are sore

Today.

I pray for just one night

Because if for one night

We can stop and look at each other

And the world with love

Then we can make one night into two

And two into twenty

And twenty into more.

I pray that all peoples

Can take time tonight

To look up

Look up at the shining moon

As She shines down on all of us

No matter where we are

She shines

No matter who we are

Or what we believe in

She shines

So let her look down on peace

Let her look down and see warm well fed people

Let her look down and see people who love

Love each other, love our Mother the Earth

Love our sisters and brothers who walk

On four, six, eight or many legs

On those that fly and those that slither

And those that swim or creep under the waters

Of the world

Let us look up with all the other people

And have hope that we can all be better people

Let us love and hope and heal

Let us be…

Spheres of MacArthur Park

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westlake/MacArthur_Park_(Los_Angeles_Metro_station)

Click to access Art_Guide.pdf

http://www.portraitsofhope.org/projects/spheres/

Soon…

I can’t wait to be up at camp and I’m hoping my body is going to cooperate and I’m going to take some Imodium with me just in case. I’m not supposed to take it since for a person with gastroparesis, it’s kind of counterproductive and quite frankly can hurt a lot even the children’s dose but if I have to I will.

There is nothing in this world that can compare to morning at high altitude up in the forest. The air is different. It feels differently to the skin. The sounds are different. The wind in the trees sounds like nowhere else I know. The air and the earth feel more alive and that quality is evident everywhere you look. The earth smells wonderful and clean even at the end of a summer on the cusp of winter. Fall is fleeting and short in California mountains. The oaks may turn colour and aspens and alders but mostly the cedars and the pines and the evergreen oaks don’t change much but you can tell the quality of light is changing. The sun is lower in the sky.

Morning begins at the tip tops of the trees over the eastern ridges and the dawn chorus raises its voice. You pass from a moment of absolute silence to the screams of Stellar Jays and the dee dee dee of the chickadees and the tapping of the woodpeckers hiding yet another acorn to farm for the winter.

The sun creeps up and then spills over the trees into the valley and it’s magic to watch it move. All nature in the valley is part of a giant sundial charting the sun’s morning path

I always raise my face to the sun’s morning kiss in the mountains, there is nothing better in the world.

An evening prayer

Lavender and deep violet veil the mountains as night falls.
A benediction on a day of work
Spirits ease as shadows fall
As muscles relax
As birds settle in for the night murmuring to themselves
As a cricket scrapes slowly in a low chirp
As breezes calm and night gently falls
As petals fold in to the flowers for protection as the sun sets
May we be ready to rest
To breathe deeply
To release the sigh of care from a tiring day
We watch the cat stretch and we relax some more
We ask for peace through the night
We ask for untroubled sleep
We give thanks for passing through another day
We breathe out and ask for strength for the next day
We ask for the will to meet it with a calm face
We ask for peace.

Green Man is grouchy

Because we need beauty on Mondays

Morning colour

Salute to the light