Fresh Blues
decay
I Did And Nothing Happened
Urban Entrance Abandoned
Junkyard Hearts
Old Wood Steel
The Red Door
integrateDISintegrate
Nature Abstract
… on… lessons in rust….
Hello again everyone. As many of you know I have a preoccupation with the subject of rust in my photos. More than a few of my photos feature rust in some form. Today is no different. I’ve been thinking about why I find rust to be such a dynamic subject. Part of it is (as I’ve written on my previous blog) the Wabi-Sabi aesthetic; Finding beauty in the imperfect, the flawed and discarded. But it also goes beyond that. I think rust has many lessons to teach us. No only about the inevitable end of all things but also how we can come to terms with the inevitable end. Rust is strong. It’s strength does not lie in speed, or the forceful blow to its subject. Rust is gentle. It does not seek to hide – it is visible in its destruction. Rust takes it’s time; the object of its affection is coaxed into its corrosive embrace.
You and me like all things must end. It is the nature of things. We are mortal. That means we will not live forever no matter how hard we try to extend the time we have. I don’t care how fit you are, how free of disease you have been, your physical fitness, or your emotional health. You will die. In fact, you might say you are already dying. And that’s okay. There is beauty in the process. What? Yes, there is beauty in the process of dying = it’s all in how you look at it. You can approach it with grace and appreciation for the time you have and the inevitable end or you can fight it every single step of the way. I once heard a woman say, “I do not plan to grow old gracefully, I plan to fight it every step of the way”. I’ve always found that viewpoint rather tragic. But that is the prevailing viewpoint in western society. In fact the exception in western culture is that you must fight it and with medical and technological advances you can fight aging, disease etc. But that is all a delusion. In the west we have become masters of delusion and self-deception.
Why do we find Autumn to be one of the most beautiful times of the year? Autumn is the season of dying. The leaves on trees are the most colorful just before they die and fall to the ground. And this change seems to happen rather fast but the change actually started at the point the leaf first came out and reached maturity on its branch back in the Spring. Our lives are the same way. It’s not just the newborn and young that are beautiful. Beauty is enhanced through experiences that are both good and bad. Rust is like that; it is one of those experiences that may seem to hasten the demise of something but it does not know that. It just is. It is a part of nature. A part of life experience just like disease, physical and emotional discomfort. Those things exist to add to our beauty.
You find me
Slowly you Change my life
I love you
**************
I feel your presence
your corrosion adds beauty
glory of Autumn
**************
Your rough embrace
Enhances my life through change
I welcome you
**************
The color of love
Textures the smooth beauty of life
Open arms tremble
**************
Sing a song of rust
A slow ballad of decay
Autumns dying love
***************
Sound of slow scraping
Crippled dry dusty fingers
Wabi-Sabi world
****************
Illusions of age
You teach strength through weakness
Beauty in Frailty
Your music moment provided by a band I recently discovered and had to buy all their albums – Do Make Say Think – A TENDER HISTORY IN RUST from their album You, You’re A History In Rust.
Album version
Alternate version
****Hey! if you have short form poem or haiku about rust and the ideas I’ve written about, please feel free to post in your comment. 😉
… on… beyond the subject….
I once read something that got me thinking about how I photograph different subjects. I’ve started becoming more interested – not in just photographing a subject but actually photographing in a way that may allow people to look beyond the subject. How do we frame a subject?
Is the frame to be ignored for the subject?
Investigate the setting. Investigate the frame.
Can you see behind? What is hidden by the subject? What is revealed by the frame?
How does framing a subject tell us more about the subject than the subject itself?
For many in our image conscious culture life beyond the frame is frequently unthinkable. I think the opposite is true. Looking beyond the subject can deepen my appreciation and understanding. It inspires more questions on the journey that can propel the viewer further into the world of the image.
If you’ve followed me for some time then you know that I am a big fan of abstraction. And so often my images have been composed only of the subject itself. I haven’t changed As one friend told me “you actually think in abstract.” Maybe I’m just starting to expand my view to include a larger world and larger context in which the subject appears and that – for me – is just as interesting as the subject itself. That’s why I love images like the ones I’m posting here where the subject almost seems like a void – a vast emptiness that nearly fills the frame of the image but is framed by its surroundings.
I like the contrast between being and nothingness (as Sartre would phrase it). I find the tension between two opposite things utterly compelling. Existential imaging?
SHOW ME EVERYTHING – by Tindersticks from the album The Something Rain
… on… suffering….
Halloween. What a perfect time to talk about suffering. The two images today are part of a series titled “All Our Efforts Are Futile”. In the long view, everything we make seems to fall apart. No matter how much effort and how good it seems when it was first created our work, over time, will deteriorate. It’s just a fact of life. It’s a constant reminder of our own impermanence.
The foundation of all mental illness
is the unwillingness to experience legitimate suffering.
~ Carl Jung
It seems to me that we spend most of our life trying to avoid suffering. But just like our own impermanence and the inevitable decay of all we build, suffering is a part of our life experience. But what is “legitimate suffering?”
Is it the suffering that comes as a result of the actions of others? Is it the suffering that comes from our own actions?
I once saw a mental health advertisement on a city bus: it was a quote from a Newsweek magazine article from 2014 that had the headline “One In Five Adults Suffers From Mental Illness Each Year”. Those are not very good odds by any standard. If you look around you every 5th person you see may be suffering from some mental illness. Now mental illness takes many forms and that descriptor is not exclusive to the more elaborate/newsworthy like a sociopath. But can be something as common as depression or melancholia. I wonder if it is wise to describe these conditions as mental illness because everyone experiences them at some point in their life it is part of life experience and any number of things can spark that fire. But mental illness is just one type of suffering. There is also the suffering from physical illness.
As I’ve gotten older, I’ve noticed a couple of things. One is that life is filled with suffering; but that suffering changes and metamorphoses over time. In my younger years the suffering was more emotional but as I’ve gotten older the suffering has changed and become more physical just due to the natural aging of the body. A constant reminder of impermanence. I’ve also noticed something in my youth I did almost anything to avoid suffering. I ignored it, I joked about it, I lied about it, I would participate in activities that would temporarily subdue it. But as I’ve gotten older I’ve come to accept suffering much as one would accept a constant companion. I don’t enjoy it but I do accept it and try to give it the space it needs. I have found that this more nurturing approach actually eases the suffering and helps me understand it – including how my actions may have brought it on.
“Fear is the path to the dark side.
Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering”
~ Yoda (from Star Wars)“Refrain from anger and turn from wrath;
do not fret — it leads only to evil.” ~ Psalm 37:8 (NIV)“Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance.
Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete,
not lacking anything. ” ~ James 1: 2-4 (NIV)
I have found this last quote to be especially true. We should consider it a joy to undergo suffering when it produces so many good things such as perseverance, maturity and a sense of completeness. We should not take the “consider it a joy” phrase as a directive to seek out suffering nor should we use it to justify causing suffering in others. Suffering will come automatically – usually when we least expect it, when it is unplanned and inconvenient. So when it comes welcome it. It’s okay and if you see someone suffering sometimes the best thing to do is not trying to ease their suffering (although many will argue that is what we should do) but to just be there with them in their suffering. Suffering is made more bearable when we are not alone. But be careful of being too empathetic so that you suffer along with them. Being with them does not require you to suffer because they suffer. Remember you are the supporter in that scenario.
I found tons of videos on YouTube that deal with escaping suffering including many well meaning gurus, religious leaders, teachers, philosophers and songs. It is so darn hard to find one deals with enduring suffering. In a world of escapism, quick fixes, and good vibrations have we forgotten the role of suffering in our lives and therefore put our own mental health at risk?
… on… pox populi….
I sometimes wonder if we are not under some mass delusion that good health is normal.
All around us, the world is in decay. In fact the human body is in decay the moment it is born. It only lasts as long as it does through maintenance – proper eating, hygiene, exercise etc. But ultimately it will become diseased and die. Disease is lives up to its name because it can be so damned uncomfortable but that doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with it – that’s just the nature of the beast. Disease is the norm. Bacteria and virus live with us 24 hrs a day, 7 days of the week and 365 days of the year. There is not a single second that we go without. Even after you shower there are still bacteria on your skin. It is impossible to be “clean”. Yet we delude ourselves constantly.
Pox Populi
There is also mental and emotional states of decay. We just now give them fancy clinical names that give us the delusion that we can control and eliminate them. But any controls are only temporary. In the end they always come back and the mind itself dies.
Maybe that’s what spooked the horses. We just need to “deal with it”.
Zoviet*France – Something Spooked The Horses
… on… looking into the iris of the world
Just when you think you know what a lily pad looks like I come along to shatter your preconceptions…. LOL
This was quite a massive pad whose center had become filled with water. For me I can imagine this being something viewed from outer space. A massive landscape seen from above with the center shrinking and expanding in a constant pulse letting pass only so much light and material from one world to another. I would love to wander thru a landscape like this. I almost feel I could get sucked into the center of this as though passing into some other realm. A realm unexplained, unexplored and unpredictable. Enjoy the journey. Let your imagination go…..
…on football…
Okay so this is indirectly about football. No footballs were abused, hurt or damaged for this presentation.
This location in Akron, Ohio USA is called The Rubber Bowl. It was the football stadium for the University of Akron. Seating 7,000 souls this stadium was built in 1940 into a hillside – right next to Derby Downs (home of the acclaimed Soap Box Derby World Finals). This stadium was in use until 2008. There are rumors and speculations about reviving the stadium and while some events had been planned for here as recently as 2015 they have all been cancelled due to concerns about the condition and safety of this space.
The University of Akron team is known as AKRON ZIPS. Their mascot is a kangaroo named Zippy which in 2007 won the national competition as MASCOT OF THE YEAR. Nicknamed the “ROO” you can often see in advertisements and slogans like “Fear The ROO”.
Where did the ZIPS get their name? Akron was, in it’s heyday, the undisputed “RUBBER CAPITAL OF THE WORLD” as it was home to the largest rubber tire manufacturers; Goodyear, B.F. Goodrich and Firestone. B.F. Goodrich company also dabbled in side product lines like rubber footwear. Those footwear lines were known as Goodrich Zippers (sometimes advertised as ZIPPS). There was a zipper on the top of the shoe/overshoe instead of laces or straps. There was also supposedly a tire line called zippers by that same company although I have found no evidence for it at this time. When the University of Akron was searching for a name, in 1927, for their sports teams the name Zippers was proposed – inspired by the footwear line by B.F. Goodrich – and it stuck. In 1950 it was shortened to ZIPS by the Athletic Director for the University.
A personal connection: I played (alternately) trumpet and tuba in my high school marching band. During my junior and senior year (Fall 1976 – Spring 1978) in high school our band traveled to the Rubber Bowl for a regional marching band competition. This usually happened in the spring. While we never won – I did come away with a fierce impression of this place being extremely windy and cold. The day I took this photos (May 15, 2016) was no exception. In fact, we actually had snow later in the day with temps in the mid/low 30’s F. The day of this post is a different matter entirely. Since May 27th we have had temps in the high 80’s F.
***The two previous posts featured some of the graffiti currently found in this location.
… on the end of royalty….
…end of the world?…
“As long as the music’s loud enough,
we won’t hear the world falling apart.”
~ Derek Jarman
…and so it goes…
There She Goes, My Beautiful World
Backsides #1
Duel At Red Sunrise
Assigned Spaces
![Stop The Press[es]](https://onbeingbecoming.files.wordpress.com/2015/09/stop-the-press-es-smlr.jpg?w=334&h=223 "Stop The Press[es]")
Stop The Press[es]
Arkhive VI
The wintergreen, the juniper
The cornflower and the chicory
All the words you said to me
Still vibrating in the air
The elm, the ash and the linden tree
The dark and deep, enchanted sea
The trembling moon and the stars unfurled
There she goes, my beautiful world
There she goes, my beautiful world
There she goes, my beautiful world
There she goes, my beautiful world
There she goes again
John Wilmot penned his poetry riddled with the pox
Nabakov wrote on index cards at a lectern, in his socks
St. John of the Cross did his best stuff imprisoned in a box
And Johnny Thunders was half alive when he wrote Chinese Rocks
Well, me, I’m lying here with nothing in my ears
Me, I’m lying here with nothing in my ears
Me, I’m lying here for what seems years
I’m just lying on my bed with nothing in my head
Send that stuff on down to me
Send that stuff on down to me
Send that stuff on down to me
Send that stuff on down to me
There she goes, my beautiful world
There she goes, my beautiful world
There she goes, my beautiful world
There she goes again
Karl Marx squeezed his carbuncles while writing Das Kapital
And Gaugin, he buggered off, man, and went all tropical
While Philip Larkin stuck it out in a library in Hull
And Dylan Thomas died drunk in St. Vincent’s hospital
I will kneel at your feet
I will lie at your door
I will rock you to sleep
I will roll on the floor
And I’ll ask for nothing
Nothing in this life
I’ll ask for nothing
Give me everlasting life
I just want to move the world
I just want to move the world
I just want to move the world
I just want to move
There she goes, my beautiful world
There she goes, my beautiful world
There she goes, my beautiful world
There she goes again
So if you got a trumpet, get on your feet, brother, and blow it
If you’ve got a field that don’t yield, well, get up and hoe it
I look at you and you look at me and deep in our hearts know it
That you weren’t much of a muse, but then I weren’t much of a poet
I will be your slave
I will peel you grapes
Up on your pedestal
With your ivory and apes
With your book of ideas
With your alchemy
Oh, come on
Send that stuff on down to me
Send that stuff on down to me
Send that stuff on down to me
Send that stuff on down to me
Send that stuff on down to me
Send it all around the world
‘Cause here she comes, my beautiful girl
There she goes, my beautiful world
There she goes, my beautiful world
There she goes, my beautiful world
There she goes again
…pulling it together…
Before you can pull yourself together,
you must first fall apart.
Coastal #2
Buddha Dissolve
On Hitting The Wall
It is better to fall apart than to be broken apart.
SAN[S] DUSKY
Adventures in the sleepy town of Sandusky, Ohio. A small town on the southern edge of Lake Erie, a former bustling industrial and fishing port that is re-inventing itself as a resort town. It has come a long way and will soon be the tourist magnet they hope to become with industrial spaces being converted into lakefront condos and shops, eateries etc galore. And they seem to be making a fine effort at restoring/preserving some of the old historic buildings downtown. But for now enjoy some of the remaining grunge of spaces in transition. As a soundtrack click “play” on this wonderful instrumental song, SANDUSKY, by Uncle Tupelo
All Images taken on 5/17/15
Andreas Golder
Enjoy this fascinating discussion with Russian artist Andreas Golder and a look at his work.
