The Angels Wear Fins

Leave Me

2012-02-09T23:24:00.001-08:00

Leave Me (now on Hulu at hulu.com/leave-me) from Ryan Dunlap // Daros Films on Vimeo.

"Dear Shane," the 2nd in the Camera Trilogy has premiered on Hulu! Here is the film! http://www.hulu.com/dear-shane

Also, if you'd like to help support Daros Films, "Leave Me" has also been accepted into the ranks of Hulu and every view helps us to make more shorts! http://www.hulu.com/leave-me

A recent widower deals with his grief through his wife's broken camera.

Find Daros Films on Facebook! http://www.facebook.com/darosfilms

Shot the weekend after the wrap on the feature film Greyscale - greyscalemovie.com
Greyscale Teaser Trailer - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGXuDCDkr6A
www.darosfilms.com
www.LydiaAshton.TV
NearsightedProductions.com

*WINNER of the 2009 36-Hour ChristianFilmmakers.org Contest
*Honorable Mention for Drama at the indieProducer Film Fest (10/1/2009)
*WINNER of the Best Short Film category at the 2009 Script2Screen Film Fest in Tulsa, OK! (10/4/2009)
*Official Selection of the Mammoth Film Festival
*WINNER of the Best Narrative Short for the Trail Dance Film Festival (1/24/10)
*Placed on the Paste Magazine Quarterly DVD Lineup for subscribers
*WINNER of the Best Short Film Award by HOSFU at the Gideon Media Arts Conference & Film Festival (6/6/10)

“A Blessing” ~ for rebecca with love

2012-01-29T11:03:00.000-08:00

Just off the highway to Rochester, Minnesota,

Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass.

And the eyes of those two Indian ponies

Darken with kindness.

They have come gladly out of the willows

To welcome my friend and me.

We step over the barbed wire into the pasture

Where they have been grazing all day, alone.

They ripple tensely, they can hardly contain their happiness

That we have come.

They bow shyly as wet swans. They love each other.

There is no loneliness like theirs.

At home once more,

They begin munching the young tufts of spring in the darkness.

I would like to hold the slenderer one in my arms,

For she has walked over to me

And nuzzled my left hand.

She is black and white,

Her mane falls wild on her forehead,

And the light breeze moves me to caress her long ear

That is delicate as the skin over a girl’s wrist.

Horses at F/1.4 © Trey Ratcliff

Suddenly I realize

That if I stepped out of my body I would break

Into blossom.

For my dear friend rebecca Blessings, Peace and Light Abundant.

xoxo,

Noelle Renee

~~~

About the Photographer

Trey Ratcliff

Briefly… A Photography-Centric Bio

I’m best known for, well, I suppose, this site, StuckInCustoms.com, which has become the #1 Travel Photography Blog on the internet. On average, the photos get over a million views a week, including a few from my mom. My work first became popular after I had the honor of having the first HDR photo ever to hang in the Smithsonian. After that, I was fortunate enough to be represented by Getty (who I have since dumped because they take 80%), been featured on the BBC, ABC, FOX, CBS, and NBC, and have had numerous showings around the world.

I am known generally for the unique way in which I capture and process the world around me. I have my own “take” on HDR Photography, and you can see my free HDR Tutorial right here. I grew up blind in one eye and this might have changed the way I view the world. I don’t know. It’s hard to be objective about the way one’s brain was wired. My background is in computer science and math, so I bring an algorithm-like process to capturing the scene in such a way that it evokes memories in a palpable manner. Whatever that means.

Trey Ratcliff at http://www.StuckInCustoms.com - all images Creative Commons Noncommercial

My Personal Thanks to Trey Ratcliff for the beauty that he creates in this world and his generosity in allowing it to be shared in this way. Thank you, Trey!

Starting With Little Things

2012-01-24T21:35:00.000-08:00

Poses with Roses ©Karen Waters

Starting with Little Things

Love the earth like a mole,
fur-near. Nearsighted,
hold close the clods,
their fine-print headlines.
Pat them with soft hands --

Like spades, but pink and loving; they
break rock, nudge giants aside,
affable plow.
Fields are to touch;
each day nuzzle your way.

Tomorrow the world.

~ William Stafford ~

(The Way It Is)

About the Photographer

Karen Waters

Artist Statement

What do I find so interesting about photographing things like concrete, tree bark or scratched metal? Texture. Plain and simple...I love texture! Layering these types of images over traditional photographs creates depth and emotion, which brings them to life and tells their story in a more meaningful way.

I refer to my work as Photographic Art because it reaches beyond traditional photography and allows me more creativity to convey a true 'beingness' that the lens alone doesn't often capture. Through these images, I hope to remind the viewer that we are part of a wonderful world full of magnificence.

I am a member of the Santa Fe Society of Artists and show my work with the group most weekends, just off the Santa Fe Plaza from the end of April through mid-October. If you're ever in Santa Fe, stop by and say hello!

Tor see more of Karen’s phenomenal layered photography and her other work go http://www.karenwatersart.com/

Karen Waters’ images are copyrighted. Permission to post her beautiful work was generously granted by the artist. All Rights are reserved. Thank you.

We Are Saying Thank you

2012-01-14T23:00:00.000-08:00

December in Central Park © Thomas Hawk

Thanks

by W.S. Merwin

Listen
with the night falling we are saying thank you
we are stopping on the bridge to bow from the railings
we are running out of the glass rooms
with our mouths full of food to look at the sky
and say thank you
we are standing by the water looking out
in different directions

back from a series of hospitals back from a mugging
after funerals we are saying thank you
after the news of the dead

whether or not we knew them we are saying thank you
in a culture up to its chin in shame
living in the stench it has chosen we are saying thank you

over telephones we are saying thank you
in doorways and in the backs of cars and in elevators
remembering wars and the police at the back door
and the beatings on stairs we are saying thank you

in the banks that use us we are saying thank you
with the crooks in office with the rich and fashionable
unchanged we go on saying thank you thank you

with the animals dying around us
our lost feelings we are saying thank you

© zoriah/www.zoriah.com

(oil smudged birds after the BP Oil spill in 2010)

with the forests falling faster than the minutes
of our lives we are saying thank you
with the words going out like cells of a brain
with the cities growing over us like the earth

we are saying thank you faster and faster
with nobody listening we are saying thank you
we are saying thank you and waving
dark though it is.

-W. S. Merwin Thanks from Rain in the Trees

~~~

Balloon Release Honors Gaza’s Children Lost in Operation Cast Lead

2012-01-10T22:05:00.001-08:00

On the third anniversary of Gaza Invasion, Chicago and Nabi Saleh Honor Gaza's Children with Mass Balloon Release
CHICAGO, IL (December 31, 2011) -- Over two hundred people gathered to honor Gaza's children with a mass release of balloons marking the third anniversary of Operation Cast Lead, Israel's brutal military invasion of Gaza. After marching from Millennium Park to Grant Park, participants released one balloon for each of the 344 children killed during the 22-day attack on Gaza from December 27, 2008 -- January 18, 2009. In a parallel event, families in the Palestinian village of Nabi Saleh also gathered for a balloon release. In response, the Israeli army fired tear gas and mustard gas at those who participated in the action, including children, and arrested at least seven .
The Chicago event was organized by Chicago Movement for Palestinian Rights (CMPR)."We organized this event to express our grief over deaths of these children and celebrate the resilience of the people of Gaza," said CMPR member Ishan Chakrabarti. Tied to each balloon was a card with the name and age of each child killed in the Gaza Massacre. The balloons and ribbon were 100% biodegradable and the cards were made from Lotka paper embedded with flowerseeds. "Wherever they land, these cards will plant seeds in the ground that will bloom into beautiful flowers to pay tribute to the memory of each child," said Chakrabarti.
At the event local community members performed selections from "The Gaza Monologues," a collection of monologues written by Palestinian children who survived Israel's assault. Immediately before releasing the balloons, participants also observed a moment of silence.
Prior to the Chicago commemoration, the West Bank village of Nabi Saleh gathered for a parallel balloon release. The Israeli army responded to the balloon release by firing tear gas and mustard gas at participants, including children. They arrested at least seven, including two internationals. Palestinian activist Amra Amra said that during the event, "Five year old Samer asked his mom if he would be a martyr like Mustafa Tamimi." On December 9, 2011, Mustafa Tamimi was murdered when the Israeli army shot a tear gas canister at his face. Tamimi became the first person to die while participating in Nabi Saleh's weekly nonviolent demonstrations against Israeli annexation of their land. During these demonstrations, the Israeli often uses tear gas, mustard gas, skunk spray, and violent arrests against the participants. Of Samer's question, Amra said, "These are not normal questions children ask their parents! Yet it is normal questions for children living under occupation."
Chicago Movement for Palestinian Rights CMPR is a diverse, youth-led movement advocating for Palestinian human rights, civil rights and equality through citywide educational events, grassroots campaigns and creative, direct action.  Many CMPR members are involved in other Chicagoland Palestinian solidarity organizations, including several chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine.

Haiku My Heart: A Bird Told Me

2012-01-06T21:03:00.000-08:00

Exposing Her heart

Wings blown back, courageous flight

For Love, Nest, and Home.

~Noelle Renee 1/6/12

Sacred Winged Watcher

Holding All Our Hopes and Fears

Perched on Heaven’s Edge

~Noelle Renee 1/6/12

Belladonna ©2011 Karen Waters

Beautiful Lady

With Power to wound or heal

Eyes grow large with hope

~Noelle Renee 1/6/12

Warbler sings sunlight,

Yellow Joy and Red surprise,

Our New Year’s, Bright Faith.

~Noelle Renee 1/6/12

For More Haiku My Heart, please visit Rebecca’s lovely blog, Recuerda mi Corazon. You will be glad you did!

About the Photographer

Karen Waters

Artist Statement

Toward Available Light ~Postcards from Paradise

2011-12-31T23:13:00.000-08:00

Toward Available Light

Minnie was a tiny, gray, and crippled, old Southern woman,
An eighty-year-old shut-in living in an apartment in the middle of Isla Vista,
A town filled with young, impressionable minds taking in knowledge,
open mouths imbibing beer, and immortally blonde,
taut, tanned bodies riding to and fro on a well-worn path,
past Minnie’s apartment, to campus and home again.

I took care of Minnie on Mondays and Fridays—
it was only a job while I attended school
And, at that time, a job was all it really meant to me.
I dusted her house, fed her a meal, and watered her plants.
On her “good days,” she would tell me stories about her youth
and her cataract-thickened eyes would smile, gleam,and dance
as though she were seventeen again and still being courted.

Her best friend was a young, divorced black man,
who went to church every Sunday,
a church, he told me, that “didn’t ordain black men as priests.”
He was the only human being, other than I, who conversed with Minnie.
And I think she was secretly in love with him,
for she described him as “that handsome creature”
and called him, occasionally, by her husband’s name—
the name of a man who had died twenty years before I met her.

I thought of Minnie living in her dusty, enclosed and rented space—
the vision of a muscular young lover with skin like dark honey--her sole company,
and I realized it was for this dream that an old, Southern belle
awakened each morning, moving her glazed, rheumy eyes
and arthritically twisted torso toward the narrow streams of sunlight
that flooded her half-lidded windowpanes.

Although Minnie is long gone now, her laughter all but faded from my memory,
It is her plants I picture still—tucked away in a corner of her apartment
as Minnie was tucked away in the corner of a burgeoning student ghetto.
There on her cluttered, formica kitchen table near a tiny, attic-style window
Minnie had planted her cactus garden.
A cluster of succulents resided there–in brown, plastic pots– spilling over the table on all sides–
so many that the miserly light from that dust-covered window could barely accommodate all.

I never much liked cactus, but there was one, oddly-shaped,
that captured my undivided attention.
Shoved in a claustrophobic, dingy, and cobwebbed corner,
this member of Minnie’s menagerie hadn’t nearly the photosynthetic opportunities
so generously granted to those whose luck or fate had given them a spot in the sunlight.

In fact, it seemed that his heartier, spinier competitors—in their efforts to gain satisfaction—
had shoved this poor fellow into his trench of dust, cobwebs and debris,
hoping he might disappear altogether–yet this cactus had survived.

In his genuine desire to live and to grow, he had strained toward available light,
developing malformed bumps, odd protrusions, and disturbing bends in places
where like his peers he might have been tall, sleek, cylindrical and even statuesque.

I remember the first time I saw him, I felt repulsed at the sight of him
But I had the distinct desire—upon watering him—to place him in the light,
To shift one of his more fortunate brothers to that dark,
cavernous area of the table where
he had so long endured, uncared-for and ignored.

Ill-fated though he was, I came to love that timid, spiny, misshapen
dwarf of a plant,and I never moved him from his original place in the shadows,
for I discovered that he had developed a “terrible beauty”* living there—
that those bumps, protrusions and bends all were a part of his own unnatural liberty.

I perceived that a forced migration to a brighter climate would have robbed him
of a poverty which had nourished rather than killed the spirit that fed from it.
Minnie gave me that cactus as a present just before she died.
He was never able to live long in the bright streams
of sunlight that poured into my open room,

But the gift of him taught me to cherish the many bumps, protrusions,
and bends that have formed my own path in life—a path forged
without a father’s guidance or the strength of a mother’s calloused hand
to pull me out of the cavernous darkness.

It is an oddly marked path among a cluster of well-worn others
whose predictable curves seem—at least to me—much the same.
But I have found my place in the light'; and I have survived there,
knowing that the way I have made is all the more beautiful
for the poverty that nourished its own unnatural liberty.

When I have the freedom to dream nowadays,
I think of that perished cactus that I used to tend in darkness;
I stand, carefully arranging that dusty corner of Minnie’s kitchen garden,
while in the background, I hear the energetic whiz of bicycle wheels
still blazing a path toward the demanding clang of university bells;
and I feel—in the depths of my belly—the echoing, liberated laugh
of a seventeen-year-old Southern girl.
–Noelle Clearwater
This phrase from “Easter 1916” by William Butler Yeats

1995; revised 1996 and 1997

Linked with Recuerda mi Corazon for Postcards from Paradise

I was looking on WordPress at a blog that I used to have there. I had not added to it in a long time. But this poem was there, and I realized that I had never published it on The Angels Wear Fins. For some reason, I felt that I wanted to have it here for the New Year. It was written many years ago, and so many stories have been lived since then. But I thought that perhaps someone reading it might be able to connect ~ and if it resonated with their spirit, it would make the New Year worthwhile already!

Happy New Year Everyone!

~Noelle Renee.

Birthday Post: Into the Cutting Edge of the Sky

2011-12-30T12:00:00.000-08:00

Black Shadows ©milan malovrh

Should I dream you afraid so that

you are forced to save yourself?

Or should you ride colored horses

into the cutting edge of the sky

to know that we're alive --

we are alive.

~Joy Harjo, SoulTalk Song Language.

Linked to Haiku My Heart and Recuerda Mi Corazon on my birthday ~ Dec. 30, 2011

Alone © 2011 Milan Malovrh

Into the New Year

She rode on a Shadow Horse

Thinking She Might Fly.

~Noelle Renee

for Haiku My Heart

12.30.11

About the Photographer:

Milan Malovrh hails from Trzic, Slovenia. Photography is his primary hobby for which he has a deep passion. He loves Lippizaner horses! You will find more of his heavenly works and many images of these beautiful White Angels on 1x.com and his homepage. You may also visit his homepage on fotocommunity.

Nativity ~ Gertrude Kasebier (redux)

2011-12-24T06:00:00.000-08:00

Suckling our little God, she experiences intimacy with the Heart of Heaven; Soul searching in silence, she knows woman’s limitless love for her own flesh. Heart severed in sorrow, she comprehends the limits of the human spirit to accept

the sudden and startling embrace of that which God chose

to become.

~Noelle Clearwater c. 1996

Excerpt from my poem “The Visit”

Have A Blessed Christmas and A Peaceful New Year.

Morning Fiddler ~ Haiku My Heart

2011-12-22T22:56:00.000-08:00

From the Photographer in his own words: Early morning in the gray mist of Lima Peru I was having my first coffee and wondering if the strength would ruin the day. In the silence I heard singing strings echoing down the weathered concrete walls. Pushing the coffee aside, I found the blind fiddler with his child sleeping against his side. I didn't know he was blind until I moved in quietly and paid attention to the empty plastic container between his legs. In the rush of seeing this dedicated man playing for his living in my view finder, I shook. I silently shot two frames, placed a ten dollar bill in his cup, slipped off into the mist and gave him blessing as I left. I never went back to my coffee. I wanted to taste life and fill my lungs with air from the Andes

The heart’s melody

played with Hope’s agile bow strings

in a minor key.

~Noelle Renee

12/22/11

Dedicated to My Dear Friend Joe Spadoman,

who is, once again, in the hospital with a troubled heart.

Joe dear, we are lifting you up in prayer,

holding you in our hearts,

our thoughts and in the Light.

Peace and Love,

Noelle

p.s. ~ Joe, all underlined links in gold lead to heart healing areas on the web that are safe to explore.

Linked to Rebecca’s blog at Recuerda mi Corazon.

Violin Portrait, Cinematography project Based on Boys Before Flowers/ Strange Sun

About the Photographer

Glenn Capers

I've come to realize that my art has diversity with powerful individual vision, that chronicles the life of individuals. People draw me into their lives to tell their story to anyone willing to listen and validate their reason for living. My attraction to story telling grew as my life developed behind a camera. I discovered that it's not how a photographer looks at the world that is important, it's their relationship with their fellow human beings and these moments of connectivity that are frozen in time for all to see.
Last thought for the photographer, "Whatever you look to see outside, is waiting inside you".

Note: the image above was posted with the express permission of the photographer. All Rights are Reserved. Thank you.

Warm From Within

2011-12-21T22:02:00.000-08:00

Love
Love means to learn to look at yourself
The way one looks at distant things
For you are only one thing among many.
And whoever sees that way heals his heart,
Without knowing it, from various ills.
A bird and a tree say to him: Friend.
Then he wants to use himself and things
So that they stand in the glow of ripeness.
It doesn't matter whether he knows what he serves:
Who serves best doesn't always understand.

~ Czeslaw Milosz ~

(Collected Poems)

Linked to Meri’s Musings Sharing the Joy Thursdays

About the Photographer'

Mark Bottoms

Mark is an Air Traffic Controller living in Dothan, Alabama. Mark’s photography exhibits a sensitive eye, and a keen sense of composition and color. His images offer a sense of tranquility and peaceful beauty to all who have the opportunity to view them on Google+. I appreciate his letting me post one of his images here on The Angels Wear Fins. Thank you, Mark :)

Some Kiss We Want

2011-12-15T21:25:00.000-08:00

Ballet 2011 Brenda Stumpf

There is some kiss we want with

our whole lives, the touch of

spirit on the body.

Seawater

begs the pearl to break its shell

And the lily, how passionately

it needs some wild darling!

At night, I open the window and ask

the moon to come and press its

face against mine.

Breathe into me.

Close the language- door and

open the love window.

The moon

won't use the door,

only the window.

From Soul of Rumi

by Coleman Barks

~~~~

Haiku My Heart: She Sleeps Softly

The Moon Has Come Down

She Sleeps Softly at Our Feet

Blanketed in Stars.

~Noelle Renee

12.15.11

Linked to Recuerda mi Corazon where the lovely Rebecca and friends reside.

About the Photographer

Brenda K. Stumpf

I've been Creative Director for the past 15 years at Prime8 Interactive.

Our work has been featured and/or won awards in publications such as CMYK magazine,

Flash Visual Jumpstart, The One Show, Promax Broadcasting, the Addy's, and How Magazine.

I recently turned my creative attention to photography, with a focus on underwater imagery.

I am currently working on projects both in the US and abroad.

Note from Noelle Renee: Please visit Brenda’s website where you can view more of her incredibly beautiful photos here at www.bstumpf.com

My gracious thanks to her for allowing me to post her phenomenal underwater work here on The Angels Wear Fins.

About The Photographer

Kelli Seeger Kim

Kelli loves working on her photography and has come to appreciate the time and hard work that goes into making a beautiful image. In her spare time she loves a good science fiction novel or a great film.

Kelli has two beautiful boys, who are featured in some of her images and a huge crush on her very sweet husband. More of Her Phenomenal images can be found on G+. All Flower images in this post are the copyrighted property of Kelli Seeger Kim. They were posted here with her kind permission. Thank you.

Special Thanks to Thomas Hawk for the lovely Moon image

Photo by Karen Hutton

Thomas Hawk

Day 12: A Virgin A Day ~The Visit

2011-12-12T05:00:00.000-08:00

Botticelli’s The Madonna of the Magnificat

The Visit

A rush of white wings, disturbing and distant,
Word whispered from the mouth of God, filling the feminine ear.
Enfleshed then, the Ave Child, swells the belly of a brown-skinned girl,
who tenderly dreams of loving a man, a fashioner of homely, wooden things—
stalwart sacrificer of cedar, he builds a sturdy life for she who knows not man.

A Jew of low degree, she has no family name to expiate the shame of her new shape;
a girl grown up in temple, she knows the lot of those who transgress Law.
Yet hearing in her heart the Holy Word, she feels the joy,
of one who carries within her womb—tender mercy, incarnate love.

She, least liberated, ponders the embryonic epiphany of an enslaved race.
Invoking ancestral voices, she articulates the deep heart cries of a nomadic people, who journeyed far from occupied lands, and placed their hope in the historic promise
of an invisible, yet uncompromising God.

It is for this promise that her people have suffered;
it is for this reason that they exist at all.
It is her uncompromising assent to conceive the impossible
that makes visible the destiny of a chosen, yet outcast tribe.

As her man molds the corners of a cradle for the unknown, unborn child
She weeps for the sacrifice of trees, green saplings
Cut down by loving hands to bear a sacred son.
Dreaming that night, hand on her belly, she sees other hands, hateful, Herodic,
Cutting down cedars, young but mature, to bear and sacrifice the Savior of the world.

Suckling our little God, she experiences intimacy with the Heart of Heaven;
Soul searching in silence, she knows woman’s limitless love for her own flesh—
Heart severed in sorrow, she comprehends the limits of the human spirit to accept the sudden and startling embrace of that which God chose to become.

I wrote this during Christmastide some years ago, thinking about Mary and her significant role in the drama of the birth of the Messiah. It is a beautiful story and she is an important archetype for many women, but she is often made to seem small in the larger scheme of things. I think that her motherly love, her suffering and poverty, and her choices and sacrifices are profound. Many women make these significant choices every day but they are not celebrated in this way although they should be. It is the women of the world who make the deepest changes in their children and so to the world.

--Noelle Renee

*Poem is copyrighted by Noelle Clearwater.
This is a repost from last year. I might have posted it on December 8, but I thought it was a good way to end our time together. Blessings to all.
~Noelle

Linked with Recuerda mi Corazon and “A Virgin A Day”

A Special Meme from Dec. 1-12 until the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe.

Please Join us and Thank you!

This button takes you to today’s post on Rebecca’s blog

A Virgin A Day 11: Madonna of the Meadow (Madonna del Prato)

2011-12-11T06:40:00.000-08:00

Giovanni Bellini

ca. 1426, Venice, Italy - ca. 1516, Venice, Italy
School: Italian
Movements: High-Renaissance

She Is Near to My Heart

She is near to my heart as the meadow-flower to the earth; she is
sweet to me as sleep is to tired limbs. My love for her is my life
flowing in its fullness, like a river in autumn flood, running with
serene abandonment. My songs are one with my love, like the murmur
of a stream, that sings with all its waves and current.

Rabindranath Tagore

Linked with Recuerda mi Corazon and “A Virgin A Day”

A Special Meme from Dec. 1-12 until the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe.

Please Join us and Thank you!

This button takes you to today’s post on Rebecca’s blog

Won’t you participate with us? Just click on the link in the image below

and it will take you to the original post describing “A Virgin A Day” on Recuerda mi Corazon.

A Single Fabric that Nothing Can Tear or Mend ~ (A Virgin a Day 10)

2011-12-10T01:35:00.000-08:00

© zoriah/www.zoriah.com" The owner holds all original copyright and licenses. Republishing rights for bloggers only, companies, organizations, NGO's and similar must first obtain permission before republishing. Contact www.zoriah.com/contact for more information or email info at zoriah dot com.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_checkpoint

A young girl with her mother, crossing an Israeli military checkpoint in the West Bank.

For What Binds Us

There are names for what binds us:
strong forces, weak forces.
Look around, you can see them:
the skin that forms in a half-empty cup,
nails rusting into the places they join,
joints dovetailed on their own weight.
The way things stay so solidly
wherever they've been set down --
and gravity, scientists say, is weak.

And see how the flesh grows back
across a wound, with a great vehemence,
more strong
than the simple, untested surface before.
There's a name for it on horses,
when it comes back darker and raised: proud flesh,

as all flesh
is proud of its wounds, wears them
as honors given out after battle,
small triumphs pinned to the chest --

And when two people have loved each other
see how it is like a
scar between their bodies,
stronger, darker, and proud;
how the black cord makes of them a single fabric
that nothing can tear or mend.

~ Jane Hirschfield ~

(Of Gravity & Angels)

Motherland by Natalie Merchant

We give birth

to the God of Love

every day

in our own

human ways,

in every out of the way,

unsheltered place

under all imperfect

conditions.

Let us go forth.

- Dr Clarissa Pinkola Estes

(My Thanks to Hettienne for discovering these amazing words.)

Linked with Recuerda mi Corazon and “A Virgin A Day”

A Special Meme from Dec. 1-12 until the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe.

Please Join us and Thank you!

This button takes you to today’s post on Rebecca’s blog

About the Photographer:

ZORIAH

Photojournalist

Zoriah is an award-winning photojournalist whose work has been featured in some of the world’s most prestigious galleries, museums and publications. Zoriah's clients include Newsweek, The New York Times, BBC News, The United Nations, CNN, NBC, CBS, ABC, PBS, NPR The Wall Street Journal, Fortune and many others. With a background in Disaster Management and Humanitarian Aid, Zoriah specializes in documenting human crises in developing countries.

The Adoration of the Magi ~ A Virgin A Day (Day 9)

2011-12-08T23:30:00.000-08:00

Elliot Erwitt, Mother and Child

The magi, as you know, were wise men--wonderfully wise men--who brought gifts to the Babe in the manger. They invented the art of giving Christmas presents. Being wise, their gifts were no doubt wise ones, possibly bearing the privilege of exchange in case of duplication. And here I have lamely related to you the uneventful chronicle of two foolish children in a flat who most unwisely sacrificed for each other the greatest treasures of their house. But in a last word to the wise of these days let it be said that of all who give gifts these two were the wisest. O all who give and receive gifts, such as they are wisest. Everywhere they are wisest. They are the magi.

--O’Henry “Gift of the Magi (Excerpt).

I thought that Elliot Ewritt’s photo evoked deep love and adoration of a child, and so ...The Magi. It also reminded me of O’Henry’s wonderful story about a couple who are deeply in love, desperately poor, living in a tiny flat but willing to sell their most precious possessions to buy one another a Christmas present. It is one of my favorite stories of all time.

federico Barocci 1528-1612

Adoration of the Magi ~ Chalk Sketch

Since we are heartfully engaged in the Christmas season, the season of Advent, and the celebration of the Madonna, I found the first photograph and thought it bore an uncanny resemblance to the ancient scene. Such are the workings of the collective unconscious. This second photo is an ancient chalk drawing from the 16th century, which despite its years and pale color, I found quite warm and inviting. Mary looks tenderly at the infant in her lap and one of the Magi almost appears to be kissing the feet of the infant. Such singular devotion refreshes the heart and the soul.

The following is a video by Sungha Jung playing Jesu Joy of Man’s Desiring, arranged by Windham Hill. He is only 9 in this video. You may offer him adoration for his fine performance.

(This is a repost of August 2010 but there were few comments and perhaps it was because it was the wrong season. Some of them were lost too, but that is a different story. I still love it and so I am posting it for you now. Enjoy Sungha's playing :),
Blessings

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Day 8: A Virgin A Day ~ As Your Field of Roses Grows and Grows

2011-12-07T22:22:00.000-08:00

Jesus in the Temple ~ 13th century french painting

What is Supposed to Happen
By Naomi Shihab Nye

When you were small,
we watched you sleeping,
waves of breath
filling your chest.
Sometimes we hid behind
the wall of baby, soft cradle
of baby needs.
I loved carrying you between
my own body and the world.

Now you are sharpening pencils,
entering the forest of
lunch boxes, little desks.
People I never saw before
call out your name
and you wave.

This loss I feel,
this shrinking,
as your field of roses
grows and grows…

Now I understand history.
Now I understand my mother’s
ancient eyes.

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Day 7: A Virgin A Day ~ The Wings She Has Carved Herself Out of the Cold.

2011-12-07T00:00:00.000-08:00

Surrounded By All The Falling

After four days of rain
sunlight fills the branches like returning birds,
one of those flocks men believed
they could shoot at forever and never reach the end.
They went fluttering, one by one,
to extinction in seven years.
But this day startles in its sudden gold,
its colored persimmons, rust and fallen

pine needles blond as a child's hair on the barber's floor;
the sound of his snipping businesslike and crisp.
When loss reaches her, she cannot even cry out,
But where has it gone?

And the sky is so utterly blue it can barely be faced.
It is time to plant bulbs again,
to fork and seed the empty beds into flower.
I turn to feel the sleep-warmth of your hands,
the even breathing that tells me you are close by...

it is still the only story that lets me wake content,
emerge from all the falling of dreams,
the crowded harbor of ships whose riggings
ring like bells,
dance like circus wires.

The girl slides down from the swiveling chair,
her hair combed to new curls.
Soon enough,
I can tell by the day's
windowed, blowsy beauty, it will begin to snow.

She will lie down in it, carefully move
her arms once up, once down
and rise to contemplate quietly, a long time,
the wings she has carved herself out of the cold.

~Jane Hirschfield

Bobby’s Ave ~ Pure Bliss

Please have a listen. I have heard Bobby McFerrin do sing this and had the pleasure of accompanying him along with thousands of others in an audience. It was a wonderful experience.

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Day 6 ~ A Virgin A Day: Just Send Me Down Forgiveness

2011-12-06T00:14:00.000-08:00

To the Black Madonna of Chartres

Friend or no friend, 
darkness or light, 
vowels or consonants, 
water or dry land,

anything more from you now
is just gravy
—just send me down forgiveness, send me down
bearing myself a black cupful of light.

by Jean Valentine

This is not the Black Madonna of Chartres, but the poem resonated so deeply with me that I wanted to share it. I was not able to identify the origin of the painting, but I love it beyond words.

This button takes you to today’s post on Rebecca’s blog for a Virgin A Day.

Day 5 ~A Virgin A Day: Madonna With Child

2011-12-05T06:00:00.000-08:00

Jacopo Bellini
ca. 1400, Venice, Italy - ca. 1470, Venice, Italy
School: Italian

Something opens our wings.

Something makes boredom and hurt disappear.

Someone fills the cup in front of us:

We taste only sacredness.

Rumi

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Postcards from Paradise: A Virgin A Day ~ Joan of Arc

2011-12-04T07:18:00.000-08:00

Vaucouleurs to Chinon, February-March, 1429

"I was born for this."

"Fear not: what I do, I do by commandment.

My brothers in Paradise tell me what I must do."

Domremy, February, 1429

"But since God had commanded me to go, I must do it. And since God had commanded it, had I had a hundred fathers and a hundred mothers,

and had I been a king's daughter, I would have gone."

"It pleased God thus to act through a simple maid in order to turn back the King's enemies."

Joan of Arc

by Leonard Cohen

Now the flames they followed joan of arc
As she came riding through the dark;
No moon to keep her armour bright,
No man to get her through this very smoky night.
She said, I’m tired of the war,
I want the kind of work I had before,
A wedding dress or something white
To wear upon my swollen appetite.
Well, I’m glad to hear you talk this way,
You know I’ve watched you riding every day
And something in me yearns to win
Such a cold and lonesome heroine.
And who are you? she sternly spoke
To the one beneath the smoke.
Why, I’m fire, he replied,
And I love your solitude, I love your pride.

Saint-Denis to Compiègne, September, 1429 to May, 1430

To her hostess: "I am sent to comfort the poor and needy."

When women brought Rosaries for her to bless: "You touch them: they will be as much bettered by your touch as by mine!"

"To God I commend you, may he keep you."

The Trial, February-May, 1431

"Had I known the hour and that I would be taken, I should not have wanted to go.

But I would have done their bidding in the end, no matter what was to befall me."

"As to whether victory was my banner's or mine, it was all our Lord's."

"There was neither sorcery or any evil art in anything I have done."

(Cohen’s Song continues here)

Then fire, make your body cold,
I’m going to give you mine to hold,
Saying this she climbed inside
To be his one, to be his only bride.
And deep into his fiery heart
He took the dust of joan of arc,
And high above the wedding guests
He hung the ashes of her wedding dress.
It was deep into his fiery heart
He took the dust of joan of arc,
And then she clearly understood
If he was fire, oh then she must be wood.
I saw her wince, I saw her cry,
I saw the glory in her eye.
Myself I long for love and light,
But must it come so cruel, and oh so bright?

underwater ©2009 nicolas evariste

"She was truthful when lying was the common speech of men; she was honest when honest was become a lost virtue; she was a keeper of promises when the keeping of a promise was expected of no one; ... she was full of pity when a merciless cruelty was the rule; she was steadfast when stability was unknown, and honorable in an age which had forgotten what honor was; she was a rock of convictions in a time when men believed in nothing and scoffed at all things; she was unfailingly true in an age that was false to the core; ... she was of a dauntless courage when hope and courage had perished in the hearts of her nation..." Mark Twain,Joan of Arc

Linked with Recuerda mi Corazon and “A Virgin A Day”

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About the Photographer

Brenda K. Stumpf

I've been Creative Director for the past 15 years at Prime8 Interactive.

Our work has been featured and/or won awards in publications such as CMYK magazine,

Flash Visual Jumpstart, The One Show, Promax Broadcasting, the Addy's, and How Magazine.

I recently turned my creative attention to photography, with a focus on underwater imagery.

I am currently working on projects both in the US and abroad.

Note from Noelle Renee: Please visit Brenda’s website where you can view more of her incredibly beautiful photos here at www.bstumpf.com

My gracious thanks to her for allowing me to post her phenomenal work here on The Angels Wear Fins.

*Note~

All quotes from Joan of Arc are taken from the book Joan of Arc: In Her Own Words. Using only material compiled from her trial transcripts and testimonies, translator Willard Trask arranged her exact words in this unique autobiography. The signature is what remains of her actual historical signature.

A Virgin A Day: Madonna and Child With Two Saints (detail)

2011-12-03T00:25:00.000-08:00

Giovanni Bellini

ca. 1426, Venice, Italy - ca. 1516, Venice, Italy
School: Italian
Movements: High Renaissance

“Behind your image,

below your words,

above your thoughts,

the silence of another world waits.”

― John O'Donohue

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A Virgin A Day ~ Virgin and Child Under an Apple Tree

2011-12-02T00:00:00.000-08:00

Lucas Cranach
ca. 1472, Kronach, Germany - ca. 1553, Weimar, Germany
School: German

“All the possibilities of your human destiny are asleep in your soul.

You are here to realize and honor these possibilities.

When love comes in to your life, unrecognized dimensions of your destiny awaken and blossom and grow.

Possibility is the secret heart of time.”

― John O'Donohue, Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom

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Oh blossom of Hope

Show us what is possible

Awaken Our Hearts.

N.C.

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“A Virgin A Day” ~ Virgin and Child in A Room

2011-12-01T00:00:00.000-08:00

Hans Baldung Grien
ca. 1484, Schwabisch Gmünd, Germany - ca. 1545, Strasbourg, France
School: German

Nuremberg, Germany
Painting, Oil on wood, 48 x 37 cm

“The heart is the inner face of your life. The human journey strives to make this inner face beautiful.

It is here that love gathers within you. Love is absolutely vital for a human life.

For love alone can awaken what is divine within you. In love, you grow and come home to your self.

When you learn to love and let yourself be loved, you come home to the hearth of your own spirit.

You are warm and sheltered.”

― John O'Donohue, Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom

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“Lollipops”

2011-11-27T14:54:00.001-08:00

Lollipops ©Gertrude Kasebier circa 1910 Description: "Lollipops." Mina Turner and her cousin Elizabeth in Waban, Massachusetts. 1910.

“Friendship," said Christopher Robin, "is a very comforting thing to have.”
― A.A. Milne

Dedicated to My Dear Friend, Rebecca Brooks of recuerda mi corazon

and linked to postcards from paradise.

Gertrude Stanton Käsebier

b. 1852 Des Moines, Iowa, d. 1934 New York City
photographer
American

"My children and their children have been my closest thought, but from the first days of dawning individuality, I have longed unceasingly to make pictures of people...to make likenesses that are biographies, to bring out in each photograph the essential personality."
--Gertrude Käsebier

Käsebier's career in art followed from her first career as a mother. After studying painting at Pratt Institute and opening a portrait studio in New York in 1897, she switched to photography, displaying the influence of her painting training in her Pictorialist style. Her family and friends posed for her most celebrated series of photographs on the subject of motherhood.
Käsebier exhibited her photographs in the Philadelphia Photographic Society exhibitions, and Alfred Stieglitz reproduced five of her images in his journalCamera Notes in 1899. The following year, along with Anne Brigman, Käsebier was one of the first two women to be elected to the British Linked Ring; two years later she became a founding member of Stieglitz's Photo-Secession group. Stieglitz continued to champion her by devoting the first issue of his second journal, Camera Work, to her images. Käsebier broke with Stieglitz and the Photo-Secession in 1912 but continued to photograph until she closed her studio in 1929.

Haiku My Heart ~ When You Belong, You Can Fly

2011-11-25T12:13:00.000-08:00

Knowing We Belong

Releases Us From All Our Fears

And Lets Us Fly Free.

~Noelle Renee

11.25.11

Linked to Haiku My Heart Friday on Lovely Rebecca’s Blog

About The Photographer

George Koruth

George Koruth is a Travel and Documentary photographer based in India. His collection captures India's rich culture and traditions. One of his specialties is street photography. Be it a smiling child or a wrinkled old woman, you will find a unique collection of faces here. He also loves to showcase social issues and hopes his photographs can give a voice to those people who don't have any say in this world. George has done work for international magazines and websites and has been featured in Indian magazines.

You may find more of his wonderful work at :

http://georgekoruth.500px.com

http://www.flickr.com/photos/m2digital

The copyrighted images above were posted with the Photographer’s permission. All Rights Are Reserved. Thank you.

Thanksgiving ~ Words When We Need Them

2011-11-24T00:47:00.000-08:00

Words When We Need Them

Before this early moment,
another, ripe with rain,
the scent of its own full shape.

Each day the rooster
we have never seen
raises the first greeting
and darkness which holds us
in its loose pocket all night
sets us down.

Now we walk,
waking up rooms,
switching on lights.
Into the breath,
wordless but ripe
with all possible words,
messages not yet gathered
or sent.

Morning looms,
more friend than
the best friend.

We could still say.

~Naomi Shihab Nye

from “The Red Suitcase”

Linked to Sharing the Joy Thursdays at Meri’s Musings

Gratitude is the memory of the heart. ~Jean Baptiste Massieu, translated from French

Have a Peaceful Thanksgiving filled with Love, Light and All the Possibilities a New Day Brings.

About the Photographer

Nicolino Sapio

http://sapio.1x.com/

Nicolino Hails from Zurich Switzerland and speaks both Italian and German.

His Greatest Inspiration artistically is Salvador Dali.

Nicolino does a great deal of charity work with his photography in Africa for

www.compassion.com
www.worldvision.com

The photograph is hope, toil, tears, and above all, love. The photograph is a gift received and how it has to give …

~Nicolino Sapio

Red Clouds Over Rooftops

2011-11-23T12:05:00.000-08:00

(Noelle Renee) Taken with my android through a front window over the rooftops of Santa Barbara at 6:15 am

“Beauty is the illumination of your Soul.”
― John O'Donohue

I was glad to have woken early this morning. I rarely see the sky at this time of day and if I do, it is through bleary eyes and a morning cup of coffee as I rise and get ready for a day of work ahead. I felt so appreciative of the handiwork of the artist who had painted such a breathtaking morning scene, and my window was the perfect frame for it. I raised my hands in gratitude for another day, and snapped a photograph to remember. My Special Thanksgiving post will be up tomorrow, but this is my personal thanksgiving. Thank you for beauty, for love, for compassion, for friendship, for the angels who try to make this world a better place to live, for the lives of those dear to me, who are still breathing, loving and laughing. Thank you to the One who is Love, Compassion and Grace.

~In Thanksgiving,

Noelle Renee

11.23.11

In The Solitude Of Winter

2011-11-19T23:46:00.000-08:00

Winter Coastal Landscape at Hvaler © Thomas Russ Arnestad

The Cold
How exactly good it is
to know myself
in the solitude of winter,
my body containing its own
warmth, divided from all
by the cold; and to go
separate and sure
among the trees cleanly
divided, thinking of you
perfect too in your solitude,
your life withdrawn into
your own keeping
--to be clear, poised
in perfect self-suspension
toward you, as though frozen.
And having known fully the
goodness of that, it will be
good also to melt.

~Wendell Berry

For Cinda XX

Linked to Postcards from Paradise at Rebecca’s Blog where

you may find other beautiful Postcards to feast your eyes on!

About The Photographer:

Thomas Russ Arnestad

About Arnestad Photography

Arnestad Photography (NO 990 983 267 MVA) presents the photographic work of Thomas Russ Arnestad (b.1979, Oslo).
He works as the Head of Photography at Inviso AS, the largest real estate photography company in Norway. During low season he performs ad-hoc photographic work for numerous clients. Besides interior photography he also shoots a lot of landscape, architecture, cars, products and travel images to name a few.
His interest began, as for many others, with the fascination of light and the beautiful impact it has on the nature surrounding us. From there on, it´s been a long journey to get where he´s at now. His nature and landscape photography, is today as then, a form for recreation and an excuse to spend some time alone.
Recent photos have been targeted into more specific projects and series than before. This is the way to go for getting more thought and substance into the photography for Arnestad.

Haiku My Heart “Spadoman” ~ There’s No Place Like Home

2011-11-17T17:56:00.001-08:00

It’s On The Tip of My Tongue

I Just Have to Say

I’m So Glad You’re Home!

~Noelle Renee

11.17.11

“The world is round so that friendship may encircle it.”

Teilhard de Chardin

I Love You Joe. I Am So Glad That We Are Friends! Be Well; Be at Peace.

Peace, Love and Hugs,

Noelle

Linked to Haiku My Heart at Rebecca’s Blog

About the Photographer:

Alfred Pleyer

Alfred loves to travel and photograph.

He hails from Austria.

You may find more of his amazing photographic captures on

http://500px.com/niklens

According to Alfred the following is true:

Citizen of the World

Living without a cat...

I Belong to group.as

I am involved in
Public Circles Project

The Hour of the Pearl

2011-11-15T13:37:00.000-08:00

‘It is the hour of the pearl, the interval between
day and night when time stops and examines itself.'
John Steinbeck, Cannery Row.

About the Photographer

Mark Bottoms

Mark is an Air Traffic Controller living in Dothan, Alabama. He is new to photography but you would hardly know it from his sensitive eye, and his keen sense for composition and color. His images offer a sense of tranquility and peaceful beauty to all who have the opportunity to view them on Google+. I appreciate his letting me post one of his images here on The Angels Wear Fins. Thank you, Mark :)

My View

2011-11-13T19:03:00.000-08:00

A Morning Offering

I bless the night that nourished my heart
To set the ghosts of longing free
Into the flow and figure of dream
That went to harvest from the dark
Bread for the hunger no one sees.

All that is eternal in me
Welcome the wonder of this day,
The field of brightness it creates
Offering time for each thing
To arise and illuminate.

I place on the altar of dawn:
The quiet loyalty of breath,
The tent of thought where I shelter,
Wave of desire I am shore to
And all beauty drawn to the eye.

May my mind come alive today
To the invisible geography
That invites me to new frontiers,
To break the dead shell of yesterdays,
To risk being disturbed and changed.

May I have the courage today
To live the life that I would love,
To postpone my dream no longer
But do at last what I came here for
And waste my heart on fear no more.

~ John O'Donohue ~

(To Bless the Space Between Us)

For G_ with appreciation and deep friendship.

~Noelle Renee

Celtic Woman: May it Be

Les Fleurs du Coeur

2011-11-10T22:52:00.000-08:00

Enough. These Few Words Are Enough.

If Not These Words, This Breath.

If Not This Breath, This Sitting Here.

This Opening To The Life

We Have Refused

Again and Again.

Until Now.

Until Now.

~David Whyte

Linked to Haiku My Heart at Recuerda Mi Corazon

About The Photographer

Kelli Seeger Kim

Kelli has two beautiful boys, who are featured in some of her images and a huge crush on her very sweet husband. More of Her Phenomenal images can be found on G+. All images in this post are the copyrighted property of Kelli Seeger Kim. They were posted here with her kind permission. Thank you.

Speak To Us Of Children

2011-11-09T08:00:00.000-08:00

"And a woman who held a babe against her bosom said,
'Speak to us of Children.'
And he said:
'Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts.
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;
For even as he loves the arrow that flies,
so He loves also the bow that is stable."

~From "The Prophet"
By Kahlil Gibran

Kristin and Eric

May The Welcome Love of Your Newly Arriving Child

be a Rich and Constant Blessing to You.

~Noelle

11.9.11

Kate Rusby : Who Will Sing Me Lullabies?

About The Photographer

George Koruth

The copyrighted images above were posted with the Photographer’s permission. All Rights Are Reserved. Thank you.

A Circle of Friends ~ For My Friend Joe

2011-10-30T09:52:00.000-07:00

The World Exists Within

A Circle of Friends

Shoulder to Shoulder,

We Anchor our Hearts Together,

Bound by Memories of Time and Place

In a Sacred Litany of Belonging.

Together we Breathe in Hope

Presenting Our Colorful Offerings

To the Compassionate One who Blesses Our Dreams

Remembering, that, in One of Many Incarnations, He had Little.

Alone, Life’s Challenges Weigh Heavy in the Balance

and Sometimes it Feels as though

We are Not Sure We Want to Travel in the Direction

Others have Walked;

Yet, Wearing the Heart of Heroes,

We Continue the Journey,

Overcoming Great Obstacles

Sometimes Alone,

Sometimes with a Faithful Companion,

Until Our Spirits Soar Again,

Feeling as if we are One-Hundred Strong,

Returning to The Circle of Friendship,

Our Source of Nurture, Strength and True Belonging.

~Words by Noelle Clearwater

10.30.11

Special Prayers of affirmation and Love for Joe S.

Peace, Love and Hugs from your good friend, Noelle

About The Photographer

George Koruth

You may find more of his wonderful work at :

http://georgekoruth.500px.com

http://www.flickr.com/photos/m2digital

The copyrighted images above were posted with the Photographer’s permission. All Rights Are Reserved. Thank you.

His Apples

2011-10-23T23:40:00.000-07:00

Merele Lui © Vlad Dumitrescu

There was a Child went Forth

THERE was a child went forth every day;

And the first object he look’d upon, that object he became;

And that object became part of him for the day, or a certain part of the day, or for many years, or stretching cycles of years.

The early lilacs became part of this child,

And grass, and white and red morning-glories, and white and red clover, and the song of the phoebe-bird,

And the Third-month lambs, and the sow’s pink-faint litter, and the mare’s foal, and the cow’s calf,

And the noisy brood of the barn-yard, or by the mire of the pond-side,

And the fish suspending themselves so curiously below there—and the beautiful curious liquid,

And the water-plants with their graceful flat heads—all became part of him.

The field-sprouts of Fourth-month and Fifth-month became part of him;

Winter-grain sprouts, and those of the light-yellow corn, and the esculent roots of the garden,

And the apple-trees cover’d with blossoms, and the fruit afterward, and wood-berries, and the commonest weeds by the road.

~[Excerpt from Walt Whitman’s poem by the same name]

View this movie at cultureunplugged.com

About the Photographer

Vlad Dumitrescu

An introduction of my work should start with a short description of Romania. The magic of this country, lies in its landscapes and in its warm people that are living in villages from very close to the sea to the heart of the mountains. Every region has its own specific habits and its own stories, which are making together the beautiful book, called - Romania. Every season is turning slowly page by page from this book, over and over again, for thousands of years. You can still find in these villages carts run by oxen, people working at the looms or in the fields with horses.
I must say that I am very lucky to live in this country, but at the same time, I am sorry to see that day by day something is changing as the modernism is cutting deeper and deeper in our old traditions.
My aim is to find during my walks up and down and around the hills, valleys and villages of Romania, old people and forgotten habits and try to bring back into present something that was lost in the past. The Romanian village is my main motive because I love its people and its habits and because I see it dying.

To find more of Vlad Dumitrescu’s Warm and Engaging photographs of Romania please take a short trip over to 1x.com where you can see many of his photos or enjoy his wonderful blog at the url you see below!
http://vlad-dumitrescu.blogspot.com/

*This photo was posted with permission from the photographer. All Rights Are Reserved. Thank you.

God Scatters a Handful of Stones/Haiku my Heart

2011-10-20T23:17:00.001-07:00

©2011 Thomas Russ Arnestad Ocean water washing the rocks on the shore. This image is captured on the west coast of Herfoel, Hvaler, Norway. Extra long shutterspeed captures the smoky feel to the water during this beautiful sunset.

In Roiling Blue Mists

God Scatters These Great, Dark Stones

In Handfuls at Sea.

~Noelle Renee 10.20.11

Here, the Rocks Gather

To Remember One Who Sailed,

Never Finding Shore.

~Noelle Renee

10.20.11

About The Photographer:

Thomas Russ Arnestad

About Arnestad Photography

Arnestad Photography (NO 990 983 267 MVA) presents the photographic work of Thomas Russ Arnestad (b.1979, Oslo).
He works as the Head of Photography at Inviso AS, the largest real estate photography company in Norway. During low season he performs ad-hoc photographic work for numerous clients.
Besides interior photography he also shoots a lot of landscape, architecture, cars, products and travel images to name a few.
His interest began, as for many others, with the fascination of light and the beautiful impact it has on the nature surrounding us. From there on, it´s been a long journey to get where he´s at now. His nature and landscape photography, is today as then, a form for recreation and an excuse to spend some time alone.
Recent photos have been targeted into more specific projects and series than before. This is the way to go for getting more thought and substance into the photography for Arnestad.
Linked to Haiku My Heart Friday at Recuerda mi Corazon.

Metamorphosis Project ~ Luca Renoldi: Architectural Transformation V

2011-10-13T19:41:00.001-07:00

These black-green leaves
now carry enough sun to
ignite white flowers.

7/21/08 Joe felso Ruminations

Her sky brimmed with stars
of the five-pointed type, spells
against emptiness.

9/8/08 Joe felso Ruminations

A city never
reaches silence, each promised
quiet soon broken.

7/28/08 Joe felso Ruminations

After fire’s spent
it leaves everything it touched
its blackest self.

8/11/08 Joe felso Ruminations

Outside these shadows
the world is bright—the leaves dance
in their own fire.

8/30/08 Joe felso Ruminations

As one of the first professional symphony orchestras ever Copenhagen Phil (Sjællands Symfoniorkester) did a flash mob at Copenhagen Central Station on May 2nd 2011 playing Ravel's Bolero. Conductor is Jesper Nordin.

Haikus on this post are a tribute to Joe Felso of Ruminations.

For more wonderful haikus, please visit recuerda mi corazon, a wonderful place to be.

The Project
What this project aims to offer the viewer is the opportunity to see reality with new eyes, eyes that "distort" what he sees, in an attempt to reveal what lies behind appearance, so that his altered state of mind may predispose him to look at metamorphosis. Through the game of decomposition and the multiplication of points of view, it highlights not only the availability of the mind to deformation, but also the lack of an absolute truth, (how this can prevail), to offset one’s own unique perspective: This is an important finding for understanding the meaning of the project (following the intent of Apuleius). The philosophical theme that accompanies the whole project is that of an eternal universe as a place of transformation, where "mutantur omnia, nihil interit" ie "nothing perishes but everything is transformed."

The Photographer

Luca Renoldi was born in Milan in 1958 and lives close to Monza, Not far from His beloved Milan. Due to His indomitable vitality and will to discover new horizons, he is often described as a twenty-year-old with thirty years of experience! For all his passions he dedicates 100% of his effort and vitality. Lover of football, a fan of FC Internazionale Milano, he is an active participant of the Inter Club Muratidentro supporters club. He has forever loved photographic art taking pictures of whatever he finds interesting, nothing precluded, fitting his perspectives to the mounted optics, rarely constructing his own photos, leaving the images as real as his eyes have captured. As manager in a company that produces industrial laundry machines, he travels all around the world right along with his trustworthy Nikon. During his frequent travels, he always finds the time to dedicate himself to photography, which effectively combines with fractals or sometimes various experimental techniques.

Note on the Series

This is the Fifth installment of a series of photographs that make up this wonderful project. My thanks to Luca Renoldi for allowing me to post his phenomenal work on The Angels Wear Fins.

Metamorphoses Project Part IV~ Luca Renoldi

2011-10-07T21:05:00.001-07:00

there it was, confronting me -- a sky, air, light:
a being.

And before it started to descend
from the height of noon, it leaned over

and struck my shoulder as if with
the flat of a sword,

granting me
honor and a task.

The day's blow
rang out, metallic -- or it was I, a bell awakened,

and what I heard was my whole self

saying and singing what it knew: I can.

~ Denise Levertov ~

(Not part of the metamorphoses project)

The Photographer

Note on the Series

This is the Fourth installment of a series of photographs that make up this wonderful project. My thanks to Luca Renoldi for allowing me to post his phenomenal work on The Angels Wear Fins.

Linked to Haiku My Heart at Recuerda mi Corazon

The Secret of Birds

2011-10-01T20:02:00.000-07:00

Boy and Egg

BY NAOMI SHIHAB NYE

Every few minutes, he wants

to march the trail of flattened rye grass

back to the house of muttering

hens. He too could make

a bed in hay. Yesterday the egg so fresh

it felt hot in his hand and he pressed it

to his ear while the other children

laughed and ran with a ball, leaving him,

so little yet, too forgetful in games,

ready to cry if the ball brushed him,

riveted to the secret of birds

caught up inside his fist,

not ready to give it over

to the refrigerator

or the rest of the day.

Source: Fuel (BOA Editions Ltd., 1998)

About the Photographer:

Alfred Pleyer

Alfred loves to travel and photograph.

He hails from Austria.

You may find more of his amazing photographic captures on

http://500px.com/niklens

According to Alfred the following is true:

Citizen of the World

Living without a cat...

I Belong to group.as

I am involved in
Public Circles Project

Where Children Live

2011-09-28T22:25:00.000-07:00

Where Children Live
Homes where children live exude a pleasant rumpledness,
like a bed made by a child, or a yard littered with balloons.
To be a child again one would need to shed details
till the heart found itself dressed in the coat with a hood.
Now the heart has taken on gloves and mufflers,
the heart never goes outside to find something to do.
And the house takes on a new face, dignified.
No lost shoes blooming under bushes.
No chipped trucks in the drive.
Grown-ups like swings, leafy plants, slow-motion back and forth.
While the yard of a child is strewn with the corpses
of bottle-rockets and whistles,
anything whizzing and spectacular, brilliantly short-lived.
Trees in children's yards speak in clearer tongues.
Ants have more hope. Squirrels dance as well as hide.
The fence has a reason to be there, so children can go in and out.
Even when the children are at school, the yards glow
with the leftovers of their affection,
the roots of the tiniest grasses curl toward one another
like secret smiles.
~ Naomi Shihab Nye

Linked to Meri’s Musings “Share the Joy Thursdays”

About the Photographer:

Alfred Pleyer

Alfred loves to travel and photograph.

He hails from Austria.

You may find more of his amazing photographic captures on 500px|Alfred Pleyer

According to Alfred the following is true: Yes and i am living without a cat...

Belongs to group.as

involved in
Public Circles Project
----------------------------------------

Balance: the metamorphosis project III ~Luca Renoldi

2011-09-25T12:51:00.001-07:00

Balance is noticed most when almost failed of--

in an elephant’s delicate wavering

on her circus stool, for instance,

or that moment

when a ladder starts to tip but steadies back.

There are too, its mysterious departures

Hours after the dishes are washed and stacked,

a metal bowl clangs to the floor,

the weight of drying water all that altered;

a painting vertical for years

one morning — why? — requires a restoring tap.

You have felt it disappearing

from your own capricious heart —

A restlessness enters, the smallest leaning begins.

Already then inevitable,

the full collision,

the life you will describe afterward always as “after.”

~Jane Hirschfield

The Photographer

Note on the Series

This is the Third installment of a series of photographs that make up this wonderful project. My thanks to Luca Renoldi for allowing me to post his phenomenal work on The Angels Wear Fins.

Linked to Postcards from Paradise with the lovely Rebecca at

Recuerda mi Corazon.

A Single Path of Vision

2011-09-23T21:38:00.000-07:00

Rocky Landscape 1 ©2011 Arnestad ~ Rocky landscape on the coast of Herfoel, an island in Hvaler county, Norway. The water pots left and right are typical for the coastal island and is seen everywhere. The tower on the peak is for ships visibility and this particular tower is called Linnekleppen.

Lighthouse

Its vision sweeps its one path
like an aged monk raking a garden,
his question long ago answered or moved on.

Rocky Landscape II tonemapped ©2011 Arnestad ~ Rocky landscape on the coast of Herfoel, an island in Hvaler county, Norway. The scene is captured as the sun sets in summertime and the image gets the nice and warm tone to it. The tower on the peak is for ships visibility and this particular tower is called Linnekleppen.

Far off, night-grazing horses,
breath scented with oatgrass and fennel,
step through it, disappear, step through it, disappear.
~Jane Hirshfield

from The Wisdom Anthology
of North American Buddhist Poetry
ed. Andrew Schelling, 2005

About The Photographer:

Thomas Russ Arnestad

About Arnestad Photography

Besides interior photography he also shoots a lot of landscape, architecture, cars, products and travel images to name a few.
His interest began, as for many others, with the fascination of light and the beautiful impact it has on the nature surrounding us. From there on, it´s been a long journey to get where he´s at now. His nature and landscape photography, is today as then, a form for recreation and an excuse to spend some time alone.
Recent photos have been targeted into more specific projects and series than before. This is the way to go for getting more thought and substance into the photography for Arnestad.

Linked to Haiku My Heart Friday at Recuerda mi Corazon.

Metamorphosis Project ~Part II ~Luca Renoldi

2011-09-20T21:45:00.000-07:00

Like a moveable theme drawn into being by a great composer ~ who places it into one part of the music, then another

Sometimes folding or inverting like shirting-fabric, Sometimes setting it upside down like a stone or a swarm of bees

that knows neither top nor bottom,

yet by balance remains recognizable and whole,

the old lie comes

Its notes like white-faced cows looking back in strong starlight.

Hard to say why this so pleases.

Perhaps it is not the outcome, but the listening,

the being asked once more to listen.

~Jane Hirschfield

The Lie

from Given Sugar , Given Salt 2001

Pavane Op.50, G. Faure. Meyers-Cutsinger, Classical.

The Photographer

Note on the Series

This is the second installment of a series of photographs that make up this wonderful project. My thanks to Luca Renoldi for allowing me to post his phenomenal work on The Angels Wear Fins.

Linked to Meri’s Musings Share the Joy Thursdays

Metamorphosis Project I~Luca Renoldi

2011-09-19T21:04:00.000-07:00

~O Body Swayed to Music~

~O Brightening Glance!~

~How Can We Know the Dancer~

~From the Dance?~

~W.B. Yeats

The Photographer

Note on the Series

This is the first installment of a series of photographs that make up this wonderful project. My thanks to Luca Renoldi for allowing me to post his phenomenal work on The Angels Wear Fins.

The Grain of Wood Runs True

2011-09-14T23:53:00.000-07:00

Wooden Boats

I have a brother who builds wooden boats,
Who knows precisely how a board
Can bend or turn, steamed just exactly
Soft enough so he, with help of friends,
Can shape it to the hull.

The knowledge lies as much
Within his sure hands on the plane
As in his head;

It lies in love of wood and grain,
A rough hand resting on the satin
Of the finished deck.

Is there within us each
Such artistry forgotten
In the cruder tasks
The world requires of us,
The faster modern work
That we have
Turned our life to do?

Could we return to more of craft
Within our lives,
And feel the way the grain of wood runs true,
By letting our hands linger
On the product of our artistry?

Could we recall what we have known

But have forgotten,
The gifts within ourselves,
Each other too,

And thus transform a world
As he and friends do,
Shaping steaming oak boards
Upon the hulls of wooden boats?

~ Judy Brown ~

About The Photographer: Tony Le

I am currently 27 with a beautiful wife and son. I earned a network and communication degree at Devry University. While my job can be very technical, I need a creative outlet which photography fulfilled. Photography has always been one of my favorite hobbies because it allows me to showcase how I perceive the world. I can come up with many reasons why I became a photographer, the simplest answer was that my first son was on his way and I wanted to capture every moment. That was about 3 years ago and I've snapped over 20,000 photos. Most were bad and only some were great but the key thing is that I tried to learn something new with each captured moment.

My only real education in photography was for a high school elective course, Photography 101. That was only 10 years go during the film and darkroom era. Thank goodness those darkroom days are gone. I am a self taught photographer and currently specialize in landscape photography and I am starting to teach myself about the style of portraiture and lighting effect.

You may find more of Tony’s wonderful work at his website: http://tonylephotography.com/gallery/

Chasing The Light ~Haiku My Heart

2011-09-10T09:35:00.000-07:00

I’m Chasing the Light

So Fast that Shadow Stands Still

To Watch Childhood Pass

~Noelle Renee

9/10/11

For More Wonderful Haikus, please visit Rebecca’s lovely blog!

About The Photographer in His Own Words:

Andre du Plessis

"To me, photography is an art of observation. It's about finding something interesting in an ordinary place... I've found it has little to do with the things you see and everything to do with the way you see them." -Elliott Erwitt.
I wish that I had more time to devote to photography. However, when I get that chance, the sheer enjoyment of it always makes up for those weeks of waiting.
My preference has evolved from experimental to street, and finally to people.
In people photography I have found what I need, and so far it has been a very interesting journey.
My preference for B&W derives from my days in the dark room, which started when I was about twelve. I once won a Jobo colour kit in a photography competition at school, but asked for the money instead in order to buy a new monochrome enlarger and lens..
When it comes to photography I see in shades of grey, and I cannot see this changing soon. I am sure that my choice of subject matter has evolved in parallel with this realisation.
I am passionate about the various peoples of that continent that I belong to, and in bringing pictures of ordinary folk in their ordinary houses to this forum (1x.com) I have started to appreciate how powerful a medium photography actually is, and the responsibility that accompanies this.

*Andre du Plessis hails from South Africa and currently lives in London where he has a medical practice.

Toward the Heart of the World ~ Postcards from Paradise

2011-09-04T12:50:00.001-07:00

Book of Hours II, 16

How surely gravity's law,
strong as an ocean current,
takes hold of even the strongest thing
and pulls it toward the heart of the world.

Each thing -
each stone, blossom, child -
is held in place.
Only we, in our arrogance,
push out beyond what we belong to
for some empty freedom.

If we surrendered
to earth's intelligence
we could rise up rooted, like trees.

Instead we entangle ourselves
in knots of our own making
and struggle, lonely and confused.

So, like children, we begin again
to learn from the things,
because they are in God's heart;
they have never left him.

This is what the things can teach us:
to fall,
patiently to trust our heaviness.
Even a bird has to do that
before he can fly.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke ~

(Rilke's Book of Hours: Love Poems to God,

translated by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy)

For More Postcards from Paradise Please go to Recuerda mi Corazon. You will be so glad that you did!

About the Photographer

Vlad Dumitrescu

*This photo was posted with permission from the photographer. All Rights Are Reserved. Thank you.

Haiku My Heart: The Secret Garden

2011-09-02T19:06:00.000-07:00

Dreaming of Poppies

I Find I’m Awakened By

A Small Alien.

In Reverie of

Daisies Creatures of Good Will

Are Announcing Peace.

In Love I Wander

Asking, Is the Kingdom of

Heaven Close at Hand?

Then A Butterfly

Quells anxiety saying

“You’re in God’s Country.”

I feel fine until

Fyodor sends Notes from the

Underground Party.

~All Haikus by Noelle Renee 9.1.11

For more Haiku My Heart, please visit Rebecca’s blog,

such a treat!

About the Author

Fabien Bravin

Fabien Bravin is 38 years old, living in Toulouse (FRANCE).
He is an engineer by profession, and began photographing professionally in 2008 after buying his first DSLR. Since that day, it has become a real passion for him. It is mostly the beauty of nature and the light that attracts him.

If you want to see more of his phenomenal work you have many wonderful and exciting choices. Just have a look at his 1x homepage :
http://fabb.1x.com/
or his beautiful photo website :
http://500px.com/Fabien-BRAVIN
or his flickr photostream :
http://www.flickr.com/photos/eulfab/

Exciting News!

Now available Fabien’s first photobook of macro photographs
2 versions available
small square format : http://fr.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/1687252
big square format : http://fr.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/1678963

All photos here were posted with the photographer’s permission. All Rights are Reserved. Thank you!

“For My House is Huge” ~ Postcards from Paradise

2011-08-28T11:17:00.001-07:00

It Was Winter

Winter came as it does in this valley.

After eight dry months rain fell

And the mountains, straw-colored, turned green for a while.

In the canyons where gray laurels

Graft their stony roots to granite,

Streams must have filled the dried-up creek beds.

Ocean winds churned the eucalyptus trees,

And under clouds torn by a crystal of towers

Prickly lights were glowing on the docks.

This is not a place where you sit under a cafe awning

On a marble piazza, watching the crowd,

Or play the flute at a window over a narrow street

While children’s sandals clatter in the vaulted entryway.

They heard of a land, empty and vast,

Bordered by mountains. So they went, leaving behind crosses

Of thorny wood and traces of campfires.

As it happened, they spent winter in the snow of a mountain pass,

And drew lots and boiled the bones of their companions;

And so afterward a hot valley where indigo could be grown

Seemed beautiful to them. And beyond, where fog

Heaved into shoreline coves, the ocean labored.

Sleep: rocks and capes will lie down inside you,

War councils of motionless animals in a barren place,

Basilicas of reptiles, a frothy whiteness.

Sleep on your coat, while your horse nibbles grass

And an eagle gauges a precipice.

When you wake up, you will have the parts of the world.

West, an empty conch of water and air.

East, always behind you, the voided memory of snow-covered fir.

And extending from your outspread arms

Nothing but bronze grasses, north and south.

We are poor people, much afflicted.

We camped under various stars,

Where you dip water with a cup from a muddy river

And slice your bread with a pocketknife.

This is the place; accepted, not chosen.

We remembered that there were streets and houses where we came

from,

So there had to be houses here, a saddler’s signboard,

A small veranda with a chair. But empty, a country where

The thunder beneath the rippled skin of the earth,

The breaking waves, a patrol of pelicans, nullified us.

As if our vases, brought here from another shore,

Were the dug-up spearheads of some lost tribe

Who fed on lizards and acorn flour.

And here I am walking the eternal earth.

Tiny, leaning on a stick.

I pass a volcanic park, lie down at a spring,

Not knowing how to express what is always and everywhere:

The earth I cling to is so solid

Under my breast and belly that I feel grateful

For every pebble, and I don’t know whether

It is my pulse or the earth’s that I hear,

When the hems of invisible silk vestments pass over me,

Hands, wherever they have been, touch my arm,

Or small laughter, once, long ago over wine,

With lanterns in the magnolias, for my house is huge.

Berkeley, 1964

About the Photographer:

Milan Malovrh

Milan hails from a small town in Slovenia, Trzic.
Photography is his primary hobby and during the last forty years it has become a great passion. He loves seeing the world through his camera because it opens the eyes of others to things, that they don´t initially see on first view.
He is grateful to all who appreciate and look at his pictures.

You may find more of his images of these amazing dream horses at http://elfot.1x.com/ and also at 1x.com

~~~~

For those who are facing the Struggles of Hurricane Irene,

May You always have a sense of Home, Protection and Shelter And the Knowledge that there is Grace in recovery and restoration even after the harshest of storms.

For More Lovely Postcards from Paradise, Please visit Recuerda Mi Corazon. It will be a breath of Fresh Air for you!

Note: All of Milan Malovrh’s images are copyrighted and posted here with photographer permission. They may not be used without that permission. Thank you.