The window as a metaphor

Following the thread of a thought brought on

by this morning's post to Instagram, I made a curious discovery;

I discovered that since my very first post on IG in 2014

I've posted a total of 14 images related to  the window.

Just what is it about them I find so intriguing?

~ view into the woods right after dawn, posted August 2017 ~

A quick hop to googleland took me on a merry journey exploring symbolism.

There was this article in particular, 'Windows: Exploring the History of a Metaphor' by

H. J. Krysmanski

“The ‘window’ metaphor has a long career in the history of art and, in fact, in the evolvement of the human perspective in general.” 

It's long, but comprehensive, with a thought-provoking list of subtitles to choose from:

The Evolution of the Window

The Evolution of the Window Metaphor

Source of Eternal Light: the Gothic Cathedral

Renaissance: the Appearance of the Screen

Light on Privacy: the Windows of Jan Vermeer

Window Dressing: Staging the Theatrical Stage

Through the Looking Glass: Virtual Reality in Victorian England

Space and Time: the Epistemology of Screening and Framing

The Eye: Mirror and Window of the Soul

The Window Metaphor in Islamic Culture

The Window Metaphor in Buddhism and Confucianism

Walls of Glass: the Essence of Architecture

Modern Painting: in Defense of the Classical Screen

‘Peep Show’ and ‘Fensterln’: Folklore of the Windows Experience

Window Shopping: the Commodification of Desire

The Window Metaphor in Modern Science

Journeys through Space: the Cinema Screen

Surveillance: Monitoring the Radar Screen

Archaeology of the Computer Screen

How ‘Windows’ Chanced To Become A Registered Trade Mark

~ bedroom window overlooking the wild Atlantic :: Isle of Harris, Scotland, posted August 2017 ~

So what if I just compile all my windows here, as a group? ... ALL of them

in the order they were posted starting with this morning's, working back thru time.

I'd like to see what their collective voice may have to say.

~ better than the movies, posted February 2017 ~

~ sunrise over the Atlantic Ocean, west Cork, Ireland, posted October 2016 ~

~ first crack, posted September 2016 ~

 "It doesn't interest me if there is one God or many gods.

I want to know if you belong or feel abandoned.

If you know despair or can see it in others.

I want to know

if you are prepared to live in the world with its harsh need

to change you.  If you can look back

with firm eyes

saying this is where I stand ..."

~ from 'Self Portrait' by David Whyte, posted June 2016 ~

~ after a big swim, posted December 2015 ~

~ sometimes it takes darkness, posted April 2015 ~

~ threshold :: St. Conan's Kirk, Scotland, posted November 2014 ~

~ seasonal changes afoot :: watching rainclouds mass, posted September 2014 ~

~ 9:05 a.m. on 9/05/2014, posted September 2014 ~

~ first evening in Edinburgh :: view at twilight, posted August 2014 ~

~ my friend's house :: needs a wee bit of housekeeping, Newburgh, Scotland, posted July 2014 ~

~ self :: riding the wind, posted April 2014 ~

:::

straight photography,

app-ed photography;

the real, the imagined, the wished for

... the simple 'what was there.'

“Above all, though, windows have permitted man to experience the essence of light, from Chartres Cathedral to the paintings of Vermeer, and to this day even their most mundane use implies some sort of interaction with the unknown and with infinity.”

I don't mind keeping the question open for now.

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Found while walking

It's possible to determine the seasons here

by what is washing up on the beach.  The tides

bring oyster shells in early summer,

multitudes of itty bitty crabs

and the particular seaweed that prints red on cloth.

Driftwood is plentiful

bleaching & cracking like rough skin in the sunshine.

It's heaven for the dogs.  Quinn is exuberant over her stick-chasing swims

while Isla is content to quietly sniff every log

up and down the shoreline for as long and as far as you'll let her.

Simple pleasures

enjoyed while I beach comb.

A lovely poem flew into my mailbox this morning from American Life in Poetry.

Although referencing the other coast, there's a truth here

to be found on all of them ... and within all of us.

I thought you might enjoy it.

Strewn 

It’d been a long winter, rags of snow hanging on; then, at the end

of April, an icy nor’easter, powerful as a hurricane. But now 

I’ve landed on the coast of Maine, visiting a friend who lives

two blocks from the ocean, and I can’t believe my luck, 

out this mild morning, race-walking along the strand. 

Every dog within fifty miles is off-leash, running 

for the sheer dopey joy of it. No one’s in the water,

but walkers and shellers leave their tracks on the hardpack. 

The flat sand shines as if varnished in a painting. Underfoot, 

strewn, are broken bits and pieces, deep indigo mussels, whorls

of whelk, chips of purple and white wampum, hinges of quahog, 

fragments of sand dollars. Nothing whole, everything 

broken, washed up here, stranded. The light pours down, a rinse 

of lemon on a cold plate. All of us, broken, some way 

or other. All of us dazzling in the brilliant slanting light.

~ by Barbara Crooker

 : : :

photo processing notes:

images shot with iPhone

double exposure created with Diana Photo app

edited on an iPad with Snapseed & Stackables apps

copyright added online with PicMonkey

: : :

... and if you've ever dreamed about walking the entire coastline of the UK

have a peek over on Ruth's Coastal Walk blog.

She's just been to Rhossili Beach

and you will not believe the unspoiled beauty ....

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Branches

just some serendipity this morn between

tree photos from the editing lightbox

and penetrating verse found in the inbox ...

chess anyone?

I'm imagining someone bent over a fresh board, poised for footsteps.  Despite

an early winter draft snaking upstairs, despite the almost-dinner hour and the too-small

likelihood of a passerby plucky enough to take the plunge, they are listening and patient,

ready for any stranger who might sit down. Such sturdy optimism. The invitation of it all.

I wonder if, at the heart of it, we forget to say exactly what we're looking for, anxious

that the details will cloister and confine, keep us from the thing we want.  The sign I read, 

narrowed as it was, stood beside an open door, and no matter what was next, there was,

at least, the certain knowledge it would include the pieces for a game to be played.

What little flag could I hold out?  What batch of words would say it best?

What would I ask if asking were the only branch I'd need to build my nest?

~ Maya Stein

: : :

"10-Line Tuesday" poetry

by Maya Stein ... a backlog can be viewed   here

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this moment :: the rain cometh

{  this moment  }

A single photo

~ no words ~

capturing a moment from the week.

A simple, special, extraordinary moment.

A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.

~ SouleMama

:::

inspired by the Friday reflections at Amanda's

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There's no place like home ...

string stone

bone

driftwood

owl feather

seaweed

beach pebble

granite square

: : :

Joining with the fine folks over at Kim's place

for Texture Tuesday ...

faved : used in multiply mode, faded 50%, center erased slightly.

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From the sea

It's been a fine, fine week

filled with many things

that just

make my heart sing

Pebbles were aligned,

tides were watched,

while in between

there was quite a bit of dunking.

I'd dyed a thrift shirt

in honor of my friend's visit

and much like in days of old

watching a photograph come to life

in the darkroom tray,

so too, my shirt's colors

after a dip in the salty brink.

Magic

pure and simple.

Kelp jewelry

and an abundant assortment of seaweed gifts

piled along the shore

inspired an experiment ...

what if they might give color?

Although I live by the sea, I have never tried.

So I waited, mustering patience

while my seaweed bundle

rested for five long days.

This morning, I unwrapped her

and I do believe a treasure trove of possibilities

await.

: : :

My  Friday Find ... joining in with the gang over at Kim's place

to celebrate life's simple pleasures.

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What the hedgerows had to say

Last evening, although it was getting late,
there was good sky

so the woofies and I went out for a walk.
Our land is surrounded by pastures to the south,
mixed Douglas fir forests to the north, east, west
and everywhere in between is the smell of the sea
and the wild scramble of the native understory.

Willows ... catching the late light in their freshly leafed out canopies.

Over time, mostly when I wasn't paying much attention,
I've built relationships with these plants & trees ...
they all serve an important purpose in our small ecosystem
and no matter how annoyed I might be with hauling another fallen branch
across the footpath or disentangling myself for the umpteenth time from the thorn-hold
of wayward blackberries,
I deeply believe everything residing here holds value.
Bitter berries for songbirds, rotting stumps for the tree frogs,
the mucky pond shallows for salamanders ...
the list is long
and diverse
and has become a great source of inspiration.

I'm often up late, with the owls, doing handwork ...
This bead weaving stitched to willow-dyed cloth became a personal story
about my Salix friends with branches.

On the trek home we spied this native elderberry [Sambucus caerulea]

setting off some frothy firecrackers.
If I'm very lucky this season
I may get to some of the gorgeous blue-black berries
well before the birds.
Must be quick - they always beat me to it.

I admit to being taken aback 

by the sheer size of her this year.

Why, she must have put on two more feet

upwards and sidewards

since last summer !

Me & my furry pals may head out again this evening for another ramble
for there's so much going on out there ...
and what the plants are saying now
is foretelling a fine future.


: : :


joining in with the folks over at
Our World Tuesday
[because it's Tuesday in Australia  ;>]
pop over & be transported around the globe ...

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Seeing double

When I think back on the countless hours spent in darkrooms

attempting to create [at the least] something a little bit  interesting

by combining two disparate negatives into one print,

well, I sit here shaking my head.  Not a time waste exactly, no I wouldn't want to say that,

but I never was very good at it and I never did come up with

a single picture worth hanging onto.

What did happen, I guess, is that I never lost my love for composites

and recently when my faraway friend happened to post a super cool photo she

created with a phone app 

- an app I'd never heard of, one that superimposes two images, adds filters & effects 

all in about three seconds - 

let's just say

I couldn't download that puppy fast enough.

This app, named Diana Photo,

 has what I might venture to call an uncanny ability to "choose" which images

to stack together to bring out the best of both worlds

and in my case, it keeps choosing pairs that feel entirely significant and appropriate

to what I'm doing with life, my work, and how I feel about where I live at this moment.

Silly, really.

Of course an app can't  KNOW  but when Diana began to combine my dye bundles

with sand & sea 

and dyed cloths were superimposed with tree leaves & blossoms ...

you can see my point perhaps?

She even went so far as to match up one of the [rare] front-on portraits of dear dawg

with the driftwood piles on her favorite off-leash beach;

the very same driftwood she played on, photographed on her 4th birthday ...

two photos taken five years apart

from an album numbering in the thousands !

HOW does Diana know???

Tis not all serious stuff, not by a long shot.

Endless supplies of whimsy occur from the combos ...

dawg as evidence,

bedecked here with her own tail ...

all part of the rolling-the-dice fun & darn good for some fine belly chuckles

[although I think dawg would be mortified].

What I'm really after, what appeals most, is the symbolic double vision.

Hard to put into words ...

simplified, it's about taking a subject I've shot in one context,

"randomly" layering it with a subject from another, 

creating a final image that has - somehow - through overlapping effects,

intensified in meaning.

Double exposure.

So far I've had my beaded world appear

and seen my work under water here in this isolated island place I call home.

These have me looking at kinship to tides of all kinds

real and imagined ...

symbolically speaking, that is.

Here I am.

Self portrait within my watery world,

wondering how in the heck a little 99 cent app could have

brought up so much introspection.

:::

Diana Photo app for iPhone is HERE

for Android HERE

:::

Linking up with the gang over at Kim's place for Friday Finds

as this was truly my biggest "find" of the week ...

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Wild skies in the atmospheric river

We have the most wonderful weatherman here in western Washington.

He's an avid blogger and not only is he entertaining, 

he contributes boat loads of useful information; 

often, nothing short of a compendium of

fascinating weather facts and details one has never heard of before.

So today I'm borrowing from this fine fella - Cliff Mass - because his latest post,

"Atmospheric Rivers Strike the Pacific Northwest"

seemed to explain all the wild stuff I've been seeing recently

u  p       t  h  e  r  e 

Unlike some of the other local forecasters who tend to concentrate more on

what's happening around Seattle,

Mr. Mass seems to [almost] always get it right when it comes to

us island folk further north "up-Sound."

Darn helpful when seawater is your highway.

As for that, sure is nice to have the ferry Captain do the driving out there ...

I love when you can see it raining miles off in the distance ...

dependent upon which way the wind is blowing,

you can know if it's coming right for you

or not.

Always good to know when a big storm's heading your way.

Wind gusts last night topped 50 mph, but we were ready for it.

The only casualty ... my old  3Gs  iPhone finally bit the dust.  Or should I say

in keeping with this post,

sailed her last voyage?

Trouble's been a'brewing for some time, 

what with going all wonky at the most

inopportune moments,

then crashing every time I tried to take a picture.

I may have app-ed her to death [is that possible?].  My penchant for playing with effects

is no secret around here,

but whatever the cause, at last

I finally have the excuse I needed to upgrade.

oh boy.

:::


linking with Skywatch Friday [because it's Friday in Australia  ;>]
where you can see beautiful skies from all around the world ...

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Don't ever let nobody ....

Been doin' some personal soul searching of late.

Oh yeah, there's been fog - mental fog - and a whole heap
of other stuff
that didn't feel too good either.

But as always, been tryin' to look for the light [metaphorically speaking]
while I'm lookin' for a way out

or up.


It can be a long slog sometimes,
bringin' on the most unexpected feelings;
a whole slurry of mixed emotions,
and thoughts from way over there on the dark side
where I just don't like to stay for very long

so

it was a great relief
when the link for this joyous video came flying into my mailbox

Eric Bibb beltin' out some truths with "Don't Ever Let Nobody Drag Your Spirit Down"



Have a listen yourself ... I will guarantee
no matter how you're feelin' right now
you'll feel way better after
a heapin' helping of Mr. Bibb.

{ note:  sounds real good turned up LOUD }

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