Category: Light

A Two Hour Smile.

8/11 Waves.

It was a good dream.   Vague and mostly forgotten, not at all unsettling, a slight smile in my sleep.  I seemed very young, maybe seven, still free with innocence, unencumbered by later life.  It was a hot day, summertime, and we were, or had been, at the beach, where I had spent the entire day engulfed in waves.  Diving under, jumping up, turning so that the back of your head had the wave break over it while you looked through to shore, maneuvering for the next one, on and on.  Bodysurfing.  Giggling underwater all the way to the sand when you got caught.

Then came the post stoke relaxation and good sleep.  Warm breezes, full moon, abundance of life and living.  The August cicadas were singing away, celebrating the season.  Something then turned, the timing too early.  Soundwaves getting louder and louder, threatening my sleep and dream state.  The dream faded, like youth, or a good summer on the first day of school.  My alarm was blaring, no longer a cicada’s song.  I hit snooze.  Ahhh, crickets….

This new silence was not feeling like more real sleep,  so I grabbed my camera bag and water housing and headed down to the beach.  There was a slight North wind, which is always good, but heavy stratus cloud cover prevented any sunrise light.  Scanning the ocean for whales and dolphin, I waited, enjoying my 7-11 large, dark coffee.  Didn’t see any, but noticed the waves were actually curling a bit, first time in a while.

When I opened my bag to grab my 16-35mm, the lens was missing.  In its place was my 24-120mm.  Wasn’t sure if it would fit in the housing and with no collar on the lens there would be no zoom, but I gave it a shot and got lucky.   24mm, not bad for leaving the house half asleep. (EDIT:  looking at exif data, the zoom slowly shifted towards the longer end.)

Patches of blue started peaking through the grey.  I headed down toward the Fire Island Lighthouse.  Bare feet in sand, coffee in hand.  The next two hours brought changing light, one long smile, a few giggles, and the focused, alert, wake-full-ness of salt therapy.  Living in a dream.  It comes in waves.

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Always, Always, towards the Light.

Happy Easter!

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Habitually, continually, building ego-castles in the sand is the crucifixion of your Light. It’s vice. It’s human.

Attaining contact with and living with your inner Light is your resurrection. It’s virtue. It’s Divine.

That is your cross to bear.

Rebirth starts moment by moment.

Love, Compassion, Grace, …Light.

  • “We are told to let our light shine, and if it does, we won’t need to tell anybody it does. Lighthouses don’t fire cannons to call attention to their shining – they just shine.”  -Dwight L. Moody
  • “Easter is not limited to the passion and death of Christ; it also includes the dismal tragedy of life unlived by the many, and all the loss of passion and truth that goes with it.”  -Michael Leunig
  • “Easter is meant to be a symbol of hope, renewal, and new life.” – Janine di Giovanni

 

Also.  The Sun always rises…

 

(Thoughts and comments welcome!)

Spring Equinox

Half-way over that mythic sunny bridge… A little more ocean warmth, some warmer breezes, sun, sun, sun.. salt water baptisms, and lively stirrings of the soul…..

Monday, March 20th at 6:28am on the east coast, was the vernal equinox. Picture the imaginary plane upon which the Earth revolves around the Sun. The Earth is always tilted at an angle of 23.4 degrees. All winter, the southern hemisphere was tilting towards the Sun. This kind of sucks for the northern hemisphere if you don’t snowboard. It even sucks if you have a wetsuit. On the equinox, however, the Earth’s tilt is such that the Sun shines directly on the Equator – the half-way point between the southern and northern hemispheres. “Equinox” – “Equi” meaning “equal”; “ox” meaning not the 53 point Words with Friends move, but the dyslexic Aussie down-under “kiss”. (Their toilets flush backwards too, xo.) More Sun kisses further into the night. Lord knows we all need some more Sun kissing our faces.

Astronomers often mark this equinox as the beginning of a new orbit around the sun. Astrologers start the year with the Sun entering Aries. Since ancient times, it has been known as a time of new beginnings. Think of the great traditions – Easter, Passover, Spring Break, or the bloody human sacrifices of the Mayans at their main pyramid El Castillo at Chichen Itza, Mexico. The main staircase of the pyramid is constructed at such a precise way that, on the day of the equinox, the sun aligns perfectly to create a serpent of sunlight, slithering down the staircase. Ancient Aliens??? Illegal aliens???? No. Stop. Their calendar ended, died, on the winter solstice of 2012. Sometimes people get out of bloody control and too wrapped up in their own customs.

Easter is a nice myth symbolizing rebirth. Kill a savior. Resurrect him. Rebirth. He planted a pretty big seed there. More symbols… Easter eggs. Eggs. Birth, fertility. Someone planted the seed that on the Equinox, you can balance an egg on its end. Well, don’t try this at home. You will die trying. Some myths are out of bloody control. Some are even co-opted by bloody control.

Spring is green. Its not just a fresh coat of paint on new and burned bridges. Green is chlorophyll harnessing the sun and allowing life for billions of years. It ramps up in Spring, rests in Winter. Every year. For billions of years. We are intimately, genetically, directly, connected to this past, its pattern, rhythms, cycles. (And yet, if you want to think esoterically, your mind should die to all past internal and external noise, and be born again with each new moment. This idea, however, gives everyone but the gods, a freaking headache. Which is fine because Spring isn’t a head thing like bloody dogma. Spring imposes its own new prism, new perspective, lessening the need for a good esoteric game.) Go to the beach or walk through town around happy hour on the first sunny 75 degree day of the year. You feel it. You feel the source of Myth. Warmth on your face, ease in your smile, vitality in your core, spring in your step, blood-pumping, aliveness, buzz in the air.

And, clams come out of their shells.

 

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Harbor Seals

…almost overslept

It was a nice morning.

 

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Almost over slept this morning.  Got up, but I was a bit slow getting enough coffee in me after yesterday’s fantastic game.  I wanted to get some landscape shots before the sunrise – I like an hour to a half hour before for photography and observing.  Those times often offer the best color.  Running a bit late, I caught the sun coming up over the ocean, always a blessing, but I missed all the good color from earlier.

The light was still great so I changed plans.  I switched out the wide-angle for the Tamron 150-600mm and went looking for wildlife.  I was hoping to get lucky, maybe see some raptors or a fox.  Drove around a bit, nothing.  Had another thought and this is what I found this morning. (Phoca vitulina)

All shots are cropped considerably, even at 600mm, the harbor seals were pretty far away. Because the low sun was hitting them just right, I set exposure compensation at -1.0, to help prevent any overexposure of the seal’s light fur. (Seal fur, btw, belongs on a seal.)  I was shooting in aperture priority, not manual mode, since I was kind of parked in the middle of the road, with a park ranger behind me tooting his horn for me to get back in my car.

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All shots:   ISO 500, F9.0, 1/1250th sec., 600mm.  The ISO was bumped up to increase shutter speed, as I was hand holding 600mm.  Aperture was 9.0, because this lens is very sharp there, and figured I needed some depth of field.

 

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There are some better places to find seals on Long Island and I will try to hit that in another post.  Seals are federally protected marine mammals.  Please respect them by staying at least 50 yards away.  If your presence alters their behavior, you are too close.

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