by ruralpearl | Oct 7, 2012 | Inspiration, Photos
Rural Atchison County, KS, Oct. 5, 2012
Waiting Afield at Dusk
By Robert Frost
What things for dream there are when spectre-like,
Moving among tall haycocks lightly piled,
I enter alone upon the stubble field,
From which the laborers’ voices late have died,
And in the antiphony of afterglow
And rising full moon, sit me down
Upon the full moon’s side of the first haycock
And lose myself amid so many alike.
I dream upon the opposing lights of the hour,
Preventing shadow until the moon prevail;
I dream upon the night-hawks peopling heaven,
Each circling each with vague unearthly cry,
Or plunging headlong with fierce twang afar;
And on the bat’s mute antics, who would seem
Dimly to have made out my secret place,
Only to lose it when he pirouettes,
And seek it endlessly with purblind haste;
On the last swallow’s sweep; and on the rasp
In the abyss of odor and rustle at my back,
That, silenced by my advent, finds once more,
After an interval, his instrument,
And tries once–twice–and thrice if I be there;
And on the worn book of old-golden song
I brought not here to read, it seems, but hold
And freshen in this air of withering sweetness;
But on the memory of one absent most,
For whom these lines when they shall greet her eye.
by ruralpearl | Oct 4, 2012 | Inspiration, Photos
I took a break from work last evening and sipped some hot tea on my deck while watching my local squirrels skitter around. I’m making a point to take full advantage of these autumn evenings before it’s too cold.. And of course, there’s a poem to go with everything:
To A Squirrel At Kyle-Na-No
by William Butler Yeats
Come play with me;
Why should you run
Through the shaking tree
As though I’d a gun
To strike you dead?
When all I would do
Is to scratch your head
And let you go.
by ruralpearl | Sep 18, 2012 | Inspiration, Photos
My last couple days have been filled with so much goodness.. No shortage of beauty and inspiration around me. Here’s a bunch of photos from a jaunt out into the country this evening — Atchison County, KS, 9/18/12.
by ruralpearl | Aug 25, 2012 | Inspiration, Photos
“I take photographs with love, so I try to make them art objects. But I make them for myself first and foremost – that is important.” -Jacques-Henri Lartigue
I’m sitting in my old bedroom at my mom’s house listening to the welcome sound of rain beating down, and I’m scrapping any plans for going out with my camera this morning (lest it lets up and I can run outside with my magnifying glass and scare the neighbors as I lay on the ground or in the bushes doing weird things with my camera). The cracks in the dry earth around here were beginning to open wide enough to fall through (not literally, but…) and this rain is like a huge sigh of relief for all life. I might just go and run through it for kicks. When I get stuck out in the rain, I like to throw my hands up in the sky and yell in my head, “Universe, baptize me!” I welcome it all.
Anyway, there are a few times that I’m doing something where I feel most present, including making a paper cutting and hitting the outdoors with my camera. I love the desolation of gravel roads, but there’s also plenty to look at even in my backyard. Having my camera allows me without effort to be totally in the now and observant, constantly searching for things to look at more closely and to record. It also gives me another avenue to be creative.
It lets me become part of my environment. I don’t feel like an outsider taking a picture. I feel like I’m inside, connecting with everything around me.
I feel like when I’m looking as closely as I do with my camera, I can really connect to the spirit of the trees or flowers or rocks or animals or whatever it is I’m photographing.
The more closely and deeply I look, the more there is to find..
“Where there is perhaps a province in which the photograph can tell us nothing more than what we see with our own eyes, there is another in which it proves to us how little our eyes permit us to see.” -Dorthea Lange
by ruralpearl | Aug 10, 2012 | Inspiration, Photos
by ruralpearl | Aug 9, 2012 | Inspiration, Photos
I sooo wanted to sleep out here tonight… More photos to come.
by ruralpearl | Aug 2, 2012 | Inspiration, Photos
An amazing evening and morning spent paddling around on Perry Lake. The best part: sleeping on a dropcloth underneath the first full moon of August, the Sturgeon Moon. It felt so natural to be out there under the sky looking at the stars (and thanking them profusely. Dang, I’m so fortunate for so many things..). A rain shower and lightning show moved us to our cars around 3:30am, but who can complain. We needed the rain and it didn’t put a damper on our plans.
“Here, start living moment to moment totally and intensely, joyfully and playfully — and you will see that nothing goes out of control; that your intelligence becomes sharper; that you become younger; that your love becomes deeper. And when you go out into the world, wherever you go, spread life, playfulness, joy, as far away as possible — to every nook and corner of the earth.” -Osho
by ruralpearl | Jul 30, 2012 | Inspiration, Photos
Colorado City, CO, 2012.
“The lamp burns bright when wick and oil are clean.” -Ovid
by ruralpearl | Jul 29, 2012 | Inspiration, Photos
Along the trail around Bear Lake, RMNP, Colorado, 2012.
“You air that serves me with breath to speak!
You objects that call from diffusion my meanings, and give them shape!
You light that wraps me and all things in delicate equable showers!
You paths worn in the irregular hollows by the roadsides!
I think you are latent with unseen existences—you are so dear to me.”
-Walt Whitman, from Song of the Open Road
by ruralpearl | Jul 27, 2012 | Inspiration, Photos
Pine cone at the Alluvial Fan, Rocky Mountain National Park, 2012.
“It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.” -Henry David Thoreau
