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ALTERNATE ENDINGS
There are times when they gather at the edge of your life,
Shadows slipping over the far hills, daffodils
blooming too early, the dark matter of the universe
that threads its way through the few thousand blackbirds
that have invaded the trees out back. Every ending
sloughs off our dreams like snakeskin. This is the kind of
black ice the mind skids across. The candlelight burning down
into the sand. The night leaving its ashes in our eyes.
There are times when your voice turns over in my sleep.
It is no longer blind. The sky is no longer deaf.
There are times when it seems the stars practice
all night just to become fireflies, when it seems there is
no end to what our hearts scribble on corridor walls.
Only when we look at each other do we cease to be ourselves.
Only at a certain height does the smoke blend into air.
There are times when your words seem welded to that sky.
There are times when love is so complicated it circles
like chimney swifts unable to decide where to land.
There are endings so sad their shadows scuff the dirt.
Their sky is as inconsolable as the two year old, Zahra,
torn from her mother and beaten to death in the Sudan.
There are endings so sad I want the morning light
to scourge the fields. Endings that are only what the river
dreams when it dries up. Endings that are constant echoes.
There are times when I think we are satellites collecting
dust from one of the earlier births of the universe Don't give up.
Each ending is an hourglass filled with doors. There are times
when I feel you might be searching for me, when I can read
what is written on the far sides of stars. I'm nearly out of time.
My heart is a dragonfly. I'll have to settle for this, standing under
a waterfall of words you never said. There are times like this
when no ending appears, times when I am so inconsolably happy.
- Richard Jackson
I did eventually let him out on open water, since he promised me he would bring the boat back in. I also let him know if he didnt stay nearby I would leave without him. Its a big big world for a small pup, I dont think he liked the idea of being stranded out there, even if he would never admitt that.
And still, the ripe fruit and the branch
Observe the sky begin to blanch
Without a cry, without a prayer
With no betrayal of despair
Oh courage! Could you not as well
Select a second place to dwell
Not only in that golden tree
But in the frightened heart of me?
Danny's Pulsar GTI-R in Vancouver's Chinatown. July 14, 2007.
You might notice the posters in the background... yes, David Beckham will be coming to Vancouver on October 3, 2007 when the Los Angeles Galaxy play an exhibition game against the Vancouver Whitecaps. As a Whitecaps fan, I'm hoping the team can pull together and give Becks a damn good run for his money. "Come on Whitecaps, come on Whitecaps!"
Polymer clay handmade painting. Came out of the pasta machine by pure coincidence. I just added a seagull later.:)
Hi my wonderful friends.. just wanted to tell you all that I will not be on flickr as much in the next week.. My one and only dear daughter is coming to visit us.. she is flying in from Phoenix tomorrow.. I am so very excited.. can't wait to see her. It has been well over a year since we have seen her. Can't wait to hug her and talk with her.. :-)
I will check in from time to time and visit as many of your awesome images as time permits me.. :-)
Take care and I will be back at full speed soon.. :-)
Nick Boren Photography © 2010
We take up most of the population
and we are ready for change.
One photo left! Can't believe this series is almost over.
St Margaret, Thrandeston, Suffolk
Thrandeston is a lovely village, with that illusion of remoteness which East Anglia does so well. I love coming back here. We are less than a hundred miles from central London, but we might as well be in the Middle Ages. As with several villages in this part of Suffolk, what looks at first sight as if it should be the village green is in fact unenclosed common pasture land, with the result that it is a nature reserve of some significance. The few houses of the village are scattered around this large triangle, and most of them are beautiful.
This was, I suppose, my half-dozenth visit. Away from the main roads, you can cycle for miles in this part of Suffolk without meeting a car, or even another human being. On one occasion as I cycled into Thrandeston, my eye was caught by a large adult male muntjac deer, watching me from beneath a tree in the hedgerow. Captivated, I stopped to watch. It looked like a tiny cow. It didn’t run, but stared at me insolently for a moment, before turning and trotting off towards the embankment, the white scut of its tail bobbing all the while.
Today, a big rabbit bolted across the common as I cycled past. This was all at ten o’clock on a Saturday morning, and such a contrast with the bustle I had left behind in Ipswich town centre. People who live in Thrandeston are very fortunate. The serenity of the village is reflected by the church and graveyard, which stand a little way from the green.
In fact, I had been here a couple of weeks previously, on the Sunday morning, hoping to revisit and rephotograph the church. But the Sunday morning service had just started and I must admit that I had been a bit disappointed (yes, I know that's what the churches are here for). But standing outside reminded me how lovely this church was, and so it was hard to resist coming back so soon.
The 15th century tower has a dedicatory inscription. It remembers that the Sulyards and the Cornwallises had it built. At the other end of the church, the chancel weeps more dramatically than that of any other Suffolk church, which is to say it is at a slight angle to the nave. This will be even more apparent inside, of course. It is a reminder that naves and chancels were built at different times by different people, often on the site of earlier ones. It should be more of a surprise to us that so few weep, rather than that any do at all. The porch and clerestory are typical Suffolk perpendicular, but on a small, intimate scale. Inside the church, the silence is punctuated only by the birdsong from the churchyard and the occasional passing car.
A 17th Century poor box stands in front of the late 15th Century font, symbols of the evangelists alternating with Tudor roses. The view east is to the rood screen, rough and rustic with little figures in the spandrels - crowned angels, two other angels blowing the wind, while yet another angel holds a spear, which you might think an instrument of the passion were it not for the fact he is defending himself against a dragon creeping up from the other spandrel. The nave benches are low and narrow, and it is easy to imagine the 19th century citizens of Thrandeston huddled together in them. The benches at the west end of the nave have lovely medieval carvings. St Peter holds his key, St John his poisoned chalice, and what must be a crouching St Bartholomew holding a flencing knife (or is it St St Simon, holding the tail of a broken fish?
These bench ends are somewhat overshadowed by those in the chancel, though. Here, parts of the rood loft and pieces of 17th Century panelling have been cobbled together to make a stall. In the central entrance stand two most extraordinary figures. They are female. One hitches up her skirt, and they both carry animals. One has a cat, the other what may be an owl. Mortlock says that it is hard to resist the notion that they are witches. But where do they come from, and why are they here? Almost certainly, they are 17th Century, and originally from a domestic setting. A similar figure is carved on a wooden mantelpiece at Christchurch Mansion in Ipswich, and I have come across several others on similar furnishings.
They have a misogynistic feel to them, and were no doubt originally inspired by the witch hunt hysteria of the middle of the 17th Century, which was a strong one in this part of East Anglia. Under Cromwell, the Commonwealth persecuted thousands of people to their death, many of whom were old women. Their crime? Perhaps they lived alone, and kept themselves apart from other people. Perhaps they practised natural medicine, or could be called upon if a woman was having difficulties in childbirth. Perhaps some of them were Catholics, and thus didn’t participate in the austere and lengthy services of the Puritan church. Whatever, they were considered witches, and therefore evil, and were drowned, or hung, or burnt. There is no one as superstitious as an extreme protestant.
With this rather sobering thought it is pleasant to turn to a window on the north side of the nave which contains a collection of fragments of medieval glass. Lots of churches have some like this, but these here are particularly pleasing. The feet of a bird, possibly the eagle of St John, the forked beard of God the Father, an angel hand plucking strings, a group of 15th century cockerels that might easily be roaming Thrandeston common but are probably from a heraldic shield, and below them part of an inscription that was once so common but is now so rare that you wouldn't know about it if it didn't exist in places like this: Orate pro Animabus, it reads, 'pray for our souls...'
Contemporary with the glass is an inscription for one of the Cornwallises set in brass in the chancel wall. It is for Elizabeth Cornwaleys. It begins Of your charitie, pray for the sowle of Mistress Elizabeth Cornwaleys. It was missing from this church for three hundred years, thanks to vandals or collectors, but was returned here in the mid-19th century. There are a couple of other, later, brass inscriptions in the chancel.
The chancel windows contain some interesting 19th Century glass by William Wailes. They commemorate two children of the Lee-French family. Hugh Spencer Lee-French died in 1860 at the age of 22 months. He is depicted in one light being held by Christ as a demonstration of the Kingdom of God, and in the other being somewhat dramatically borne up by an angel from the globe of the earth to the lights of heaven above. The other is to Thomas Broadley Lee-French, who died at the age of 11 in 1866. In one light he is depicted as the young Samuel telling the priest Eli that he has heard the voice of God, and in the other as the young Christ being found by his parents teaching in the temple. A third window is in a similar style, the Good Samaritan pouring healing oils on to the beaten man's wounds, as St Peter falls to his knees as he watches Christ walk on water, but it is not of the same quality and may even not be by the same workshop.
Looking down on all this, the 19th Century corbels to the roof depict a diverse array of heads. A Moor and a Negro are perhaps tributes to the Victorian empire, while the woman in a wimple harks back to the 14th Century. By the chancel arch, a man whose arms seem to grow from his head cackles manically. At the other end of the nave, an ugly man gurns, perhaps suffering from toothache, a popular late medieval depiction.
A church full of drama, then, fascinating and lovely.
FUEGO • MERCE • P.ONE
A stitched panorama made from 8 original photos.
This photo is better viewed: LARGE
Benched in the rain - Los Angeles County, CA
at Chernivtsi is our pair of back to back semi permanantly coupled M62 Diesel locos. These or rather this locomotive did virtually all of the distance haulage or banking of the rather heavy tour train. Although a 'Steam' tour, lack of watering facilities and the infirm nature of all but one of them saw their use confined to run-pasts and even then the Diesel had involvement in most, usually running on one of it's two engines. As a class, these Soviet built 1900+ hp (x2) M62s seem capable of equalling a steam loco's exhaust ability.
The branch line heading off up the hill in the picture heads from here across into Romania.
I shot this photo near the Itami airport, Osaka.
This airport is very popular with aircraft photography enthusiasts because the distance between the end of the runway and the outer fence is very short.
It's been so long since I posted, this place seems familiar but foreign at the same time to me. Flickr was a starting point for me in photography and I gleaned a lot of inspiration from this place. From a fan of photography to actually picking up the camera...I owe something to this place. I look at who I followed, what photos I liked and posted, and I really see I used to care and tried to be creative. Life has twists and turn and I'm trying to get that desire back with personal work. I don't shoot much of what I want or plan anymore...it's 95% just happenstance. This shot taken a few months ago was an attempt to do "personal" work. This post is just a hi, and maybe a slight reminder to myself (or you) to get out there and keep trying. Peace to you.