Tag: Darkness

The Water Tower Above Glover Park

by Ebb Then Flood

 

IMG_3083 (2)‘The Water Tower Above Glover Park’

Glover Park, in Auckland’s eastern suburbs, was an idyllic scene a couple of days ago in the warm autumn sunshine.

People, dogs, prams, sports balls everywhere, in a natural grassy bowl surrounded by leafy arboreal splendour. Everyone practicing social distancing while trying to be and look friendly. Bliss!

Then there’s this brutalist concrete exemplar on a ridge, watching silently over it all.

I remember it from when I was the same age as the children running around in the park.

Ugly, grimy and slightly sinister in appearance, even bathed in sun.

I, for one, need the foreboding form to complete the scene – you can’t have all that light without a little darkness…

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The Very Necessary Narrow View

by Ebb Then Flood

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Window, Tower of London      October 2019

We all want to be seen to be broad minded and to be the one to take the wider perspective.

This shot of a window in the Tower of London (a prison to many unfortunates centuries ago) gives a little lie to that virtue.

For there is a time to take the narrow view.

When it is the only view.

When you are in darkness, or a jail of circumstances beyond your control.

Then the sliver of light and the merest glimpse of the exterior is enough to give hope.

Some small positivity, manageable to a damaged spirit.

The whole luminescent world of possibility is too much to contemplate in that grim time.

If you are there, as I have undoubtedly been, it’s okay to do only what you can and take the narrow view…

Fog Inside My Head

by Ebb Then Flood

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I can remember where I took this picture.

It was in the hill country just north of Taumaranui in the central North Island, at a highway rest stop.

I  can describe the weather.

There was a fog, like smoke, opaque and wispy at turns, drifting through the pines and scrub, leaving all damp to the touch.

But I truly know what fog feels like.

For it was in my head, in a troubled time, when there was no clarity and no respite and for a brief period, no hope.

And even though I have climbed out of the worst of it, there are still moments, small intervals, when the fog returns from banishment.

Very frustratingly, I might add.

Then I remember that the fog must lift, and the sun come through, as it did a only a few minutes down the road…