“Holding A Light Out For You”
…you know, because I always will…
Tag: Light
To The Island In The Light
‘To The Island In the Light’
Islands hold a special fascination for me.
There is something about there compactness, their isolation, their very apartness – that draws me like a magnet.
“Why should islands exert such an exceptional appeal? Why should so proportionately a small area of the earth loom so large in our awareness? What is the secret of the special excitement generated when people are isolated and surrounded by water?”
– John S. Bowman, ‘A Book Of Islands’
I have no real answers to the above questions, but I post this photo of craggy Taranga Island, in New Zealand’s Bream Bay, rising from the sea and bathed in light, as some sort of response to them.
In my mind, I go to the island in the light…
Night Stripes
‘Night Stripes’
…wild stripes of leaf and light rage against the dark night…
Mudstalking In Golden Light
‘Mudstalking In Golden Light’
A white-faced heron manages the neat trick of managing to walk gracefully through thick, oozing mud, illuminated by late afternoon sunlight.
I love to watch their slow, deliberate stalking gait as they forage. If they find something edible, the slo mo stuff ends with rapid beak-led motion towards their prey.
Please Slide To Open
‘Please Slide To Open’
There is a chink of light outside the door.
Slide the door.
Don’t pull it, or push it.
There is a slight opening, which will get bigger as you go.
Ease into the light, for you cannot force it.
Outside awaits you.
Guiding Light
‘Guiding Light’
When it all gets a bit tangled and gloomy, we all need a guiding light, someone or something, to see us through.
Song for the day, to match, from Television’s classic 1977 debut album, ‘Marquee Moon’:
“Guiding light, guiding light
guiding through these nights”
Shadows On The Diagonal
‘Shadows On The Diagonal’
… shaded and slanted…
The Water Tower Above Glover Park
‘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…
Daylight Will Not Be Saved
‘Pohutukawa Branches & Sea’
New Zealand ends daylight saving hours this weekend, as the northern part of the country basks in glorious sunshine and the weight of Covid-19 diminishes the glow without totally extinguishing it.
So, the daylight hours “saved” will now be “lost” again!
If daylight itself cannot be preserved it leads me to wonder exactly just what can be saved right now.
I’ll settle for saving my sanity and, in doing so, remind myself that you can’t save everything and everyone, not even yourself sometimes. You can just do the next right thing, whatever it is, for yourself and others, in any given moment and then keep doing so in those that follow…
Meanwhile, I will make the most of the fading warmth and light of autumn. It is still my favourite time of year in my neck of the woods. The picture above was taken on a gentle coastal walk yesterday.
Stay safe, if not saved, people!
Lighthouse On The Rock
‘Lighthouse On The Rock’
…during troubled, or even dangerous times, we are grateful for signifiers of hope and light, and those things that are certain and safe…
The Very Necessary Narrow View
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…
The Eye Begins To See
“In a dark time, the eye begins to see.”
– Theodore Roethke
You can’t regret dark times, if through that darkness you come to appreciate the light and see life afresh…
Where There’s Smoke…
An eerie orange light in the middle of the day in Auckland.
This is not normal, I assure you.
The cause is smoke from the enormous bush fires in Australia, blowing some 2200 kilometres or more on westerly winds.
The sun is occluded and the sky’s light is as spooky as the events across the Tasman are tragic.
Thoughts and prayers to those affected.
Through The Twilight
“You cannot, in human experience, rush into the light. You have to go through the twilight into the broadening day before the noon comes and the full sun is upon the landscape.” – Woodrow Wilson
Those words sum up my own experience; my picture recreates its memory and serves as a reminder.
When you know a darkness, it is tempting, when you are leaving it, to want to parade in the fullness of light.
However, in the ‘tween time – the twilight – you get to really know show the shapes and forms of the important things, dimly lit as they are.You feel them deeply, even as you peer though the mystical interplay of shadows and light.
There will be plenty of time for full light to illumine all the details…
Summer Sets The Scene
Here be summer.
Coming on, and growing by the shortening day. We’ve just passed the longest day but the weather will get hotter. That’s odd I think.
But maybe it’s all about intensity.
Quality, not quantity and all that.
The qualities of scorching heat and brilliant UV-blitzed light will inhabit our little part of the planet, and suffuse us with those same elements, as if by osmosis.
Languid days will create relaxed, kinder people.Doing just what they fancy, just because they can. Holidays at this time of year certainly help!
And we will be, temporarily at least, the best versions of ourselves, all flowers and blues skies.
So, the scene is set…let play begin!
I’d Be Lost Without You
All my life I have had fascination with maps and cartography (the mapmaker’s art). I have a geography degree that hasn’t earned me a cent, but I don’t care.
As a child, I would pore over atlases and maps with their linear representations of different parts of the world – seas, mountains, rivers ,deserts, towns and cities.
I would get lost in those pages and charts, but a good lost, y’know ?
I took this photo of an old map on my recent travels in Scotland. It depicts Fife and its coastline. Heights in feet, depths in fathoms, as it was, but nothing out of the ordinary.
Look closer.
It’s really a guide to the lost and endangered, or maybe a series of warnings to prevent yourself getting in those predicaments in the first place.
Beacons, lights, storm signals and lifeboats(!) and their locations.
Because (and I say this from harsh experience),when you are truly lost (the bad lost), you need external direction and you must heed the signals that you receive from around you.
You might have a moral compass, but you ,alone, cannot be your own map…
Atrium
My UK domiciled Kiwi cousin recently got married at a wedding venue there, sporting this splendidly ornate atrium.
Architecturally, an atrium is designed to give a feeling of space and light.
Cynics might claim that marriage does the exact opposite, but I wish her both those things…
To Get To The Light
Sometimes you will have to enter forbidding places and pass through darkness to get to the light.
Candelabra
Fifteen candles on a candelabra in the sacristy of Barcelona’s iconic Sagrada Familia, which I was fortunate to visit yesterday.
Very elegant in a gothic sort of way.
Sort of complicated too, for an article whose sole purpose is to shed a little light on things.
But that is religion in a nutshell I guess…
All That Glitters…Gets Boxed In
It’s the way of the world.
If something is shiny and precious enough, it gets assigned a value over and above its basic elements.
And like this very yellow gold jewellery in an Asian glass display cabinet, it gets boxed in.
To be admired, shown off and micro-examined by others with their own motivations, good or otherwise.
I have seen it with people I know or are well aware of – once you are on constant display there is a polished role or roles to be played.
That person might still shine but their light is often captured in the box of others.
A gold bracelet has an amplified worth, but it had a unique molecular character and purity before the artisan’s touch gave it a lustre to be lusted after, or sold to someone with enough cash.
We are all valuable in our own right, and really need just enough glimmer to throw light on the free path we are on.
ebb then flood 