Category Archives: photography

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Maxfield Parish clouds I

This is for photrablogger’s Mundane Monday Challenge #58, though Monday didn’t feel mundane at all! My son graduated from WSU this weekend and we were in Pullman, in the frenzy of excited students and parents and families.

The photograph is from last Monday. I left chorus and the clouds put on a gorgeous show over Port Townsend Bay, light and lit like a Maxfield Parish painting….

Congratulations to all of the graduates everywhere….

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The legs go last

This if for photrablogger’s Mundane Monday #56…. his photograph is shadow and angles and stairs and pattern. This is my legs, on a run on Saturday, and yes, that is Princess Leia helping me to be brave about rebuilding my muscles…. the feet are not a horribly deformed rash but a pair of toe shoes for running. I like going barefoot, but my feet aren’t toughened enough and it’s cold in the mornings! Not real icy cold, but 50 and wet.

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J is for joy

J is for joy.

Do you feel joy sometimes? Are you joyous? Joyful?

From Webster 1913: The passion or emotion excited by the acquisition or expectation of good; pleasurable feelings or emotions caused by success, good fortune, and the like, or by a rational prospect of possessing what we love or desire; gladness; exhilaration of spirits; delight.

From dictionary.com: the emotion of great delight or happiness caused by something exceptionally good or satisfying; keen pleasure; elation.

I took the photograph two weekends ago. My daughter was racing, category 2 mountain bike race, three laps, four miles each. I was walking the course backwards with a friend. We had to be alert and step off the path every time a rider was coming. There were around 100 riders in category 2, all ages, men and women. We stopped to take photographs and cheer for everyone and especially our team!

A rider on the first lap had an asthma attack from all the pollen, and we walked him back out. I walked the bike while he concentrated on breathing. We stopped again to take pictures and then he could ride out. I walked on, listening for bikes, and there were trillium along the path….

I don’t think I can feel joy unless I also admit grief and all of the other feelings. It’s like weather, emotions come and go and may or may not feel like they make sense. If we refuse a feeling, it just seems to get stronger and rather panicky and keep bothering us…. until we treat it like the guest in Rumi’s poem.

Grief comes, and can be sweeping our mind clean for a new joy.