A few 30x20 inch prints of some of my recent favourites - Alexandria (Jan 2013)
Seth Godin (*) writes on finding a foundation for our Life Purpose (*):
When we find our own foundation and are supported in our work by those around us, we can get back to first principles, to realizing our own dreams and making our own art by supporting others first and always.
via Open, generous and connected (*) by Seth Godin (*).
Photography is a discovery of life which makes you look at things you’ve never looked at before. It’s about discovering yourself and your place in the world.
Sometimes photography seems abstract, but then something happens that makes it concrete.
Colin Pantall (Tue 06 Nov 2012)
Sometimes you read an almost random post by someone you don't even know - you it find so pertinent and you are deeply touched and you learn something about life and yourself. Today is one such day ..
Colin Pantall (*) writes (*) on the passing of his Mother-in-Law, Elizabeth, last weekend:
I think it was a relief in some ways that she died, because she wasn't independent and it wasn't the way she wanted to live, but at the same time it was a massive shock. Not because of the death, but because of the passing of an era, the end of a living history. You can keep history alive in various ways, but when the person who witnessed it goes, it does spell the end of a chapter. It doesn't mean we should forget it, but there is still some part of a time that has gone. Things have moved on.
He also talks about how someone is remembered through photographs and our memories.
On Photography, he writes:
things are also preserved and the family album does this admirably. It's a shorthand of memory, of history, of an edited and at times idealised past, where certain things are hidden and certain things taken away - sometimes in retrospect. Even so, we still look at it quite objectively as something quite factual.
However, complementing the photos (if they were made and are available), there are the memories to draw upon and the cues (*) that inspire them:
But Elizabeth didn't have those old photos, so I wonder how she will be remembered. Just as words are sometimes better than photographs, so is food. I remember her Slovenian cooking, her gingerbread, her puddings, her cakes and so does my wife.
I have learnt that it is important to remember and in some ways this has become my life purpose (*). As Colin reminds us, there are photos as well as our memories - what we remember.
eljeiffel (*) for me is all these elements of remembering, remembering not only Jenny (*) and those that have gone before us, but my own legacy (*) - the scratches and fractures (even if it is just a couple of photographs of the colours orange and blue, and the hidden memories they evoked in me) I will leave on this world when I am gone.
Blue - Asakusa Kannon Temple / Tokyo (Fri 21 Sep 2012)
Paulo Coelho says, "To realize one's destiny is a person's only obligation."
I'm not fatalistic, and I still believe that we make our choices. Nothing is pre-destined to the point where we're no longer required to act on anything. But I believe that signs guide us to the right path, so that we can achieve our dreams sooner.
These signs are found within us, in the stillness of our hearts, in the deepest recesses of our being.
To actually see them, and recognize them for what they are, we have to clear ourselves of all doubts, fears, and worries. We've got to remove the trappings that stay stuck inside us. We've got to know who we really are and what we're really meant to do. It's a painful task, but it will be even more painful to go through life not knowing our life's purpose, our life's worth.
Listen to your heart. Just try.
(I've always been a mind-over-heart person, but the moment I listened to my heart everything just fell into place. "When you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.")
From Paulo Coelho-isms (Dedicated to my friend, Ellen Joy) (*) via Five Years in Paulo Coelho’s blog (*) and Five Years in Paulo Coelho’s blog (*).
Stumbled across this today. Funny how things work out. Here is a photo from around the initial post was made. Always puts a smile on my face.
Smile - Jenny after a long Chemo Session that day - Kogarah (Jul 2003)
Hands Clean - Alanis Morissette (*) / Live from Abbey Road Live (*) [Youtube (*)]
At the end of the first song Hands Clean (*), Alanis gives this amazing calm and lucid insight into fame and her life purpose. Here it is:
[On] Fame. At this point I would say that it is a planetary value - wealth, fame, power at the cost of everything else.
So I think that value being shared around the planet creates in people this thought that if I am famous, I will be happy.
And what I have come to see is that fame only amplified that which was there already.
So if I was depressed or I if I was insecure or if I was angry or whatever it was it just amplified it.
It made everything bigger and it did not sort of give, give me what it had been sort of purported to be able to give.
And so there was this great disillusionment.
[On Life Purpose] At this point in my life I am clearer that I share music because it is part of my life purpose.
To write it is, the act of writing it is for me and the act of sharing it is so that other people can make it their own - they can derive comfort, inspiration or whatever they want to derive from it.
So it becomes an offering of some kind and because of that I can do it and I can work really hard.
If I were singularly doing it to just be in the public eye for gratuitous reasons, than I would probably last about an hour.
This was recorded sometime in 2008, I am guessing. I saw it late one night on the ABC in February 2009 (*).
It was a rather random viewing and because I knew of Alanis' music, I decided to record her segment of the show on my PVR.
Over the ensuing months I would watch it repeatedly, often in the middle of the night, when Jenny had fallen into a deep sleep. I was mesmerised by Alanis' voice, the musicians that supported her and the live performance. In some ways this video takes me back to those last few months with Jenny and the sense of innocence (*) we all had with what we were about to confront (*).
Alanis' words, reflects the the depth of her experience and her delivery touched me back in 2009, and they touch me even more now because of the memories they evoke three years on, as well as her insights into life purpose, something that I have had to grapple with when you feel you have fulfilled your purpose in life.
This recording takes me back to those nights before Jenny's passing where I would watch this video safe in the comfort that she was in the next room, breathing and still with us.
Tonight, I have captured this part of my life here - I tried to add it to my blog back in early 2010, but it was too hard back then. For some reason it seems right to add it now, though I have not been able to fully explain here why. I just think it is amazing.
