I love this time of year. The days are warm with a slight bite in the air. Everything seems brighter and clearer. Edges are sharply defined.Each minute holds a thousand memories. Memory slips into moment, triggered by the quality of light or the smell of burning leaves.
Light reflects from the sky onto a leaf and into my eyes. Cool air flows from a garden wall towards my arm. The sky is a deep autumn blue.
I would love to be a leaf. In autumn I will gently float on the breeze.
I have been hunting the sound of the wind rustling through leaves. My ears follow sounds. I listen and wait. Metaphors shyly emerge.
I would love to be a leaf. In autumn I will gently float on the breeze.
I have been hunting the sound of the wind rustling through leaves. My ears follow sounds. I listen and wait. Metaphors shyly emerge.
Rain patters on a grass roof.A car swishes down a wet road. Drops explode on the roof.
Leaves beating a melody become drops falling on the sea and beach. Branches dip and fall like waves.
From a Freestate lawn I once watched a flock of pigeons circling in the air above me. Their wings beat against the air like leaves and their bodies followed the pattern of branches. Their hearts are connected to their home like branches to a tree. 
Some trees surrender to a ferocious dance. Others gently sway their arms and reach towards the breeze with their fingers. Some trees do not sweep. They do not gently sway. I stand under them but I hear no sound. They soundlessly readjust their leaves as if waiting for a climax. Does a leaf revel in its freedom?
Dancing in the wind, you gracefully float downwards. The earth’s warm moist embrace enfolds you until tree roots claim you back. Slowly you feed into cells. One day you push back out into the spring. At night you rest under the stars.
Today in mid workshop grumble I recognise the space I’m operating from. I am observing my world as a victim. I guard against slights, put shields up to keep rejection out and curl up when anger sweeps past me .
But I am free to react in whichever way I please. I take a deep breath and straighten my shoulders. I recognise the emptiness of the moment. I can fill it with fear or a joyful power. The choice is mine.
*
It might not sound like much but suddenly I am entering into a new unknown space. I am shifting a pattern. A million new ways of being presents themselves to me. I become a leaf trembling on the branch of opportunity waiting for the wind to sweep me up towards the stars.
Today in mid workshop grumble I recognise the space I’m operating from. I am observing my world as a victim. I guard against slights, put shields up to keep rejection out and curl up when anger sweeps past me . 
But I am free to react in whichever way I please. I take a deep breath and straighten my shoulders. I recognise the emptiness of the moment. I can fill it with fear or a joyful power. The choice is mine.*
It might not sound like much but suddenly I am entering into a new unknown space. I am shifting a pattern. A million new ways of being presents themselves to me. I become a leaf trembling on the branch of opportunity waiting for the wind to sweep me up towards the stars.*
See more selfportraits here.
*
ps. I will come visit on Friday - Long day, late night
10 comments:
these photos are hauntingly beautiful. now i can go back and read your words. i just wanted to absorb the beauty of the images first.
I've never been able to capture that blue in your photos, the blue in the sky that happens at just the right time of day. It's the most magical blue there is and it gives everyone's skin a silvery glow.
I think we all view the world as a victim sometimes. We are all vulnerable but only the strongest of us admits it. Reading words from people I have so much in common with-the blogworld makes me feel normal....
Your photos are beautiful as always. I love all the leaves. Just today I thought I smelled spring in the air...different season, many same sentiments.
" It might not sound like much but suddenly I am entering into a new unknown space. I am shifting a pattern. A million new ways of being presents themselves to me. I become a leaf trembling on the branch of opportunity waiting for the wind to sweep me up towards the stars."
this seems so achingly familiar to me. jeezus. i can't wait to see what you metamorphose (sp? word?) into.
hel, your comments on my blog are always so perfect they make me cry. thank you for your support. i really do appreciate it.
you don't seem like a victim to me, hel. in fact, every time i com here i think, wow. look at her go.
and every time you do your self portraits, i think, wow, isn't hel beautiful.
glad to see Kiki here. Kiki is good people.
It's true what you say, I think, we can choose how we want to be, where we want to come from. I love reading your posts and love your photos.
This will sound stupid but I didn't know that trees lost their leaves in South Africa. I just assumed they were year round, never thought of seasons in Africa. In my mind it's hot and green, all the time and in a much different way from here. But it probably isn't so different.
I love autumn. People say that it's spring where you feel a renewal, but I've always felt that way most in the fall. I always attributed it to having a late summer birthday.
You are definitely making your own choices, and the results are astounding. Thank you.
Wow.. what pictures! Good that you recognize the cycles. We often shift how we perceive the world, day to day. There's really no need to intentionally change much because we learn a little bit from all of it. :)
Peace,
~Chani
That's an important realization to make. I stopped seeing the world from a victim's eye ( and boy, did I before ) when I realized giving other people the power to make me unhappy was just stupid. Brutal as it is, the chances of the people you encounter day to day caring enough, as a group, to make you happy, is slim. They'd rather do something for themselves and the fallout from that will make you unhappy if you let it.
I'm happier now and I fit my place in the world better. There is some trade-offs for a new world view. Nothing in this world, it seems, is free. I still have the better of the deal; I'm content to lose what I gave up and treasure what I received.
Spring is slowly advancing, a step at a time, then shrinking back. Seasons are shy in this part of the world. They arrive gently, they do not rage - but once arrived they spread out and become comfortable and take over. I've never been so consistently HOT as I've been over the past summer, nor as consistently FREEZING as I've been over the winter. Weeks of 40C plus temps, then weeks where it never got above 8C and went down below with ease. Brrrrrrrr. It makes the world more real, though. It made me more alive. It peeled away a shell of carefully constructed indifference, a shield against the world. Yeah, every so often I still discover one of those and I have to puzzle over it. Only the walls of Jericho came down in a week, and it took a heck of a lot of faith.
No season beats autumn for blue skies, no season beats spring for a promise of renewal.
What a beautiful post -- both the photos and the writing.
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