One Short Post Containing One Photo, One Poem, One Order

One photo: One branch, two catkins, four leaves.

One pussy willow branch

One poem:

One Hundred Love Sonnets: XVII
Pablo Neruda
Translated by Mark Eisner

I don’t love you as if you were a rose of salt, topaz,
or arrow of carnations that propagate fire:
I love you as one loves certain obscure things,
secretly, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that doesn’t bloom but carries
the light of those flowers, hidden, within itself,
and thanks to your love the tight aroma that arose
from the earth lives dimly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where,
I love you directly without problems or pride:
I love you like this because I don’t know any other way to love,
except in this form in which I am not nor are you,
so close that your hand upon my chest is mine,
so close that your eyes close with my dreams.

One word comment: Discuss.

This post is part of the Blogging A to Z Challenge. Today’s letter is O. Thanks for stopping by. Please leave a comment and let me know what you think. You can find other A to Z participants by clicking on the graphic. You’ll find an index of all of my A to Z blog posts here.

Ah! Bright Wings

God’s Grandeur,
~ Gerard Manley Hopkins

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs —
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

Honeysuckle

Honeysuckle blossom

Close-up

This post is part of the Blogging A to Z Challenge. Today’s letter is H. Thanks for stopping by. Please leave a comment and let me know what you think. You can find other A to Z participants by clicking on the graphic. You’ll find an index of all of my A to Z blog posts here.

Sunday Quote (2012 Week 15)

“The future depends on what we do in the present.” – Mahatma Gandhi

A pretty flower

Entwined, Entangled

On land:

Tree And Vine

Entwined Branches

Entwined, Twisted

Interdependent

Thorny Entanglment

And by the sea…

Entanglement on the Beach

In The Wrack Line

Washed Ashore

Pen Shell and Seaweed

Entwined Sea Life: Brittle Stars and Whelk Egg Case

This post is part of the Blogging A to Z Challenge. Today’s letter is E. Thanks for stopping by. Please leave a comment and let me know what you think. You can find other A to Z participants by clicking on the graphic. You’ll find an index of all of my A to Z blog posts here.

Pretty Data Sets

Beautiful images.   Check it out.

Sunday Quote (2012 Week 13)

“The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have little.” ~ FDR

High-Low Water Marks: Treading Water Underneath Bridges

Weekly Photo Challenge: Through

Straight Through to the Falls

This is my entry for the WordPress Weekly Photo Challenge.

I took this picture a few weeks ago. It is the same bridge in the photograph I used for last week’s challenge. I like how the bridge supports create a frame for the waterfall in the background. This is at a point where the creek divides briefly into several streams before coming together at the dam. So, while the bridge is over the creek, it is also provides a few to the same creek, not looking perpendicular to the bridge but intersecting the supports. To see this, you have to be facing the in a southern direction, the same direction as the creek flows, but look westward to see the fall that is on the south side of the roadway. It is a view that thousands of people crossing through the busy intersection daily would never see from their cars.

The Internet Changes Everything, Even Art

I came across this video today Art in the Era of the Internet and found it very interesting. The video features discussions about how internet innovations are changing copyright, arts funding, and collaborative art projects.

Art in the Era of the Internet | Off Book | PBS – YouTube.

I wasn’t familiar with Off Book, a web-only series from PBS. Here is their promo for this piece:

The Internet has intensified connections between people across the planet. In this episode of OFF BOOK, we take a look at the impact of the this new interconnectivity on the art world. Traditional funding models are dissolving, new forms of expressing ownership have arisen to accommodate for remix culture, and artists are finding ways to connect physical art experiences and traditions to the Internet. In the digital era, the experience of art from the perspective of the artist and the art audience is shifting rapidly, and bringing more people into the creative process.

I started to write some rambling thoughts on the work and impact of the three companies represented in this video — Kickstarter, Creative Commons, & The Creators Project — but decided that each could easily be a post.

Here are three quotes from the video:

Lawrence Lessing, cofounder of Creative Commons: My creative utopia is that we have a huge proportion of all of us creating all the time.

Yancey Strickler, co-Founder of Kickstarter, There is no pre-concept whatsoever to the kinds of things that can be made. And I think that is a very powerful opportunity.

Ciel Hunter and Julia Kaganskiy, of the Creators Project
The internet is forcing us to broaden what an artist’s studio should look like.

Do you agree? How is the internet changing how we experience the arts? Are there other ways than what is mentioned in this video? Are these changes positive for the arts? For artists? For audiences? Or are there pitfalls to them as well?

One of the issues that I toss around in my head is whether the “freedom” of anyone to create on the internet is good for every one. Surely there are benefits — and I’ve experienced some of those. (Hello, reader!) But, I think that there are legitimate concerns over the differences between “freedom” and “free”, and sometimes I think that hobbyists (as I am) can sometimes lessen the value of art. The cacophony of voices on the internet can drown out all of the individuals. Fickleness determines if something goes “viral”. We’re all famous for a few minutes — far less than 15, I think. It’s all gone in a nanosecond. If it’s gone, is it still art? Does it matter if we value creativity but not the artist or his/her body of work? Can it all co-exist? Is there really an “internet” community or just small parochial circles that have little contact and even less relevance to other self-contained “communities”?

OK. That is far more than just a few blog posts and a lot of questions for a late Wednesday night! What are your thoughts on any of these questions or on the Off Book video?

PBS Off Book’s Tumbler can be found here.

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Photo Friday: Pristine

This week’s Photo Friday Assignment is Pristine.

From The American Heritage Dictionary:
adj.
1.
a. Remaining in a pure state, without human alteration: a pristine stream.
b. Remaining free from dirt or decay; clean: pristine mountain snow.
2. Of, relating to, or typical of the earliest time or condition; primitive or original.

What better example to illustrate pristine than an untainted stretch of beach on a warm and cloudless day?

Mangroves And Beach As The Tide Was Slowly Coming In