Всю Ночь Шёл Дождь

It Was Raining All Night

Всю Ночь Шёл Дождь

It Was Raining All Night

Шитьё

Sewing

The Lake

I remember how many years ago reading for the first time Charles Tomlinson's "Swimming Chenango Lake" struck a deep chord in my soul, and I forever fell in love with the poem... *** Winter will bar the swimmer soon. He reads the water's autumnal hesitations A wealth of ways: it is jarred. It is astir already despite its steadiness, Where the first leaves at the first Tremor of the morning air have dropped Anticipating him, launching their imprints Outwards in eccentric, overlapping circles...   In "The Poem as Initiation", Tomlinson cites Claude Levi-Strauss's anthropological study, "The Savage Mind": "... the Pawnee Indians have a ceremony called the Hako, for the crossing of the stream. A poetic invocation is the essence of this ceremony. The invocation is divided, we are told, ' into several parts which correspond respectively to the moment when the travelers put feet in water, the moment when they move them and the moment when the water completely covers their feet.' All these stages are celebrated and differentiated..." *** For to swim is also to take hold On water's meaning, to move in its embrace And to be, between grasp and grasping free.

Весна в Парке

Spring in the Park

The First Day of Spring

and  The Last Day of Winter The images have been processed in the Poladroid program.

Анна Зельманова - Гусева

My Grandmother, circa 1950

Cornflowers and Aeonium

Study of Immortality

"Preliminary Study"

"Roads and Cemeteries"

"Grandmother"

The Patio

The Conversation

The Invitation

"It doesn't interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart's longing. It doesn't interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love for your dream for the adventure of being alive. It doesn't interest me what planets are squaring your moon... I want to know if you have touched the center of your own sorrow if you have been opened by life's betrayals or have become shriveled and closed from fear of further pain. I want to know if you can sit with pain mine or your own without moving to hide it or fade it or fix it. I want to know if you can be with joy mine or your own if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful to be realistic to remember the limitations of being human. It doesn't interest me if the story you are telling me is true. I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself. If you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul. If you can be faithless and therefore trustworthy. I want to know if you can see Beauty even when it is not pretty every day. And if you can source your own life from its presence. I want to know if you can live with failure yours and mine and still stand at the edge of the lake and shout to the silver of the full moon, "Yes." It doesn't interest me to know where you live or how much money you have. I want to know if you can get up after the night of grief and despair weary and bruised to the bone and do what needs to be done to feed the children. It doesn't interest me who you know or how you came to be here. I want to know if you will stand in the center of the fire with me and not shrink back. It doesn't interest me where or what or with whom you have studied. I want to know what sustains you from the inside when all else falls away. I want to know if you can be alone with yourself and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments." Orian Mountain Dreamer

Тарелка Камней

A Plate of Rocks

Снежное Воскресенье

Sunday. Snow