Aurora 2012 by Christian Mülhauser

“Last week I was again in Norway for shooting northern lights. This time I was very lucky, there was a lot of activity on the sky especially on the 24 January. The scenes are from Ravnastua, Skoganvarre and Lakselv. The first two days I had a lot of trouble with frozen Cameras. It was -25°C (-13°F) and after 1-2 hours of shooting the lens was frozen.”

more @ Aurora 2012 from Christian Mülhauser on Vimeo.

If you ever wondered …

If you ever wondered …

I would like to be someone you’ll remember
But not someone you can’t forget

Becoming aware of my presence should be like
Taking notice of a gentle breeze passing by

When i am with you

I would like to be as unobtrusive as the faint aroma
Of a freshly gathered bouquet

Waiting quietly to be
Enjoyed

When I arrive
It may be like a kiss from the morning sun
And when i leave

I hope you will be filled with reassurance that
Like the dim light of the moon

The consistency of the cycle is the promise
Is the cure

And all these things that I am

that are in
And of this world

are there
Just to let you know

If ever you wonder … emphatically yes
You are truly loved

Lilly

Porcelain Doll photo (c) Headshot London Photography: www.headshotlondon.co.uk

You have an obligation

Just because people are queuing up for it, just because they charge money for it, just because it’s on a hundred thousand billboards doesn’t mean we need it. Just because they say it’s good for us, bad for us, worse for us, just because it’s on the evening news and pop-up ads doesn’t mean it will ever fulfill us.

We are born as reasoning, deductive creatures and we spend our lives being taught that the narrowest, most well-trodden paths are the best to travel. We’re taught that some doors should remain closed. We’re
taught that diamonds are a girl’s best friend but did we ever stop and ask ourselves–why?

We’re taught that we were born halves forever seeking to be whole, and we’ve been to a thousand bars and clubs and parties and networking sites throwing ourselves into a pursuit we’ve always been taught is going to be external. Every price tag should come with the disclaimer that its purchase does not come with happiness.

We’ve been taught that up is up and down is down, that we can’t breathe in space, that symptoms are more
important than causes. We pay lip service to commercial canticles and ask ourselves what can I do? We take the roads most traveled because we have been taught to ask why not instead of an infinitely more powerful why? We do the things that make us happy because we are told that they’ll make us happy, even if we sometimes secretly wonder why we’re not feeling it.

Maybe we’re not doing it right. But we keep on going through the same old motions because practice makes perfect, and maybe it’s just easier to stop caring why it doesn’t fill us with fire instead of trying to strike a spark of our own. You should be angry.

You should be furious. You have been made to feel like a leper at the first breath of a question, and you should clench your teeth to breaking before you take another spoonful of what they’re trying to feed you, no matter how seductive or persuasive the airplane noises they try to coax it down with. When they smile and try to shake your hand to steal concessions from you, make your hand a fist.

Make sacrifices, but not on the altars of a system that needs to poison itself into oblivion and forgetfulness just so it can keep grinding its own gears down to rust and pulp. They will always be quick to condemn you, belittle you, tell you it can’t be done just to shut you up, because there’s a tiny little part of them that still screams to be heard that recognizes that yours is a voice made to end worlds.

They have tried to make yours a life of thoughtlessly accepted obligations; of education, of degrees, of marriages, of children, of mortgages, of pensions, crises and deaths. Set fire to their contracts and write your own terms. You want to spend your nights counting the stars? Count them. Lose count. Start over. You want to forgo the canvas and toss buckets of paint into empty air? Hand me one.

Invent a new language. Graffiti forgotten catacombs that no one will ever see. Dance like a moron. Write love letters to strangers on the backs of napkins, playing cards, your own hand, just to let them know that there are wholes out there, sculpting their own dreams on their own terms in their own time with their own hands, their eyes set on distances far beyond the shuffling of their feet over gray, uniform sidewalks.

When they try to feed you their symptom-driven, reasonless terms and conditions, you shouldn’t just shrug your shoulders and accept just because everyone around you has accepted. You should be outraged. I know I am. Your only obligation, ever, should be to yourself and that bright spark that burns deepest that they will do their very best to turn to ash. Make them burn their hands on you when they try.

Happy Labor Day, indeed.

Lilly

I get a little dispirited some days…

…when I look around and see so much of the surface of the world built into tacky, gleaming towers built with the sole intention of drawing our eyes away from what lies underneath.

…we dispose of our fleeting desires and trends the way we dispose of the wrappers of the cheeseburgers we inhale on an hourly basis, of the poisons we call entertainment, of the way we’ve hobbled the glorious machinery of our bodies before glowing LCD altars and have long-since forgotten that we were once at one with the natural world before we snapped every last one of its immaculate curves and remade them into straight lines that we don’t even realize are cutting the tendons we use to hold onto them.

We chase after fancy, gaudy, nothings; after personalized license plates, and if you actually sit down and think about that for a second, about why on earth we need personalized license plates?

…if you go outside and walk down the street and just stop taking it all as a given for a minute..

..and look at how many billboards are screaming in your face about stuff you should never have to care about, about the way television advertisements aren’t allowed to be louder than the programs they interrupt so they changed the frequencies to make them more invasive, and that’s more invasive into your life and your world that should be busily being shaped by your two hands.

Me? I say to hell(o) with all that. To spending your life ticking the same boxes everyone around you is trying to tick, all the while looking over your shoulder trying to catch a glimpse of why anyone’s ticking them at all. I will spend the sum of my days delving inward, and you won’t remember me for what I was wearing, what I was drinking, what I was saying to simply be agreed with, what car I drove, what parties I went to, or who I loved or who loved me.

All you’ll see will be thousands upon thousands of pages of what I bring back from the depths. And I will call that a life well spent because it’ll be on my terms and no one else’s, no way, not now, not ever.

You’ve got the time

We carve out caverns of time for television programs and become too busy for the things that fill us with light, or to discover what fills us with light. We look to other people for the good in ourselves and forget that the good in us– inside of us– we ought to put there ourselves.  We interact with people by adding them to our lists or ‘circles’ of friends and make little time for the people in our lives who challenge us to new journeys, or to meet these people in person.  We dance around the injustices that surround us and excuse ourselves by saying that it takes much more than us to change anything, or that we’ll get around to it eventually.  We crave connection but refuse to even raise our eyes at those who pass us, or respond with more than a few words when our friends and family ask us about our lives.

Our lives. As tiny and insignificant as we are, we’ve all the power and the time to raise our voices and rile up those around us about the wrongs that we want righted.  We’ve all the power to make up our minds that we have, so why not get around to realizing that we’re just as insignificant & just as powerful as the individuals who’ve set up the unjust systems and that we’ve got voices just loud enough and time that’s just enough to get up and make things right.

 

There is no mystery about the origin of things

“Every day we slaughter our finest impulses. That is why we get a heartache when we read those lines written by the hand of a master and recognize them as our own, as the tender shoots which we stifled because we lacked the faith to believe in our own powers, our own criterion of truth and beauty. Every man, when he gets quiet, when he becomes desperately honest with himself, is capable of uttering profound truths. We all derive from the same Source. There is no mystery about the origin of things. We are all part of creation, all kings, all poets, all musicians; we have only to open up, only to discover what is already there.”

~ Henry Millers

Photographer Terje Sorgjerd Films Amazing Northern Lights Show

“Though my soul may set in darkness, it will rise in perfect light; I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night.” Galileo Galilei

Amazing films by the wonderful Norwegian landscape photographer Terje Sorgjerd, who is a passionate landscape and video photographer since 2006.

The Aurora

“I spent a week capturing one of the biggest aurora borealis shows in recent years. Shot in and around Kirkenes and Pas National Park bordering Russia, at 70 degree north and 30 degrees east. Temperatures around -25 Celsius. Good fun. Music is Gladiator…”

The Aurora from Terje Sorgjerd on Vimeo.

The Mountain

“This was filmed between 4th and 11th April 2011. I had the pleasure of visiting El Teide. Spain´s highest mountain @(3715m) is one of the best places in the world to photograph the stars and is also the location of Teide Observatories.”

The Mountain from Terje Sorgjerd on Vimeo.

 

Facebook Page for updates facebook.com/?TSOPhotography
Follow Terje Sorgjerd on twitter.com/?TSOPhotography
Press/licensing/projects contact: terjes @ gmail.com

An Angel In the House

An Angel In the House

How sweet it were, if without feeble fright,
Or dying of the dreadful beauteous sight,
An angel came to us, and we could bear
To see him issue from the silent air

At evening in our room, and bend on ours
His divine eyes, and bring us from his bowers
News of dear friends, and children who have never
Been dead indeed,–as we shall know forever.

Alas! we think not what we daily see
About our hearths,–angels that are to be,
Or may be if they will, and we prepare
Their souls and ours to meet in happy air;

A child, a friend, a wife whose soft heart sings
In unison with ours, breeding its future wings.

James Henry Leigh
1784-1859

You Reading This, Be Ready

Starting here, what do you want to remember?
How sunlight creeps upon a shining floor?
What scent of old wood hovers, what softened
sound from outside fills the air?

Will you ever bring a better gift fr the world
than the breathing respect that you carry,
wherever you go right now?  Are you waiting
for time to show you some better thoughts?

When you turn around, starting here, lift this,
new glimpse that you found; carry into evening
all that you want from this day. This interval you spent
reading or hearing this, keep it for life.

What can anyone give you greater than–now,
starting here, right in this room, when you turn around?

William Stafford
(1914-1993)

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Chicago Blizzard 2011 Photos

Some photos of our house and street 2 days after digging out… (click on the images for full photos)

Thunder Snow

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