Flowers Don’t Cry

/ cmszinnia

One day when I was looking at the Astromelia, I noticed the petals were dropping but they still looked pretty so I took a picture.  Then I remembered something Jeffrey Yuen said in class one day.  He said, the Chinese say, “Flowers don’t cry when their petals fall.”  I thought WOW, that would make a great 15 second video.  I would take pictures every day and voilá.  (Yes, I am studying French again.) I was struck by the beauty of the flowers as they withered and the petals fell.

The video turned out to be 34 seconds but still not a burden on the viewer.  Luck was with me when I started to record the voice over.  WKCR was playing “My Favorite Things” performed by John Coltrane, what an auspicious coincidence.  I let it play in the background.  Remember flowers don’t cry when their petals drop.

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Flower Portraits

/ cmszinnia

This little puff piece came about because when you run out of photographic paper and inks, videos save the day.

One of the lovely things about the market is all the flowers for sale.  Some days, I get so enthusiastic that I buy so many flowers that I run out of places to put them.  At first,  I was just putting flowers in the entrance and the meditation room but after a while I decided to put them in the treatment room, then my studio, then my bedroom and finally in the living room in front of the dancing tree.  Some of you might remember this tree from DC.

When I put the flowers in front of the tree, I began to enjoy how they worked with the background.  Eventually the tree became like an old fashioned photo studio backdrop.  Then I had to add the living room to the places I routinely put flowers.

Here are some of the pictures I took.

 

 

What did we do before ?

/ cmszinnia

When I have extra time to wait when I am in an airport I often take vidoes of what is going on around me. You may remember the conveyor belt and Manchester airport at 5:15 AM. This one was taken at National Airport which serves Washington, Dc this past July.  Cell phones and laptops have really taken us over.  I can remember when there was no place to recharge a devise.  Now there is even excess capacity.   So what did we do before?  Talk to some one? Read a newspaper, magazine or book?  Be bored? Be annoyed? How did we manage to wait for planes before all this technology.

Union Square Subway station

/ cmszinnia

When I went to New York City to study Chinese Medicine with the Daoists Jeffrey Yuen, I stayed at Union Square, East 14th Street and Broadway.  I would get off the metro in the evenings to be greeted by shifting musical sounds as I walked toward my exit.  This is my typical trajectory.

Manchester Airport early in the morning

/ cmszinnia

I do not consider muself a jet setter because I do not travel just for the sake of it.  I travel because I want to do something that cannot be done where I am living.  None-the-less, I find myself spending a lot of time in airports.

Traveling involves a lot of waiting so while I am waiting, I look around.  If something catches my eye, I take a photo but more likely a video because I don’t like carrying my heavy camera around.  Why do I have a heavy camera?  I have it because I love the zoom lens which allows me to shoot things that are either far away or close without moving.  Also I can shoot things that are elevated with less distortion because I can stand far away and bring them close with the lens.  This is good when I want to shoot an architectual detail.

Returning to the theme of travel, I find myself taking videos in airports.  The last was Heathrow and Pierre Trudeau where I felt as if I were on a conveyor belt.  This time I was truly amazed at the level of hustle and bustle at Manchester airport in England at 5:15 in the morning, people eating, drinking, gambling, sitting around, dragging suitcases what have you.

I am including the YouTube link although you will not be able to access it from here.  https://youtu.be/PThCtD3sJyU&rel=0