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Farewell, WP Photo Challenge
Funny… how little things can suddenly make us feel nostalgic. I’m sure that many of you will miss the Weekly Photo Challenge, just as I will… and just as I did, many of you have dug through your photo archives for some of your all-time favourites.
A quick glance at the photos I’ve posted since I started blogging reminded me that I found a nice, understanding and supportive community in his little corner of the internet. I am obviously no photographer, and I remember that initially I was uncomfortable and shy about posting photos. After all, I was thinking that my blog would be all about writing… But it soon became something else. I quickly realised how much photos can enhance and personalize my blog.
Like I said, I am no photographer, but I love taking pictures, lots and lots of them, of all sorts of things – it’s about capturing a moment, a feeling or a fleeting thought, just like writing. It wasn’t about perfect composition or impeccable images, I got to understand. After all, life is anything but perfect… And life does get in the way, so we don’t always have much time or energy to spare for our blogs. So my “writing” blog now includes many, many posts which contain mainly photos, and I “blame” the weekly photo challenge and occasionally the daily post for it 😉 .
Even when I didn’t feel like writing or didn’t have enough time for it, I could keep in touch with the blogging world and share snippets of life through a few photos. So a warm thank you to the WP team that has provided us with inspiration and to all of you who took part in the challenge and took time to stop by and share your thoughts. Let’s keep in touch! 🙂
Broken
Pretty, Pretty Flowers
Awakening
In a way, spring snuck up on me this year… Perhaps it’s because of all that snow and cold weather in March. Perhaps I was simply not paying attention. I don’t know, I’m just doing my best not to overanalyse; instead, I’m trying to enjoy the sun, the pretty flowers, the amazing way in which nature is blossoming once more.
Like I said, I’m trying… But is it just me who feels like just the other day we were celebrating New Year’s, focusing on that particular new beginning?… Sure, I can account for all these months, but it feels like time just flew by too fast.
In response to WP Weekly Photo Challenge – Awakening.
Spring Smiles
It finally looks and feels like spring… and that always puts a smile on my face. 🙂
In response to WP Weekly Photo Challenge – Smile.
Sunset
Favourite place
In response to WP Weekly Photo Challenge – Favourite Place.
I’d Rather Be… Leaving
Sometimes it’s Paris or Madrid… sometimes it’s a snowy mountain peak… and sometimes it’s hiding in my car in a supermarket parking. Escape is escape, no matter where it takes you, and there’s a very thin line between exquisite and dreadful.
I’d rather be anywhere but here… Everybody has thought it and felt it at least on a few occasions, I’m sure. But sometimes the need to run becomes a constant, the fuel and reason behind one’s actions, when time gets divided in small, painful increments between escapes. It’s exactly these moments away that keep you sane, that give you the strength to bear that exasperating “everyday” and if escape plans fall apart, despair, depression, anger and frustration bubble up uncontrollably.
There was this large bag the contents of which I occasionally liked to spread all over the living room rug when I was a child, much to my grandmother’s exasperation. Postcards and stationary from countless hotels in what then seemed surreal exotic places were more amazing to me than fairy tales. I never wanted to be a princess and fairy tales weren’t real, even if I enjoyed many of them. But untouchable as they might have seemed, those places were real, and my mother had seen them all. The mere idea of it made her seem untouchable as well. Travelling wasn’t as accessible back then as it is nowadays, so that collection of postcards representing places she had seen was quite an achievement. An exciting, yet frightening achievement… I wanted to grow up and go see such beautiful places as well, I remember; I also remember having no clue as to how I would manage such an extraordinary thing. Grand things are in even greater in a child’s eyes.
I have a postcard collection of my own now. I travelled because I loved to, I wanted to see all those places. I travelled because at times I felt I had no choice. But I also travelled because for a number of years I felt I had to be anywhere but home in order to be alive. No matter where you are, who you are and what you have, it’s all worthless, I was raised to believe; everything that’s truly valuable is that which you have yet to conquer; once you’ve conquered it, it becomes worthless and you need to move on to something greater, or at least new. Only weak people savour that which they have and they’re happy with their existences, I was taught.
Thinking back, I don’t regret taking any of those trips, not even the horrible ones. But eventually I had to understand the real reasons behind my need to leave, so that I could allow myself to feel accomplished and content with what my life is when I stay. There was a time when “home” had nothing for me and I was right to want to run; that attitude was no longer appropriate after a certain point, wanting to leave everything behind was no longer only a token of ambition. Instead, whether I liked it or not, I had to admit that learning to find joy in my everyday life was not a sign of weakness. And I liked it, even if it wasn’t easy… It was certainly better than constant dissatisfaction.
Some trips weren’t really for me, much as I tried to believe otherwise; they were journeys taken to gain approval I would never really gain. Other trips I haven’t taken in order to comply with somebody’s expectations and image of the person I should be… an image that would never be me. The rest… the rest of them were all about me and where I wanted to be, what I needed, and that’s the kind of travelling that I wish to be doing from now on.
Nurture is not everything; there’s also nature… my nature. And by nature, I am a restless, ambitious person, who often gets bored too easily. I can accept that, the same way that I can accept the fact that early summer, and sometimes early spring as well, make me giddy with that familiar desire… I want to get in my car or on a plane and keep going, not looking back. I love that impulse, it generally makes me feel alive, if it stems mainly in the need to travel, not to run away. That’s not a bad thing; it’s not necessarily a good one either, I remember.
I also remember something else I could no longer deny after a certain point… We desperately need to escape sometimes; what we tend to ignore or forget when we plot our escape is that there are some people who love us and whose desperate need is to be with us, when all we think about is running away…
Out of This World
So delicate, so pretty… nature’s beauty is almost surreal sometimes.
In response to WP Weekly Photo Challenge – Out of This World.
Faceless
Beloved
Winter Silence
Serene
Parallel Lives – Sample Fragment 94
“Sad? How is it sad when that’s the only promise of improvement? It’s not sad to stand as proud and unflinching when you’re raw and exposed as you do when you’re on the peak of glamour, gathering shallow praises from those around, from all of those who can only perceive obvious or staged beauty. There, look at that tree, the little one between the two dark ones, it’s already on the right track, with its daring pink flower buds starting to bloom before the leaves have any chance to show up.” Continue reading “Parallel Lives – Sample Fragment 94”
Temporary
?
?
?
?
In response to WP Weekly Photo Challenge – Temporary.
Parallel Lives – Sample Fragment 93
The cold wind freezing her face and messing up her hair kept her alert, it was a different sort of awakening. She could see and find joy in all the little things around her for a moment, without any sadness or regrets from her real life and her real self creeping into this still world of simplicity and happiness. The early spring day was sunny and calm, their boat, together with a few others scattered on the surface of the river were the only one disrupting the quiet afternoon, scaring away a few of the birds that remained there over the winter or had already managed to find their way back as soon as the snow disappeared.
“Look at it, it’s all so real, no need to cover up the branches in all sorts of bright shades and colourful noises, it’s all naked and true, not ashamed, not needing to hide its bareness.” Continue reading “Parallel Lives – Sample Fragment 93”
Peek
In response to WP Weekly Photo Challenge – Peek.
Occasional Glow
There can a special glow in simple things and moments… But sometimes that certain glow hides a rough life, a life full of sacrifice and struggle. It’s all in the eye of the beholder – passing by is one thing, living there, behind the glow, might be entirely different.
Scale
In response to WP Weekly Photo Challenge – Scale.
Leaf
Glorious
Thorny
In response to WordPress Daily Post One Word Prompt – Thorny.
Waiting
Corner
Elemental
In response to WP Weekly Photo Challenge – Elemental.
Glaring
In response to WordPress Daily Post One Word Prompt – Glaring.
Summertime Collage
In response to WP Weekly Photo Challenge – Collage.
Transient Moments
Every time I go to the mountains I am somehow pulled towards these seemingly insignificant water streams. I could almost say that the sound of undisturbed nature is incomplete without that murmur of rushing waters.
Once in a while, it stares you in the face, the enormous strength and consequences of something apparently so small cannot be denied or ignored. Bit by bit, over what seems an eternity, water droplets have carved their way through impenetrable walls.
There’s nothing else to be done other than admire the force of repetitive transient, apparently insignificant moments.
Fleeting instants and unexpected people walk into our lives and leave it just as fast, like water streams… They occasionally leave indelible marks, the consequences of which we only notice much later. Once we do, we need to accept that nothing can ever be the same.
