More than you ever wanted to know about the working of a contemplative photographer's brain

Because I'm supposed to be preparing for the talk I'm to give at Seattle U in February,   I'm a little more conscious than usual about what goes into this daily practice of mine -- which (of course) means that it's not flowing quite as smoothly as it normally does.


Some of that has to do with time constraints -- interruptions, changes in plans, people getting up and coming downstairs unexpectedly when they normally sleep in -- but some of it is also just the experience of being observed by my own analytical brain.

So you may remember that yesterday I had intended to share Ed Bastian's definition of contemplation, when I got sidetracked.  So today I knew I wanted to come back to that, and so first I looked at it again, to see what it was that struck me.

"Contemplation," he says, in his new book,  Interspiritual Meditation, "is not an aimless meandering of thought, but a disciplined activity by which one explores and investigates an idea, an insight, a sacred persona, or a truth, in a thoroughgoing way, pursuing its consequences for all aspects of our lives."

This definition struck me particularly because I'd been preparing for this talk, and it seemed to me that in all my preparation I'd actually neglected to say anything about what I think it means to be a contemplative photographer, which is... um... kind of the basic concept that frames everything I do?  Well, duh! 

But then, of course, I thought -- well, this is a pretty dry description, and if I begin with that the whole talk is going to be a bit of a snore.  So then I thought, well, maybe if I just talk about it in the blog I'll be able to get it out of my system, or clarify it.  Which meant I should begin by finding some sort of image that reflects or illuminates the subject.  Which meant I went browsing through my image collection -- and half an hour later I still had... well, nothing.

Because that's not really how it works, most of the time at least.  The image really has to come first.  So then I gave up and let myself just hunt for an image that called to me, and then I would just work with it.  And wouldn't you know something like this rusty thing at the top of the blog would appear.  I mean, hello: what am I supposed to say about this?  There's beauty in disintegration?  Getting rusty isn't necessarily a bad thing?  And what does that have to do with contemplation? Because these thoughts are just coming off the top of my head; it's not like they're deep or anything.

And now the blogging process  -- already thrown off this morning by my husband needing to cook in the kitchen while I was meditating -- has been interrupted by 3 separate phone calls and I'm basically thinking I should stop trying to write, just quit while I'm ahead and let YOU figure out what that image could POSSIBLY have to do with contemplation.

But then some part of me -- you know, the brain that thinks I might have something important to say if I could just slow down for a minute and LOOK at the damn thing -- thinks there must be SOMETHING I could say, so I go back into Photoshop to look at the image again and realize, no, actually, that wasn't the image that really called to me today; it was THIS one -- which I rejected, because it was sort of obvious; so much so that I suspect I may have already used it?

But now, whatever the initial message it may have wanted me to explore might have been, it seems clear that the time has come to just STOP.  STOP WRITING.  STOP THINKING.  STOP WORRYING ABOUT IT -- and stop isolating yourself from the rest of the family, which has now gathered in the dining room for breakfast.

So I will.

So there.