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A different viewpoint?

hirakismail's picture

I wanted to start off with this photo, an example of the cultivation of the way to my site:

The grass is mowed in very neat rows on this hill, the hill I take to get down to the site.

When I approached it this time, I decided to leave my backpack away from the tree. I didn't want it to get in my way or in the way of the site. It seemed necessary somehow to leave it behind.

As I was looking out at the pond again, I had in mind Gary Snyder's suggestions, to see the wild, the unspoken parts of nature. To concentrate on the grit and the hunger and the survival rather than the peaceful. This was really hard still, but the closest I got was to notice the continuous ripples in the pond. They came very often, and I remember hearing somewhere that if there was a ripple, that meant something in the pond had just been hunted or eaten. Thinking about this, I saw the ripples differently, and started wondering what exactly was going on under those waters. There was a sports game going on to my right (probably soccer judging by the sound the ball was making, I didn't actually go and check to confirm) and the players were cheering on eachother loudly, and in general communicating with eachother about maneuvers in the game. I wondered then vaguely, if they were under water, how their loud voices might make the sound ripple. Then that lead me to imagine the organisms in the water. Were they also 'shouting,' 'yelling,'did they make enough noise to make the water ripple? What did it sound like under there. I took this pic of the water ripples, and also a video, but I couldn't manage to post the video, as the software wasn't compatible :(

Here is the pic I took, and forgot to rotate, but strangely, it represents my feelings about the pond better sideways than it would facing front:

The reflection of the trees onto the water, the floating plants, the confusion of where is up and down makes me think this represents the pond pretty well.

I lay down on my side then and took a photo of the fence surrounding the pond from a different angle:

The fence and the tree seemed to coincide really well here, to become a part of eachother in a sense.

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hirakismail's picture

I wanted to add (I just

I wanted to add (I just remembered) two things:

One, I felt that the noise my camera was making in clicking was disturbing the insects flying above me, i.e. dragonflies, and other flies I don't know the name of. They would fly around faster, and fly further away from me. I tried covering the sound section of my camera to prevent this.

Two, I saw a Bluejay for the second time ever, because I live in Arizona, and those aren't around. I got really excited and attempted to slowly walk toward my camera to take a picture, and it flew away. This action made me stop and think for a bit: was I the first person with a bright pink scarf around my head that the bluejay had ever seen? The color was very vibrant. This thought was amusing, and even more so when I thought how I would feel if someone just barged on over to take a pic of me, just because I was the first "scarf-kind" of person they had ever seen--which, believe it or not, has happened... With permission of course, a person at the end of a conference which I was a part of came over and asked me if they could take a picture of me because "they really liked my scarf" and "had never really seen many people wearing one." I said yes quickly, more out of bewilderment than anything. So the concept of privacy--do animals have it, want it? Whenever an animal flies/runs away, I always assume it's survival instinct, they want to get away from the familiar. What if it was an issue of privacy? :) It's a thought that I can't confirm, but is interesting to reflect upon