Collectively. The quote is inspired by my reading of Drawdown, a book of solutions to global warming (with a tip of the hat also to Chris Wark, in an unrelated context).  The world is all reading a larger book, The Book of Life on Planet Earth (metaphorically), but of course some have barely begun reading […]

Reality can get in touch with you through your bank, your spouse or family, or via your employer or customers. It can find you despite all creative effort and artful camouflage – even if you are cloud-based, as I am. We are still embroiled in the renovation of an old house nearby, so I can […]

An epitaph of sorts, and a good one, being some last words from our late lamented friend Bernie Downey, whose memorial service was today. Bernie was always good-hearted and stimulating company, and he obliged me on this moonlit occasion two years ago at Te Hapu, Golden Bay, by holding his pose for a long test […]

Here we are with Rumi again; he was a devout Muslim and a great humanist. My twilight scene features the lowly convolvulus, and illustrates one obvious love of my own.

LOL, as I did when I read this 6-word snippet online just recently. This is Memento mori [“Remember your mortality”] meets Embedded Quote, with a colourful ornament from Te Henui cemetery, New Plymouth. What it is to be human, and of a certain age! Will any of it matter in another 50 years?

Our final visit with Rumi, at least for the time being; here the anxious, solitary image of Claire reinforces the simple message, one of many brevities which gleam like semi-precious stones in his meandering poetic landscapes. For New Zealanders the landscape above should also have an evocative power, as flax, ti kouka and nikau feature. […]

With this pungent comment Rumi sits at the crossroads of western and eastern mysticism. The sentiment permeates all types of introspective spirituality, and is familiar to Christians through Luke’s singular statement that “The Kingdom of God is within you”. Meanwhile it is of course a dominant theme in eastern mysticism. Rumi wrote voluminously, having no […]

Another time, another season – and another quote from the masterful Rumi. Bemused by her little book, Claire considers the source on the same Manukau beach as my last post. There’s not a great deal the human race seems able to agree on, but who can deny that “Here and now” has a compelling immediacy? […]

Gee I wish I’d known this much earlier in life. Model Claire cautiously embodies the sentiment however, one fine Sunday on the beach at Kaiterakihi, on the Manukau. A 13th century Persian poet, Rumi still gets frequent airplay. He was a devout but liberal Muslim (of the Sufi variety) and his poignant – sometimes earthy […]

“In the Book of Life, ages one to forty are the text, what follows is just the commentary”. Yup, I’ve always been partial to a good epigram, and have been collating a list lately (mostly attributed) with the notion of embedding them in my images. This extends the line I began in 2012 with my […]

This twilit tableau was the runner-up in my series of St Joseph with a vase of faux flowers. It ranks as “runner-up” only because it’s entirely moon-less, the crescent moon (the object of the whole exercise) being too high in the sky to be included in a horizontal composition. However as a simple set-up, this […]