the view from here is changing

the view from here is opening

the view from here

contains the near and the far

the crests and the valleys

fence lines and the fields between.

it is a breathing, moving landscape

perspectives unfolding

moment by moment.

I remind myself

to taste the sweet grass

right here, right now

to step into the view

one foot at a time

to let myself be led by the

opening horizon.

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This is Jules snoozing in the sun yesterday.  Jules is a BIG greyhound with a BIG intimidating bark.  He has a sweetness and a gentleness about him that is extraordinary, but he is fiercely protective. We love that about him.  No one is going to hear him and want to approach.

I have been writing a lot about the landscape of the body and the way that our bodies partake of and reflect the earth.  About learning to enter the landscape of our own bodies, to become cartographers of our own terrain.

I had to lie very flat and quiet to take this picture, and was so focused on not startling Jules that I did not even see the crest of Indian Mountain behind the curve of his ribs or the bristles of winter’s grass in the foreground and his whiskers behind.  I think that as I become a better photographer,  I will see more of those things, but for now, I like the happy accidents.

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Tamara Lempicka

I have been writing about the landscape of the body and its relationship to the body of the earth and the bodies of other creatures.  About the sense of our own bodies as landscape, to be discovered, explored, savored.

These two paintings are by two of my most favorite painters.  I met Laura Von Rosk many years ago during a residency at Yaddo.  Her landscapes were the most sensuous I had ever seen.  I bought one she had done in Minnesota.  It had a perspective of gazing up the hilly thighs of a woman, across the fields of belly and breasts and into the sky beyond.   I recently reconnected with her work at a show in Hudson at the Carrie Haddad Gallery.

Lempicka’s work invites us into the contours, the hills, valleys, the hidden caves of the body.

If you lie on the floor and roll very slowly from back to side to front, how do you feel the landscape of your own body?  How effortless can you make that movement?  Continue on, rolling to your side and then ending on your back.

Imagine this as a little meditation, a way of calling the earth of your body into awareness.

If you are a rider, can you feel a deepening harmony of your body and your horse’s body as you ride?

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