From: Bob Kiss (bobkiss@caribsurf.com)
Date: 04/11/02-11:17:14 AM Z
DEAR LISA,
I have been following the Tree vs. City thread for a while now. I used
to live in NYC and regularly worked in Paris, Munich, Milan, London, L.A.,
Rio and Sao Paolo. I now live on an nice little tropical paradise Island,
Barbados, a five minute walk from the wind swept,surf washed east coast. I
moved here to be closer to nature and especially the sea. The country side
and light here are fantastic. People from the First World pay a heck of a
lot of money to come here on vacation. However, when people ask me where I
go on vacation (because most people want to come here) I respond, Florence,
Paris and even New York. There is beauty all around us if we keep our
hearts, eyes and minds open. Of course we have personal preferences but, in
keeping with Gregory's post, I must quote a Zen story where a Zen master
claims that every day is beautiful regardless of the weather. CAN YOU FIND
THE BEAUTY? IS YOUR HEAR OPEN TO IT? Rainy day? Cold snowy day? Hot
blistering day? City scape? Land scape? Seascape? Street fair? Crumbling
"alphabet city" tenement? Three hundred year old Baobab tree?
I love the smell and color of the sea as the sun sets behind me and the
full moon rises simultaneously out of the sea into a pastel blue and pink
sky. I also love the smell of paint and mixed perfumes and the vision of
all the preening people at an opening in a NYC gallery. Even the Paris
metro has beauty and interest. In Florence you have to STRIVE not to
stumble on beauty. Sure there is ugliness everywhere as well. Simply
choose. Just once try to find the miraculous in what you feel is
mundane...it is an amazing experience. Let finding beauty become a habit
regardless of where you are. PLEASE don't let those whom you hate because
they have tried to indoctrinate you to their biases bias you against what
they liked. It is natural to feel negative to what has been forced upon
you. Hate the indoctrinator...not the aesthetic.
All of that said, though I still love Manhattan, no amount of money in
the world would get me to move back. I feel two decades in NYC is
sufficient...I will try Island Life for two and they let you know! ;-))
CHEERS!
BOB
----- Original Message -----
From: Gregory W. Blank <gblank@bellatlantic.net>
To: <alt-photo-process-l@sask.usask.ca>
Sent: Thursday, April 11, 2002 1:50 PM
Subject: Re: trees rule
> By your interest I can't believe your first sentence,...however.
>
> Zen is in all things and places. Zen is the foundation of Art, Art is a
> practical application of Zen. If one is less given to the goings and
> commings of the world, of making a buisness of the world, then one can
enjoy
> what one does and perhaps find enlightenment, regardless of where one does
> it.
>
> I have found this to be truth for myself.
>
>
> on 4/11/02 4:58 AM, Katharine Thayer at kthayer@pacifier.com wrote:
>
> > I try to stay out of these discussions any more and haven't read most of
> > this one, but the subject line on this post pulled me in.
> >
> > I've always found it interesting that those who set themselves up as
> > arbiters of what subject matter is permissible for photography and what
> > isn't, say out of one side of their mouths that we should photograph
> > what's around us, while out of the other side of their mouths comes some
> > version of the idea that landscape is passe' and no one should be
> > photographing nature any more. In other words, only those who live in
> > cities or suburbs and who breathe popular culture have permission to
> > photograph what's around them (or in other other words, only what
> > surrounds ME should be a permissible subject matter for YOU). Those of
> > us who have long since tossed out our TVs, who live as far from housing
> > developments, malls and skyscrapers as we can get, who arrange our days
> > by the tides and the weather, who know trees and how the ocean moves and
> > where the osprey lives in the same way city dwellers might know the
> > sound of the el or the way the sun glints off a particular building at a
> > particular time of day, are told that what we see isn't worth
> > photographing and what we know isn't worth knowing. This is just
> > nonsense, and I hope Shannon or anyone else will pay it little mind.
> >
> > Katharine Thayer
>
>
>
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