The Magic of the Cities.

Zen promotes the rediscovery of the obvious, which is so often lost in its familiarity and simplicity. It sees the miraculous in the common and magic in our everyday surroundings. When we are not rushed, and our minds are unclouded by conceptualizations, a veil will sometimes drop, introducing the viewer to a world unseen since childhood. ~ John Greer

Sunday, November 2, 2014

Offerings




The Day of the Dead Offerings

“I am so accustomed to being alive
I didn’t realize I had turned into a vulture”.
Jorge Reyes
 (Mexican Composer)

The sound of the rain, the smell of wet earth, the heat of fire, the color of the sky glowing in the afternoon and the taste of hot coffee: all sensory experiences that we keep with us and that accompany us as we go through our life on earth.
 But it isn't always like that.  Some day, sooner or later, we cross the threshold that divides life and death, and then our perception of the world, as we know it changes.  And red after red is perhaps a more surprising color any other shade that has ever been seen or imagined; the sharpest sounds that have ever been heard and we discover the hidden beauty of the odors that are hidden from our earthly noses...Or perhaps, we won't even need our senses -- sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch -- for the new sensory experiences that our soul never used while life flowed by day to day.
 What experiences manifest themselves in that moment?  What new textures do we learn?  What new senses do we discover?  Until now, no one has been able to answer these questions that are as unsettling as they are old.
 But there is a moment where simple belief is confused with faith, a magical moment in which whatever's out there and our world reconcile, and crying and pain suffered in the wake of irremediable loss of a loved one is transformed.  And body and spirit are reunited, the world of the alive and the kingdom of the dead, color, magic, tradition, mysticism untie to form one of the most celebrated parties in Mexico:  the Day of the Dead.
 The Day of the Dead offering is a living hope to spend just one more day with our loved ones from far away, from a remote place that allows them to return to earth, to the land of tastes, smells, colors, sounds and textures...where they must relearn about senses and experiences that are no longer useful to them.  They come back to share our elements, those which surely they also had at one time, and it is our only way to ensure communion in the festivity.
Oscar Guzmán

Dulceria de Celaya
If you want to get a taste of upper-class Mexico in the age of the Porfiriato, go to this elegant store. If you're lucky enough to be in Mexico City around Day of the Dead, you'll see a wonderful window display here. Try a variety of the treats. They are a little more expensive than you might find elsewhere, but the atmosphere and the experience of watching the candy being boxed up are worth the price!


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Saturday, November 1, 2014

The Beauty of Botero


Fernando Botero exhibition at Palace of Fine Arts. Mexico City
More images here. 
Background sculptures by Carlo Nicoli

“Man needs music, literature, and painting - all those oases of perfection that make up art - to compensate for the rudeness and materialism of life.” ~ Fernando Botero


November Theme Day: Landmark
Click here to view thumbnails of all participants in this theme day!


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Friday, October 31, 2014

Waves



"Photography can be a mirror and reflect life as it is, but I also think it is possible to walk, like Alice, through a looking glass and find another kind of world with the camera."
- Tony Ray-Jones


PHOTO FRIDAY
THE CURRENT CHALLENGE
Fri Oct 31, 2014
This week’s challenge:


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Thanks for visiting, please be sure that I read each and every one of your kind comments, I appreciate them all. Stay tuned.

Monday, October 27, 2014

Waves


When anxious, uneasy and bad thoughts come, I go to the sea, and the sea drowns them out with its great wide sounds, cleanses me with its noise, and imposes a rhythm upon everything in me that is bewildered and confused. Rainer Maria Rilke

Sunday, October 26, 2014

Pie de la Cuesta Beach

“We need the tonic of wildness...At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea be indefinitely wild, unsurveyed and unfathomed by us because unfathomable. We can never have enough of nature.” 
― Henry David ThoreauWalden: Or, Life in the Woods

Wrong Politics

(iPhoneography) Playa Majahua. Cabo Marques