The Grey Tree

Feeling philosophical today. After a long conversation with Eric Falvey and some light reading with Carl Jung. Today's words of wisdom.

We are not brought into existence by chance nor thrown up into earth-life like wreckage cast along the shore, but are here for infinitely noble purposes.— Katherine Tingley

 “Thoroughly unprepared, we take the step into the afternoon of life. Worse still, we take this step with the false presupposition that our truths and our ideals will serve us as hitherto. But we cannot live the afternoon of life according to the program of life’s morning, for what was great in the morning will be little at evening and what in the morning was true, at evening will have become a lie.” Carl Gustav Jung

 

4. The Stage of the SPIRIT

According to Jung, this will be the last stage of our life, a stage where we realize that none of those 3 stages are really who and what we are. We realize we are more than our body, we are more than our possessions, more than our friends, our country and so on. We come to the realization that we are divine beings, spiritual beings having a human experience, and not human beings having a spiritual experience. We now know this is not our home, and we are not what we thought we are. We are in this world but not of it. We are now able to observe ourselves from a different perspective. We are now capable to step out of our own mind, out of our own body and understand who we really are, to see things the way they are. We become the observer of our lives. We realize that we are not that which we notice but, the observer of what we notice.

Source

Miss Greenlee Elizabeth

Thank you to Jennifer McAlpin, my sister in law, for allowing me to photograph her during her graceful pregnancy with my lovely niece, Greenlee. It was a pleasure getting to share this intimate time with all of them including, daddy to be, my brother Chadd McAlpin. Here are a few of the images from that warm and sunny summer day on the beach in Longport and Ventnor New Jersey.

The Dreamer

Coming of Age

Life, environment and our experiences all of these things influence and mold us into the individuals that we become, ebbing away at the innocence that we begin with. I started this project thinking that I would discover all of the things that take away from our purity. What I realized was that nothing is ever "taken" but rather "gained." Through experience we gain knowledge; this is the definition of "living." We live to experience and we experience to live.                 

And Then, There Was Color...

                                                           (Crystal Cave Rd., Kutztown, PA; an autumn drive)

My last term at Kutztown I finally discovered color photo. Prior to that all of my work was black and white portraiture and documentary in nature, so this was a great departure from what I had been doing. Once again revisiting this idea of time and its effects on things. This time looking at objects rather than human beings. It is interesting how time can completely transform not only the appearance of an object, but its usage and purpose as well. How the functionality of an object gives it its purpose and definition. I love this idea of recycling things that have become "retired junk" so to speak into something beautiful, new & revered...art.

La Rosa Di Maggio

This is a photo of my grandmother Angela LaRosa. She is now 85 years old and dementia has begun to deteriorate her brain. Despite the fact, she still enjoys a playful day with her great grandchildren playing peek-a-boo with them outside on a sunny california day. This is how I will remember my grand-mother, jovial and full of life.

Intangibles

All living things are born into existence, bloom and progress toward entropy, essentially their own dematerialization. The difficult part is that despite the withering of the physical body, the spirit remains unwavered. At age eighty I will still view the world with the same reverence that I did when it was still new and exciting. To appreciate the miracle in the mere fact that any and all of this universe exists in all of its perfect complexities is the key to youth and wholeness.