Simplicity

Spring offers a whole new range of subject matter as the flora changes by the moment.

Our sky seldom disappoints, no matter the time of year.

Not that there is a shortage of subjects that appeal to me:

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Stripes. I do believe I may have mentioned before my liking for stripes.

Stripes and lines.

Perhaps they represent order, the absence of which accounts for my current malaise.

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Rows of trees. I like those too, I suppose they are also a line of sorts.

In this case they make me think of runners lining up for a race.

Trees often conjure up other images in my mind.

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The way certain surfaces catch light to stand out in dark surrounding.

The outline of the pines barely shows, but I like the overall effect.

Concentrating on the picture, I found the pines begin to stand out. Hm.

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Trees on skylines, especially with this sort of cloud.

Simple images that you might not even notice.

Simplicity appeals to me, maybe because my life has had its complications.

But then, doesn’t everyone’s? The only difference, in the details.

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My favourite view of the woods, still open to the sky, but trees alive with new growth.

The question is, would a simple life be enjoyable? Satisfying?

It depends, I suppose, on what one regards as simple. To me, it is the absence of complicated involvements that tie you up in knots and hold you back from committing to your personal passion, which might itself in fact be quite complicated.

Fostering cats involved a number of complications, but it was what I wished to do, what fulfilled me, so I did not regard it as burdensome.

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Perhaps if life had been simpler, I would have become an artist and maybe I would have created patterns for fabric, based on what I see everywhere in Nature.

Since moving to the country, I constantly see images that I would turn into jewelry or fabric.

At this late stage, all I can do is take pictures.

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Screens. I love a hint of something that lies beyond a dark foreground.

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Animals and birds, especially if they are doing something unusual.

A lifetime ago, my travel buddy Tim took me on a camping trip in Sudan which we shared with 14 other people, travelling overland in the back of a Bedford truck. One of the others was a Swiss veterinarian whose main occupation seemed to be photographing dead animals. We never found out quite why, as when we halted for the night, she took herself off into the dark and we only knew she was still there because we heard strains of Mozart that she listened to on some battery-operated device.

The only other thing I remember about that woman was that when we were stopped by a village policeman and marched into the chief’s hut, all our passports had to be presented. They were ceremoniously heaped on the man’s desk and he seemed to find it amusing to knock the pile over and then count them while stacking them up again. One passport stood out like a beacon and we cringed, rather expecting that he might zero in on it because it was bright red in a sea of navy. But our Swiss companion got no more attention that the rest of us as the chief picked up each document and compared photos to faces, all the time laughing in a most unsettling way.

That was the afternoon after we fell in the river while crossing the Nile, which is to say that the truck did. Kids from a nearby village were most entertained watching a bunch of overfed strangers attempting to rescue their transport from the mud, while their parents sat observing and we could only imagine their conversation.

There were times on that trip when I wasn’t sure I’d ever see home.

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If you’ve never been camping, don’t start in Sudan, or what today is South Sudan. You would have to be certifiably mad to attempt it now, of course.

There are no photographs from my trip, but the above is pretty much what we saw for two weeks as we drove from the south back up to Khartoum for our flight home, on Swissair, as it happens. Though as I recall, it was less green then.

It was probably my least enjoyable holiday, yet also the most useful. You learn an awful lot about yourself in such situations!

Perhaps tomorrow I’ll write about the excitement of Walmart.

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