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01 February 2008
Photo Friday: Sanctuary A favorite place, a park, a cafe, wherever you go to relax/feel safe, suggested by seanyboy?
Oh, I've got one for this! It's the hammock at my mom's place in beautiful Kincardine, Ontario. It's soooo nice to just loll there, looking at the blue sky through the GREEN leaves. Sometimes my girls and I all lay in it, swinging and relaxing. Man, it's the best: ≡ Click to see image ≡
A great smile in the hammock: ≡ Click to see image ≡
And, my Paris-living, lonely brother, in happier times...heh heh: ≡ Click to see image ≡
I can't really go there anymore because nearly all my photos from my year in Indonesia were lost when my apartment was robbed and my computer was stolen in December, but this is one of my favorites from what was the (temperature-wise) warmest, coziest time in my life, from a hike near Candi Sukuh on Java.
The heat there wasn't oppressive - it was all-embracing, like always being hugged; I don't remember sweating that much after I learned to slow down to a more tropical speed. And, I swear, the place has some of the most vibrant life on God's green earth. Pineapples you could peel and eat like giant popsicles. Insanely-colored butterflies just sitting on your clothesline. The nicest neighbors I've ever had. Groups of university students singing at intersections collecting change from passers-by, raising money for disaster-racked parts of the country 45 minutes after the first reports about the earthquake/ferry sinking/mudslide are on the news.
So while it seems like a quiet scene, if you could hear the hum, the sound of everything alive around you, surrounding you with energy and inspiration and chaos and creation and light, then maybe you'd know why frosty Latvia, where I'm currently based, seems a little colder.
*basks in equatorial brilliance, reminisces, smiles*
BP you are hilarious! Richat, your kids are total cuties. And mdonley thank you for the vicarious trip to what sounds like a warm and teeming place. :)
Currently, my sanctuary is our tv cave. It's perfect for reading or being quiet, too. No pic, sorry. :(
The coast, the ocean, without a doubt. I'm a different person when I am there, completely happy and interested and relaxed and full of energy, all at once. I never get tired of it. My coast isn't a sunning coast or a people watching coast, it's usually cold and windy and empty of people.
When I lived in the middle of the country, and I was too stressed to sleep, I'd make a beach in my mind. The more stressed out I was, the more the beach would start out super littered. I would focus on cleaning the beach, removing all the trash people had left there until it was peaceful and clear. And then, more often than not, I'd fall asleep.
I would say the ocean as well, especially the wildness of the Northern California/Oregon coast. But, since I don't live there anymore, this is the best I can do for now. Either way it's a natural world.
If I can get myself out and hiking in the woods with the dogs, I inevitably feel better. Without woods time, I go a little stir crazy. These are the most woodsy woods closest to me - Bent Creek. ≡ Click to see image ≡
And then, at the very end of Folly Beach there is a lighthouse. I like it there. A lot. ≡ Click to see image ≡
The garden of my kid's godparents in the Siskiyous. It's a pity that they sold the place. ≡ Click to see image ≡
Their house ≡ Click to see image ≡
Perched on a high bank of Eliot Creek, just over the California line from Oregon. ≡ Click to see image ≡ I am sad that they sold it, but it was 90 minutes from work, and way off the grid. Life was too much a challenge, in that they have always lived hand-to-mouth, and just could not do that out there.
But I cherish the times I went down there, and the weeks my Daughter was able to stay there and hang out in the deep woods.
Ooooh, danf, that's so beautiful. I can see why it was your sanctuary.
When my grandmother moved into assisted living, we moved her out of a house in John Day that had been in my family for several generations. It took every argument my aunt and my grandmother's best friend could think of to keep me from buying it. I don't remember what it sold for, but the people who bought it sold it (they were foreclosed on possibly) for something like $45,000. I shudder to think what it looks like now - I know other people in John Day have said that it wasn't kept up (it was immaculate when we were moving my grandmother).
I have no idea what I would do with a huge beautiful house way out in the mountains of Eastern Oregon, but I moved a lot growing up, and it was the only place I knew of that was always there.
Sil, it's even awesomer in person. You sneak through this abandoned manhole/pipe thingy and come out on the other side where there's this huge waterfall and swimming hole. Completely something out of a story book.
mgl, I love that picture if only because it implies that you are someone's idea of sanctuary.
photo by splunge
photo by TheophileEscargot
photo by Kronos_to_Earth
photo by ethylene
