Soothe me

I keep on forgetting

Please tell me again

I need to hear it

Just one more time

It keeps slipping

away from my mind

It's your voice in the wind

Your cry in the sigh

I know it, that's true

But I need to hear it

From you

I keep on forgetting

So say it again

Please say it

Until I believe it again.

Maybe

"I may be going nowhere, but what a ride."

- Shaun Hick

What one feels

"One can be the master of what one does, but never of what one feels."

- Gustave Flaubert

So let me be

"She had been defeated by herself alone, and the sadness of it left a dark shadow in her heart.  It further sapped her confidence and left her ever more withdrawn, ever more capable of suppressing her feelings.  Like her roughened hands, her sensitivity was slowly being hardened, and she drew relief from numbness creeping through her."

- Yo Yo

Ghost Tide

Mindfulness

In pursuit of a mindful life, I am trying to let my thoughts go.  Wherever they want.  I want to know what consumes me.  It's interesting to see where they take me.  Where do your thoughts take you when you let them go?  

Mine are consumed by the beauty of Namibia... 

The photographs I still want to take... 

Where I still want to travel to...

What I want to do when I have the time...

How I miss my family back home...

My family here, their happiness...

So many things.

And so I drift on...

The sound of the Sea

"I felt once more how simple and frugal a thing is happiness: a glass of wine, a roast chestnut, a wretched little brazier, the sound of the sea. Nothing else."

-Nikos Kazantzakis

Zorba the Greek

Quiet

"Have you ever heard the wonderful silence just before the dawn?  Or the quiet and calm just as a storm ends?  Or perhaps you know the silence when you haven't the answer to a question you've been asked, or the hush of a country road at night, or the expectant pause of a room full of people when someone is just about to speak, or, most beautiful of all, the moment after the door closes and you're alone in the whole house?  Each one is different, you know, and all very beautiful if you listen carefully."

- Norton Juster

The Phantom Tollbooth 

Nightfall

"I wish I could show you

when you are lonely or in the darkness

the astonishing light

of your own being"

- Hafiz

This photograph is of the 1905 Jetty in Swakopmund just after nightfall. I was a glorious day and I just kept wandering around here looking out to the sea and taking photographs.  The sky remained beautiful for a long time after the sun had set. I started walking back to my car but turned around for a final shot and this was the result.

It is my favourite.

Sunsets

I delight in sunsets.  Always have.  For a few moments each day, the sky turns the most magnificent hues and colours, painted by a Master's Hand...

My life partner moved to Namibia six months before I moved.  We've been together for 11 years and we thoroughly enjoy spending time together, whether idle or busy.  He is my best friend, best lover, best carer and best provider - he is my everything and much of what I do revolves around him.  He is my North.  Naturally, being apart for such a long time was very hard for both of us.  Although working hard during the day, evenings were long and lonely.  

Some colleagues became aware that we were apart and started inviting him for sundowners after work.  But every night, when dusk came, this sweet man of mine would turn his back deliberately to the sunset, close his eyes and refuse to watch.  Every night for six months.  No amount of coaxing or teasing would entice him to turn around and look at the sun setting.  Why?  

Because he wanted to share his first sunset in this beautiful country with me.  Because he knows how special they are to me.  To him, it was a way of telling me he missed me and wished I was with him.

It was love.

On 04 December 2014, we shared our first Namibian sunset together.  And have been trying to catch them together ever since.

May we never spend another sunset apart.

I love you my Desert Wolf.   

So much unsaid...

I just love this photograph.  So many things are left unsaid, but the image is striking.

Perhaps because the individuals in the photograph is known to me?  

Or perhaps it is that I've caught them in a moment.  

A moment of laughter and joy.

A moment of forgetting the world.

A moment of demonstrated unconditional love from a father to his daughter.

This is love in it's purest form.

  

Broken Beauty

"We had shipwrecks in

our hearts

they wore torn-down sails

and sea-swept decks,

they were broken beauty,

but they lay between the fierce tides of our heartbeats

caught in the anchors 

that hid in each breath."  

Ariana