Pursuit of Happiness

"Happiness in this world, when it comes, comes incidentally.  

Make it the object of pursuit, and it leads us on a wild-goose chase, and it is never attained.  

Follow some other object, and very possibly we may find that we have caught happiness without dreaming of it."

- Nathaniel Hawthorne

American Notebooks

The Moon landscape, outside Swakopmund is a impressive dreamy landscape that no photograph can ever truly reflect the beauty and splendour of.  It's a scene that takes your breath away...

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.

Exploring

"I can speak to my soul

only

when the two of us are off exploring deserts

or cities or mountains or roads"

- Paul Coelho

Standing Tall

"I stand tall

like a tree upon this earth

while the stories of 

fear and false beliefs

flow past me 

like leaves being carried in the wind..."

- e.g. wise

Life's journey

"Life is a journey

that must be traveled

no matter

how bad the road or accommodation"

Never let a stumble in the road be the end of your journey...

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.

  

Contrasts

"The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.

What is called resignation is confirmed desperation."

Henry David Thoreau

Walden

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

Why sing?

Majestic Flight

"In order to see birds

one must become 

part of the silence."

Robert Lynd

Tell me how tough your life is again...

A whole new world

"For every man the world is as fresh as it was at the first day,

and as full of untold novelties for him who has the eyes to see them."

Thomas Henry Huxley

A Liberal Education

Lord Byron said it best

"There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,

There is a rapture on the lonely shore,

There is society, where none intrudes,

By the deep sea and music in its roar:

I love not man the less, but Nature more...

To mingle with the Universe, and feel

What I can ne'er express, yet cannot conceal."

George Gordon (Noel), 6th Lord Byron

Childe Harold's Pilgrimage

I have never met a sunset I didn't like

Nobody notices when we leave...

Sand blowing in the Namib dunes

Rest

All things, to their created nature,  must rest once in a while.   

So rest.  

Forget the world, forget your cares, your worries, rest a bit.  

Put aside your normal routine, your rythms, your ways.  

Rest just a little.  

Be still, quiet down and listen to your silence.  

See what comes.  

See Who speaks to you.  

Can you?  

Or are you the noise in this world? 

  

On Time...

"Now, thieving Time, take what you must..

Yet leave, O exempt from plunder

My curiosity, my wonder!"

- Mark Anthony de Wolfe Howe

Thieving Time

Nothingness

When I first came here, I did not see anything.  The land looked bleak, desolate and dead.  The sea a dreary misty grey and it was cold.  What on earth did I get myself into?  I have always loved nature and it's greenery - the trees, the grass, the endless splendour of various blooming flowers and their invoking fragrances.  I loved the rain on a tin roof, heavy thunderstorms and lightning strikes.  The smell of earth just after the rain; no better smell in the world.  A world of sunshine and warm weather...

Then, I moved here.  Where there is nothing. Where there are only a few trees. Where it never rains.  Not even a little love shower.   All I saw was sand, rocks and a miserable grey sea.  

But now, I see...

And my heart will never be the same again as I have seen beauty beyond compare.

Right here in this nothingness.

Of sand and sky and sea

I live by the sea. In the desert. Under an endless sky where sand dunes reign.  Where the long roads stretch to nowhere and beyond. The nowhere of ethereal beauty and absolute wonder.  People say God made this country in anger because of it's huge contrasts and extreme contours.  God's anger is spectacular, for the country is beautiful.  Every fibre of my being has fallen in love with it.  Totally wholly and completely...  

I don't always have many words, but my photographs can speak for themselves.  And even if my memory fades one day, or perhaps I get stuck in busy grey rainy days, I can look back on this journey and remember where my soul resides.