Looking into a Frog’s Eye

Frogs always fascinated me. 

When I photograph them, it is good to know that the frog’s vision is triggered by movement.

In the moment we look into each other’s eyes there is a connection in stillness. 

The slightest movement would make it jump and the connection is lost.

I am standing still, breathing slow, for the frog to trust me. This trust opens a window inside. 

I can see into this reptile being and at the same time I can see into the reptile deep inside myself. 

I can feel my ancient programs of survival.

Yes, I too can be triggered to jump. 

Looking into the frog’s eye connects me with old anxieties, coded in my DNA. 

Hello stranger, you are welcome.

Caged

In this time of the Corona virus I feel caged in. 

During my meditation of today I remembered this photo I took a while ago at Phakalane in Hout Bay.

A dried cage of a flower is protecting and holding a seed.

When my children were young, we learned from an anthroposophical doctor the value of illness for the development of children. 

Every time they went through the usual childhood infections one could see a significant jump in their development after they had recovered.

The virus forces me into a cage of self-isolation. 

This cage is holding me in suspense. 

Like the seed in this image I am longing to fall to grow and live. 

I am longing to feel the wet earth and crack open to new life.

But the cage keeps me in a resting place until the time is right.

There will be winter storms and the turmoil of hard rain to break the cage around the seed and then in spring, when the soil is ready, the seed will grow to a new flower.

And after the virus has gone, our communities will be different and grown to new life again.

Charnel Ground of the Sea

I took this image of the sand at Diaz beach, Cape Point.

What looks like ordinary sand from a distance turns out to be a billion pieces of broken shells.

Each one of them once contained a living creature. 

Shells were protecting and holding the form of uncounted bodies.

Bodies eaten by birds, fish and digested by bacteria, fertilising the ocean of life. 

The shells are broken up into tiny pieces and polished by the sea.

Millions of remnants of past life are now morphing into a beautiful beach and in thousands of years will become limestone in a new world.

All these tiny little pieces of sand show me how small our life is in the bigger picture. Our mind tends to constantly blow our ego up out of all proportion.

However, beyond the mind we are all of this: The sea, the beach, every bubble in the foam and every tiny little piece of sand are an expression of creation and so are we.

Edge of Africa

This is the western edge of Africa.

It is a rough edge, dark and mysterious.

There is a bit of Africa in all of mankind. After all, our ancestors came from this continent.

I find this in myself and maybe that’s why I have been drawn to Africa 

and ended up here making it my home.

This edge must have been terrifying for the early explorers 

and going past they found Good Hope.

To get to Good Hope we must travel past our darkness and past our edges.

It also means to see, recognise and acknowledge them inside and out.

The sailors feared the edges, but they had to look at them clearly.

If the edge stayed in the fog it became most dangerous.

Dance of Creation

This is an image of the sea at Diaz Beach, Cape Point.

I was watching the flow of the water welling up from the deep, dark calm.

Foamy structures welling up in constant changing shapes of a million shades of white and blue.

As I observe I can feel the bliss of movements taking form and after a short while dissolving again.

It is a fleeting reality emerging and flowing back into the deep dark unknown.

I can feel the pure joy of effortless emergence.

Joy is its only purpose.

There is no plan, target or aim. There is nothing to accomplish.

It is just the wonderful bliss of creation.

The ocean is part of and a metaphor for all there is.

It is a metaphor for the bliss of consciousness observing all into being 

and fading back into the full stillness of total potential.

This is the eternal dance of creation. God breathing in and breathing out.

Baobab Time

In the giant green house in the Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens stands a Baobab tree.

I felt him watching me taking photos through an eye in his bark. 

The eye of the baobab looks like a galaxy, a galaxy on the skin and an image of the depth inside.

Maybe something has been dropped into this bubbling pulsating network of fibers and nodes. 

I see life moving.

This image is a snapshot, frozen in time, of the eye taking in what it sees.

But my mind tells me that there is no movement on the bark of the tree.

Could it be that the baobab has his own speed as he sees with nearly still slowness?

Bubbling and pulsating take place and flow in baobab time.

I believe in nature every being has its own time. There is a time of the flower, a time of the bee, a time of the rock, a time of the wind and a time of the human being in each moment.

I can stop and feel into the baobab time 

and for a moment I forget the idea that my time measures all what is happening.

Time stands still and loses its relevance.

Letter in the Grass

I walked towards the low tide beach when I noticed the bunches of dry grass on the  left of the path. Something pulled me to look closer and take a picture.

Processing the raw image brought out the secret letters. 

Fonts looking familiar but like a foreign ancient writing. 

A love letter written by the wind and the sun.

A letter wanted to be found. A message of chance without a bottle. I worked on the image again.

 It fascinated me. What would the wind want to tell me of his love making with the grass?

And the heat bending each leave into a form to make it a symbol of a language.

Does this symbol represent a sound? Is  it the sound of the wind captured in the grass?

Is  there a love song of the wind that can be played reading the letters?

Can you see the sweet sounds of loving?