Loving Freedom

“A loving relationship is one in which the loved one is free to be himself -- to laugh with me, but never at me; to cry with me, but never because of me; to love life, to love himself, to love being loved. Such a relationship is based upon freedom and can never grow in a jealous heart.”

Leo F. Buscaglia

Bradley Beach NJ

Taken on a beautiful December afternoon! 

Frost on the Punkin

WHEN the frost is on the punkin and the fodder's in the shock,
And you hear the kyouck and gobble of the struttin' turkey-cock,
And the clackin' of the guineys, and the cluckin' of the hens,
And the rooster's hallylooyer as he tiptoes on the fence;
O, it's then the time a feller is a-feelin' at his best,	5
With the risin' sun to greet him from a night of peaceful rest,
As he leaves the house, bareheaded, and goes out to feed the stock,
When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder's in the shock.

James Whitcomb Riley

Manchester, NJ

We were all surprised with rare October Snow last night. Snow for Halloween!!

Autumn Harvest

“What though youth gave love and roses, Age still leaves us friends and wine”

Thomas More 

Laurita Winery , New Egypt, NJ

Contrast

“Our lives at times seem a study in contrast... love & hate, birth & death, right & wrong... everything seen in absolutes of black & white. Too often we are not aware that it is the shades of grey that add depth & meaning to the starkness of those extremes.”

Ansel Adams 

Manchester,New Jersey

Summer Is Over

“The Summer hath his joys, / And Winter his delights. / Though Love and all his pleasures are but toys, / They shorten tedious nights.”

Thomas Campion 

Seaside Heights, NJ

Tiny World

The mushroom is the elf of plants,

At evening it is not;

At morning in a truffled hut

It stops upon a spot

 

As if it tarried always;

And yet its whole career

Is shorter than a snake's delay,

And fleeter than a tare.

 

'Tis vegetation's juggler,

The germ of alibi;

Doth like a bubble antedate,

And like a bubble hie.

 

I feel as if the grass were pleased

To have it intermit;

The surreptitious scion

Of summer's circumspect.

 

Had nature any outcast face,

Could she a son condemn,

Had nature an Iscariot,

That mushroom,--it is him.

Emily Dickinson

Manchester, NJ

Mystery

“He who knows no hardships will know no hardihood. He who faces no calamity will need no courage. Mysterious though it is, the characteristics in human nature which we love best grow in a soil with a strong mixture of troubles.”

Harry Emerson Fosdick

Freehold Fin Fur and Feather Club grounds

 

Bubbles

"The world 's a bubble, and the life of man less than a span.”

Francis Bacon

Howell, NJ

Evolution

“Evolution made civilization steward of this planet. A hundred thousand years later, the steward stood before evolution not helper but destroyer, not healer but parasite. So evolution withdrew its gift, passed civilization by, rescued the planet from intelligence and handed it to love.”

Richard Bach

Congo Gorilla experience

Bronx Zoo

Complete

Do everything with so much love in your heart that you would never want to do it any other way.”

Yogi Desai 

Ruben Museum, NYC

It Gets Better

“Okay. Listen up, people.

It gets better. You being here makes this world a more blessed place. There’s art to be made. And there are songs to be sung. There’s so much to learn about yourself. There are sexy people to make out with. Yeah.

There’s joy coming for you. So stay with us. It gets better.” 

Jules Skloot

17th St. New York, NY

Gentleness

“I will not by the noise of bloody wars and the dethroning of kings advance you to glory: but by the gentle ways of peace and love.”

Thomas Traherne

Brendan T. Byrne State Forest

 

Magic of Learning

The best thing for being sad," replied Merlyn, beginning to puff and blow, "is to learn something. That is the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake in the middle of the night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world around you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then — to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting." 

T.H. White

Merlin, at the New Jersey Renaissance Festival

Bordentown, NJ 

Door

"Men live on the brink of mysteries and harmonies into which they never enter, and with their hands on the door-latch they die outside.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Point Pleasant,  NJ 

Spring

“Enjoy the Spring of Love and Youth, to some good angel leave the rest; For Time will teach thee soon the truth, there are no birds in last year's nest!”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Taken at Delaware Valley College, Doylestown, Pa 

Affection

“Caresses, expressions of one sort or another, are necessary to the life of the affections as leaves are to the life of a tree. If they are wholly restrained, love will die at the roots.”

Nathaniel Hawthorne

taken out of my kitchen window 

Fickle Moon

“O, swear not by the moon, the fickle moon, the inconstant moon, that monthly changes in her circle orb, Lest that thy love prove likewise variable.”

William Shakespeare

Super Moon

This was taken in my back yard in Manchester, NJ  

Feed the Wolf

“A Native American grandfather talking to his young grandson tells the boy he has two wolves inside of him struggling with each other. The first is the wolf of peace, love and kindness. The other wolf is fear, greed and hatred. "Which wolf will win, grandfather?" asks the young boy. "Whichever one I feed," is the reply.”

Native American Proverb

Jackson, NJ  Howling Woods Wolf rescue

Howlingwoods,org

 

Friends

"A true friend is someone who lets you have total freedom to be yourself-and especially to feel. Or, not feel. Whatever you happen to be feeling at the moment is fine with them. That's what real love amounts to-letting a person be what he really is.”

Jim Morrison 

Pine Lake, Manchester, NJ

Love Hurts!

“Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses, you build up a whole suit of armor, so that nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life...You give them a piece of you. They didn't ask for it. They did something dumb one day, like kiss you or smile at you, and then your life isn't your own anymore. Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so simple a phrase like 'maybe we should be just friends' turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart. It hurts. Not just in the imagination. Not just in the mind. It's a soul-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. I hate love!

Neil Gaiman

Out my kitchen window. This looks like a kiss but it was actually a bite and the bully squirrel chased the other one away.

The Rose

“Love is the rose. Lust is the thorn.”

Sri Sathya Sai Baba 

Lebanon State Forest.

I was walking around a lake inside the forest and this silk rose was leaning against this tree. 

Very strange. Maybe a memorial!

Loneliest Loneliness

“What if a demon were to creep after you one night, in your loneliest loneliness, and say, 'This life which you live must be lived by you once again and innumerable times more; and every pain and joy and thought and sigh must come again to you, all in the same sequence. The eternal hourglass will again and again be turned and you with it, dust of the dust!' Would you throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse that demon? Or would you answer, 'Never have I heard anything more divine'?”

Nietzsche

Lakehurst, NJ

Flow on

“Try to realize it's all within yourself no one else can make you change, and to see you're only very small and life flows on within you and without you.”

George Harrison

Lake Horicon, Lakehurst, NJ

Absence

“How like a winter hath my absence been. From thee, the pleasure of the fleeting year! What freezings have I felt, what dark days seen, What old December's bareness everywhere!”

William Shakespeare

Leisure Village West, small pond,  Manchester, NJ