I am going to diverge a bit with this topic.  I am going to talk a little about kitty motherhood.  How do felines raise their young?  I came across two kitties and their mom on a small backstreet across from the local Buddhist temple.  Temples are one of the places that stray kitties hang out in, because most temples have graveyards attached to them.  The strays can find some shelter, food, and water there.  I am not sure if these kitties had owners or they had just wandered over from the temple.

As soon as I squatted down to frame up my picture, one of the kitties came right up to my lens.  It came so close that the kitty came out slightly blurred in the image.  The momma cat, who was keeping a motherly eye on her young, let out a big meow.  Just to let the kitty know not to get to close, or to let the kitty know that big momma is watching.

Mother kitties relinquish their control over their little ones once the little ones are able to wander around and explore some.  The mother will continue to supplement their diet with breast milk for as long as she can, but the babies have to start finding food on their own.

This is so different that a human child.  A human child remains so helpless for the first couple years of their life.  And in many ways they are still rather helpless even when they grow up a bit.  The kitties just get thrown into the world.  For these little strays the survival instinct overrides and they will either grow strong and survive or they will perish.

I respect motherhood in all its shapes and forms.  I hope these little ones make it and can survive in the big bad world of Chiba.

The air is crispier today that yesterday.  On my way in to the city you could see a faint Mt. Fuji off in the distance behind the ever looming Sky Tree Tower.  These are some of the signs that the seasons are shifting gears.  The air is clearer and we can see the mountains that ring the Kanto Plain.  I was actually felt a little nippy in the morning with just a windbreaker.  But, the sun came out and the day quickly warmed to a beautiful temperature.  A temperature that I felt at comfortable in in short sleeves.

As I was making my way to the station, I kept getting whiffs of a sweet fragrance.  The fragrance was so sweet to my uncivilized nostrils I thought it was some overly sweet candy.  That is what is smelled like, candy.  My reason returned and I knew that it could not be candy and their must be something in bloon that was giving off such a super sweet aroma.

I wasn’t able to answer the question what it was until I just about had reached my house.  There was a bushy tree that was covered with teeny tiny orange blossoms.  The blossoms could have been no more than 5 mm in diameter, yet their fragrance was unmistakable.  The sweet smell of autumn that drifts through the open window and across school children’s paths.

Orange

Little

Powerful

Blossoms

Sweet

More often than not things never quite go as planned.  I might have the most perfect idea in my cranium, but when it comes to try to bring from the synapse realm to the physical realm there is something missing in the process.  The same can be said of creating a photographic image.  I may have the best of intentions to create an image that is clean and sharply focused; however, I end up with soft edges and blur.  Does this mean that our vision is not complete?  Or should we learn to embrace the process that imperfection can bring a glimpse of perfection?

I am leaning more towards the second view point these days.  If I set up in my head an exact image of what I want I am missing the process.  I am missing the valuable steps that take an idea, that sudden impulse, and be able to bring it to completion.  These two images today are both not as I intended to end up with.  I wanted them to be sharp macro images that illuminate the beautiful intricacies of the flowers.  What I ended up with were blurs of shapes and colors.

As I was looking at the images for a second time, in post, they became expressions of color.  That is how their imperfection spoke to me.  Not what is wrong with the images  but what is right with the images.  I first viewed them as rejects.  I saw everything that they were not.  They weren’t sharp.  They weren’t  well focused.  If i hadn’t of given them a second going over I would have missed the beauty that they had become.  They became perfected through their imperfection.  Their first perceived negative points became their strengths.

The colors became my longing for the Big Island of Hawaii.  Those days nearly three years ago were we played under deep blue skies and watched the flora fill our vision.  The colors of Hawaii here in the semi countryside of Chiba Prefecture, spoke to me.  I was only able to enjoy this expression because I transformed my imperfection into a perfection.  At least a perfection for the moment.

Harmony is a word we like to know but we rarely see it in practice.  How do two things that shouldn’t be in harmony with each other get to be?

I found one answer the other day as I was wondering along a wall in Chiba Prefecture. The large cement wall probably had been built to hold back the hillside from sliding into the houses that are packed in one right next to each other.  The large poured concrete wall had a few drainage pipes built into the wall in order to release some of the rain water that saturates the hillside.  In some of these drainage pipes a perfect plant bouquet was packed in.  The plant was thriving on the water that was filtering in through the mud and out through the concrete wall.  It was a pure harmonious relationship.  The wall and mus supplied the water and nutrients needed to sustain the bouquet’s life.  The plant in return added to the simple aesthetic beauty of the poured concrete.  Together they were able to capture my lens.  They were able to communicate with me about their relationship.

Yes, objects communicate with each other, and they also communicate with me.  It is a triangular relationship between the objects I focus in on, the camera that allows me to capture it, and the spirit that allows me to communicate with all sides of the process.

Lucid communication, thats what it is all about.

According to my metrological sources Friday was the last warm day we are going to have this year.  The weather from now forth will progressively become cooler and cooler.  It will get so cool somewhere down the road that I will be writing how cold I am and I can’t wait for spring to arrive.  This year the weather really did seem to be like an out of control faucet.  One day it was cranked to the HOT and the next cranked to COLD.  I juts got to protect myself to keep from catching a cold.

As I was making my way though a quiet neighborhood in Chiba prefecture I stumbled upon a few pomegranate trees growing wild.  The were short squat yet full of ping pong ball sized fruit.  I thought that it was rather serendipitous to find my all time favorite fruit in the semi-wilds of Chiba.  Also, since many of my family are observing the Jewish new year with apples and pomegranates I was captivated by these little fruits.  These fruits have been enjoyed for millenniums in the middle east.  They are such an odd fruit.  The seeds are  surrounded by the wine like fluid flesh.  In order to enjoy the arils of the fruit one has to work hard to separate them from the bitter white innards of the fruit.  No matter what the difficulties are in getting to the juicy bits it is always worth it.  Having to work at getting the purple pieces is part of the pleasure of the fruit.

As the seasons change so does the why in which we interact with the land around up.  For example, here in Japan citizens were encouraged to grow green curtains.  Green curtains were devised as a way to save electricity by growing climbing vine plants on a trellis over a window.  Many Japanese planted morning glories, goya (Okinawan bitter melon) even saw some grapes.  They were beautiful.  Now those that planted them to cut back on electricity now get to fill a basket with grapes, goya and other vine climbing plants.

We should all take the time to help green our world.  All it takes are are few seeds, water and love to be able to reap the health and stress relieving qualities of greening our planet.

To all my brothers and sisters celebrating Roshashauna I wish you the best of times.  Enjoy some fresh apples and pomegranates for me.