Seth Haines's Blog, page 18
November 22, 2018
Observation #4: Long Shadows
I made my way to downtown Hunstville, Alabama for a little street photography. I found a little park by a quaint museum where the city placed a popup ice-skating rink. It was late in the afternoon, well before the golden hour and the shadows were long. None was longer than those cast by a little girl, laughing as she learned her legs on southern ice.
Observation #3: Children cast the longest shadows.
*Come join the inner circle. Photo taken with the Canon M-50.
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November 21, 2018
Observation and Examination #3
EXCLAMATIONS
EVERYWHERE!
Observation: Everyone is shouting these days. ALL CAPS! EXCLAMATIONS!
Examination: Are you a calming presence in an anxious, shouting world?
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November 20, 2018
Observation and Examination #2: Seeing Things
Observation: We all see art differently, that is, if we stop long enough to see it at all.
Examination: Are you too busy to see the art around you?
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November 19, 2018
Observation and Examination #1: Cleaning Spaces
Observation: There are times when space becomes too cluttered—the house, the career, the accounts, the places of faith, whatever.
Examination: What keeps you from cleaning the slate?
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June 27, 2018
Observation #10: iPhone Addict
What happens when my phone buzzes, when the notification appears, when it asks me to click or swipe or whatever? Yesterday morning, I turned off those notifications, kept my phone facedown, too. In the afternoon, I reversed the process as a sort of experiment.
Buzz–my gaze shifts.
Notification–I read the banner on my phone scree, feel my energy shifting from my task.
Maybe my blood boils a little as I read about immigration. Maybe my heart quickens as I see an investment notification. Maybe I...
June 26, 2018
Observation #9: Your Phone, Your Drug
Yesterday I caught a little well-played flack for personifying distraction as a mistress. Always the female form, the commenter said. Why is it so?
I tried to explain it away, tried to show why I (a straight man with a healthy appreciation for said female form) might personify distraction as a seductress. Were my context different, perhaps I would have named it a Seductor, but I am what I am, and I wrote what I wrote, and the comment was well played.
What is distraction, then? Maybe a drug?
...June 25, 2018
Observation #8: Distraction is Your Mistress
Distraction is a sneaky seductress. She waits in the quiet hours–the hours of meditation, the hours dedicated to work, the hours just before sleep. She comes calling through the screen, notifies me of some Twitter thread or Facebook comment or CNN breaking news alert that I must check. And like any good seductress, Distraction divides me. She pulls me from what’s real—connection, creation, healthy productivity—and offers me digital candy. It tastes good in the moment, but what’s it worth, rea...
June 22, 2018
Observation #7: The Pier-to-Pier Interaction
Crossing the river, I watched two barges passing each other. I imagined the captains (do barges have captains?) waving at each other, imagined them lashing the barges together, spending an afternoon on the deck chatting about family and sharing a cup of joe. Were my imagination to become reality, I wondered, would this be a peer-to-peer and pier-to-pier interaction?
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June 19, 2018
Observation #6: Undoing the Undoable Knots
If there’s one thing we want–all of us–it’s that our undoable knots would be undone. My friends at the Cathedral of St. Francis of Assisi in Santa Fe, New Mexico reminded me of this yesterday.
June 15, 2018
Observation #5: In Which I Cry at The Beauty of Life
Amber, the boys, and I were driving through Eastern Colorado in the evening. It was the golden hour, the magic moment when the sun stoops to kiss the earth. There were low clouds scattered and the sunlight broke through the folds, created a sort of curtain on the horizon. Amber and I were listening to a live recording of Bruce Hornsby singing “The End of the Innocence,” and in a beautiful instrumental break, she said, “I’d die to be in the middle of that.” I turned to her, told her we were sm...
