#Contemplation

[stanford-photography]

Angela, Grand Canyon, 2008 By Jeff Stanford, 2024

Buy prints at: https://jeff-stanford.pixels.com/

I met Angela in Las Vegas, Nevada, November 4th, 2008, the night Barack Obama won his first election. I was on a two-month long road trip from New Jersey to the West Coast and back after the funeral of my youngest brother. I was lucky to be working for myself as a web developer with some wonderful customers that I only needed to meet IRL a couple of times a year. One to three hours a day working on projects was enough to keep me financially free so I would do that first in the morning and then either move on or stay someplace to see the sights. I also discovered a couple of sites where I could meet up with women at each destination who might like to show me around. I always made it clear that I was on a road trip and only around for a short while, but I was surprised by the number of people who replied. So, in Las Vegas it was Angela I met, and we hit it off wonderfully. Originally, I was supposed to meet up with my best friend, Mick, from England but he could not make it at the last minute. Angela was a great host and even though I never made a single bet I had a great time in all the clubs, bars, casinos, and restaurants in Vegas we visited. Eventually when it was time me to leave Angela and her daughter Jessica followed along as far as Memphis.

[peaceinthestorm]

John Singer Sargent (1856-1925, American) ~ Study of a Seated Man, 1895

[Source: nga.gov]

[marejadilla]

Darrel Rhea, “Flowers & Mermaids” Art Serie. Seattle, Washington.

Contemplation

[allthatispeculiar]

[qlqniel]

The Blue Man and The Sea

Achill Island, February 2016

[contremineur]

Hovsep Pushman, Contemplation (oil on masonite, before 1940)

[jeanfrancoisrey]

Invitation à la contemplation…

[huariqueje]

Morning Contemplation - Onelio Marrero , n/d.

Cuban-American , b. 1958 -

Oil on canvas , 18 x 24 in.

[lazyyogi]

The most fundamental aggression to ourselves, the most fundamental harm we can do to ourselves, is to remain ignorant by not having the courage and the respect to look at ourselves honestly and gently.

Pema Chodron

[derangedrhythms]

When we arrived at the centre of darkness the forest opened.

Alejandra Pizarnik, Selected Poems; Uncollected Poems (1962 –1972) from ‘Contemplation’, tr. Cecilia Rossi

[imaginal-ai]

"The Meditation of Saint Tariq" (0001)

(The Meditations and Ecstasies Series)

[wyntersart]

Contemplation by Thomas Benjamin Kennington (c. 1900)

[thatsbelievable]

[philosophybits]

Contemplation not only enlarges the objects of our thoughts, but also the objects of our actions and our affections: it makes us citizens of the universe, not only of one walled city at war with the rest. In this citizenship of the universe consists man's true freedom, and his liberation from the thralldom of narrow hopes and fears.

Bertrand Russell, The Problems of Philosophy