A couple of days after Christmas, 2005,, I went for a walk downtown with my  family and had a couple of interesting experiences I would like to share with you. It was a dull, cloudy, rainy day in here in Halifax - most of the snow had been washed away and what was left was very grey and dirty. There were five of us adults and two children in a big stroller.

For quite a while, habitual tendencies kept arising in my mind that were obscuring any kind of relaxation as well as any clear perceptions. To start with, there was the basic resentment towards the weather – you know, ‘where’s the Sun, why is it so dreary here, it’s too dark and dull to take photos, I wish I was in Arizona..and on and on.’ Then there was something we have discussed many times in classes – getting from point A to point B. We were going to lunch and there was a sense of getting there and out of the lousy weather before the children in the stroller started to freak out! I found that I was walking fast, with a lot of impatience, trying to keep my camera dry and out of the drizzle...seeing NADA! Zero! I had an umbrella down close to my head and a Gap hat pulled down so all I could see in front of me was the ground and some disembodied legs going by.

At some point I got trapped behind our large group which seemed to be walking at an annoyingly slow pace - there was no way to pass them without going through mud and puddles, so I gave up...and that’s when it happened!

Ground to a halt, transmission thrown into neutral, I began to notice the rich wet world under my umbrella viewfinder without resentment. Like when the cork comes free from a fine bottle of red wine and the actual aroma is set free. I went along with the fact that I was not looking up and out as I usually do, but noticing things within the field of vision available to me under my hat and umbrella. Due to this, I was seeing things out of the frame of large open vision and instead things were appearing somewhat disjointed and free from the usual context.

Well, that’s that!. I just wanted to share these thoughts with all of you. Here are some of the images from that day.

I wish you all endless feilds of perception.

Michael

Click here for the rainy day gallery