People...Empathy and The Lady

I am currently having trouble, uploading photographs of enough quality and definition, to my original Almanack and so I have decided to publish this private blog, which can only be reached at present, through a link from the Almanack, until I can find a solution.

In a strange way, this problem has caused me to create the "Secret Almanack"....

                                        

                                                                            Alice in the Park     

                           

Wikipedia defines 'empathy' as: "the capacity to recognize or understand another's state of mind or emotion. It is often characterized as the ability to "put oneself into another's shoes",

"To in some way experience the outlook or emotions of another being within oneself."

 

 

 

I was walking through the gardens behind the theatre in Bournemouth were we were performing, when I saw her. Her neat way of sitting, immediately 'touched' me.

 

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Robin Easton - "everything so composed, peaceful and orderly even her legs, feet and hands .. "

...I walked past her, already focussing my camera - then I doubled back and quickly took the shot. She reminded me of my mother and also myself, when I first attended spiritualist church and consciously left a place for Christina, who had just died, to my left...and then the minister said "There's a lady sitting beside you..."

Anji -"Loneliness. (S)he’s left a space for someone who won’t come anymore."...

 

Certainly the lady seemed out of place and somewhat tense...

Susie - My initial response, is she is thinking of times past, she is missing someone, she is watching someone that she wishes she could momentarily trade places with.. bring back time

 

...There was a collectedness and an alertness about the lady. Although she was sitting on the bench, she did not seem to be a part of it - rather she sat above it - as if she was in transit...

 

 

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Robin Easton - "she sat at one end of the bench the way one would if they hoped or expected someone else to arrive. She left room for “more”, for something to happen, for “possibility”...

                                                                  ...Tamera "Waiting. Waiting for something, and a little anxious about it???"

 

She reminded me of a television play I saw many years ago, where Maggie Smith played an ex-wife who had visited her past husband and his new wife and who, after a difficult stay, was sitting neatly on the side of the bed, with her suitcase by her feet, in the guest-room, waiting for her taxi to arrive to take her to the railway station. I remember the play upset me greatly, as I had just separated from my wife.

 ...angel - "A Lonely (old) lady watching the world go by."

 

I had decided to shoot the photograph from directly opposite the lady. All around were people enjoying a bright summer's day in the park - but the viewpoint I wanted to stress, was the...

...Eric S.  "Waiting, loneliness, reflections or memories." A good while ago, there was a film which a think was rather ahead of it's time - "Being There" starring Peter Sellers, concerned a Butler who was suddenly made homeless when his employer died.

The Butler, who was called "Chauncey Gardiner", was the most simple of men - some would say dim, or stupid - but he possessed such an expression of profundity, that people would hang onto every statement he made and regard every utterance as a gem of wisdom - even though the statement and his thinking behind it, was one that a child of three would make - or even 'better' in terms of wisdom.

 

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Joseph - "my first impression was that this lady had senile dementia and doesn’t quite know where she is or indeed, why. Despite the fact she looks fairly composed with her belongings resting alongside her, I feel she is somewhat lost and sits waiting for someone who doesn’t look likely to appear any time soon"

 Rather like Hans Christian Anderson's King, people dressed Chauncey's words and his expressions, with their own "clothes" of opinion.

 

 

 

So what was she thinking?... ...

  

 

The actor Spencer Tracy, was once asked how he put so much feeling into his close-ups. He replied that he did nothing more than stand there and be photographed and that the audience did the rest - in relation to the film and it's plot as it unfolded.

 

 

 

 

Bird - "she sits and waits with fingers anxiously knotted…it’s been so long. All this long time thinking him dead, and in her bag sits the faded letter, says his plane was shot down. Could he really be alive after all? Will he recognise her? She sits and waits for her young man, finally come home."

Although the lady was sitting in a park, I wanted her surroundings to be anonymous. What was important to me, was her position and expression and also the feeling of 'aloneness' that I often feel personally... 

 

tashabud - "I believe the elderly lady is waiting for a bus. She’s either waiting for the bus to go somewhere or waiting for the arrival of someone she knows who will be riding a bus. While she waits, she makes sure to give other people room to sit down, should they want to sit down as well."

 

 

The human eye, or more exactly  the brain, is very selective. When I took the picture, I was unaware of the background of the shot - after all, it was some twenty feet away, but when I transferred the shot onto my computer and looked...

 

...there was a young, loud lad. He was a distance away, but the two-dimensionality of the photograph meant that he intruded into the shot and set up a relationship with the lady that I didn't think really existed - except within the medium of the camera...

...So I zapped him out.

 

 

But everything in life is a collection of energy and although I had 'cloned-over' the noisy youth with grasses, the now 'invisible tyke' still existed...

A. Bolaji  - "the background implying the need for peace...it is where she is sitting and the ‘power’ of the background, [that] signifies (at least to me) some kind of longing for peace and contentment."

 

Although the full spectrum  cannot be perceived through our three-dimensional senses, many people can perceive energy or 'presence' that lies beyond...

 

Liara Covert  - "The woman is communicating with a deceased relative. She reads energy and interacts with spirit in ways that defy words."

 I have been saved a few times in my life, by following my gut instinct and I have heard 'instinct' equated with guardian angels or spirit guides. I think we must all have been in a situation, where a feeling or force has 'saved' us. I know that the times I have not followed my instinct have usually ended in disaster

 

Chrissy - "me & Andy are reading stuff together and laughin’ he says she is lookin’ at them guys on skateboards and bikes and thinking “When are they gonna give me some peace & quiet!”…LOL ( That is after a glass or two or even three of nice red wine!)"

 Yes Chrissy and Andy, the young tyke could have been on a skateboard for all I know - and nice red wine does enable spontaneity of perception :)

 

Finally (for this blog post) The selective nature of the brain and of our perceptions, often blocks out the vibration of colour. This is perhaps why colour newspapers have never really taken-off. Colour softens graphic fact and adds warmth to 'reality'

 It was a bright sunny day and I hadn't noticed the pretty blue of her skirt, or the vivid colours around her...

 

                                                                                  There was still something about her that touched me.

                                                                                                     (Maybe even more so in colour)

 

                              I never saw her leave, or asked her name,  but to me she will always be         "Alice"..

                                                                                                       .or...  ravenscawl - Eleanor Rigby?

 

We all create our own realities and those of the people we interact with. Creation and Destruction are inseparable and each one cannot exist without the other...

 

"lt's only the Red King snoring," said Tweedledee. "Come and look at him!" the brothers cried, and they each took one of Alice's hands, and led her up to where the King was sleeping.

"He's dreaming now," said Tweedledee: "and what do you think he's dreaming about?"

Alice said, "Nobody can guess that."

"Why, about you!" Tweedledee exclaimed, clapping his hands triumphantly.

"And if he left off dreaming about you, where do you suppose you'd be?"  

"Where I am now, of course," said Alice.

"Not you!" Tweedledee retorted contemptuously. "You'd be nowhere. Why, you're only a sort of thing in his dream!"

"If that there King was to wake," added Tweedledum, "you'd go out -- bang! -- just like a candle!"

"I shouldn't!" Alice exclaimed indignantly. "Besides, if I'm only a sort of thing in his dream, what are you, I should like to know?"

                                  "Ditto," said Tweedledum.

                              "Ditto, ditto!" cried Tweedledee.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                

                           Still she haunts me, phantomwise.

                                Alice moving under skies

                              Ever drifting down the stream
                              Lingering in a golden gleam
                               Life, what is it but  a dream                                                                                                                  

                                              "Ditto."                                                     

                                                "h".

                                       Janet  - Hi Henry,
"When I first look at that picture I see a lonely old women. She is looking at others around her and wishing that she had the company they do. Then I thought to myself, maybe she is not so lonely and is just out for a walk and is reflecting on her earlier years, in which she enjoyed their joy and happiness as well."
                                          

                                                     "We are such stuff as Dreams are made On, and our little lives are rounded by a Sleep."

                                                                                              William Shakespeare

                                                                                                                                                                  ~

                             

                                "Through the Looking-Glass" 

          http://milindsmusings.blogspot.com/2006/09/life-what-is-it-but-                              dream_115754570401790170.html

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