Picture of the Month

Dec 25

Reality leaves a lot to the imagination.

– John Lennon

Nov 25

There are always flowers for those who want to see them.

– Henri Matisse

Oct 25

Be happy, cried the Nightingale, be happy;
you shall have your red rose.
I will build it out of music by moonlight,
and stain it with my own heart’s-blood.

– Oscar Wilde, The Nightingale and the Rose

Rose (1993) by Isa Genzken – Roppongi Hills, Tokyo, Japan

Sept 25

Aug 25

‘Would you tell me, please,
which way I ought to go from here?’
‘That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,’
said the Cat.
‘I don’t much care where…’ said Alice.
‘Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,’ said the Cat.
‘…so long as I get somewhere,’ Alice added as an explanation.
‘Oh, you’re sure to do that,’ said the Cat,
‘if you only walk long enough.’

– Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland

Jul 25

There are only two tragedies in life:
one is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.

– Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere’s Fan

Jun 25

Despair has its own calms.

– Bram Stoker, Dracula

Treasury Building, Dublin Castle, Ireland

May 25

‘Bring me the two most precious things in the city,’ said God to one of His Angels;
and the Angel brought Him the leaden heart and the dead bird.
‘You have rightly chosen,’ said God,
‘for in my garden of Paradise this little bird shall sing for evermore,
and in my city of gold the Happy Prince shall praise me.’

– Oscar Wilde, The Happy Prince

Cape Zanpa Lighthouse & Taiki Statue, Okinawa, Japan

Apr 25

It takes great deal of courage to see the world in all its tainted glory, and still to love it.

– Oscar Wilde, An Ideal Husband

Feb 25

The ending is always a surprise.

– Daniel Wallace, Big Fish

Jan 25

But who wants to be foretold the weather?
It is bad enough when it comes,
without our having the misery of knowing about it beforehand.

– Jerome K. Jerome, Three Men in a Boat

Dec 24

To lie in the soft brown earth,
with the grasses waving above one’s head,
and listen to silence.
To have no yesterday, and no to-morrow.
To forget time, to forget life, to be at peace.

– Oscar Wilde, The Canterville Ghost

Norwich Cathedral, Norwich, UK

Nov 24

If I had a world of my own,
everything would be nonsense.
Nothing would be what it is,
because everything would be what it isn’t.
And contrary wise, what is, it wouldn’t be.
And what it wouldn’t be, it would. You see?

– Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

Oxford, UK

Sept 24

Behind every exquisite thing that existed,
there was something tragic.

– Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

Nikko, Japan

Aug 24

Some things are more precious because they don’t last long.

– Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

Jul 24

Life is a lot like jazz… it’s best when you improvise.

– George Gershwin

Jun 24

A flower blossoms for its own joy.

– Oscar Wilde

May 24

Autumn is over the long leaves that love us,
And over the mice in the barley sheaves;
Yellow the leaves of the rowan above us,
And yellow the wet wild-strawberry leaves.

The hour of the waning of love has beset us,
And weary and worn are our sad souls now;
Let us part, ere the season of passion forget us,
With a kiss and a tear on thy drooping brow.

– W. B. Yeats, The Falling of the Leaves

Apr 24

Action is limited and relative.
Unlimited and absolute is the vision of him who sits at ease and watches,
who walks in loneliness and dreams.

– Oscar Wilde, The Critic As Artist

Mar 24

The final mystery is oneself.
When one has weighed the sun in the balance,
and measured the steps of the moon,
and mapped out the seven heavens star by star,
there still remains oneself.
Who can calculate the orbit of his own soul?

– Oscar Wilde, De Profundis

Feb 24

It seems to me that we all look at Nature too much,
and live with her too little.
I discern great sanity in the Greek attitude.
They never chattered about sunsets,
or discussed whether the shadows on the grass were really mauve or not.
But they saw that the sea was for the swimmer,
and the sand for the feet of the runner.
They loved the trees for the shadow that they cast,
and the forest for its silence at noon.

– Oscar Wilde, De Profundis

Sydney Harbour, Australia

Jan 24

There are only two tragedies in life:
one is not getting what one wants,
and the other is getting it.

– Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere’s Fan

Nov 23

It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors.

– Oscar Wilde, The Preface to ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’

Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia

Oct 23

Music is the art which is most nigh to tears and memory.

– Oscar Wilde

Sept 23

Fill my heart with song
And let me sing forever more
You are all I long for
All I worship and adore

In other words…

– Fly Me To The Moon (In Other Words)

Aug 23

A painter should begin every canvas with a wash of black, because all things in nature are dark except where exposed by the light.

– Leonardo da Vinci

Jul 23

A little bit of order in a chaotic world.

Jun 23

For a dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight,
and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.

– Oscar Wilde, The Critic As Artist

May 23

Oh, the time will come upWhen the winds will stopAnd the breeze will cease to be breathin’Like the stillness in the windBefore the hurricane beginsThe hour that the ship comes in

– Bob Dylan, When the Ship Comes In

Apr 23

Ground control to Major TomGround control to Major Tom…

– David Bowie, Space Oddity

Mar 23

We are all in the gutter,
but some of us are looking at the stars.

– Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere’s Fan

Muckross Abbey, Kerry, Ireland

Feb 23

Then she gave one last burst of music.
The white Moon heard it, and she forgot the dawn,
and lingered on in the sky.
The red rose heard it, and it trembled all over with ecstasy,
and opened its petals to the cold morning air.
Echo bore it to her purple cavern in the hills,
and woke the sleeping shepherds from their dreams.
It floated through the reeds of the river,
and they carried its message to the sea.

– Oscar Wilde, The Nightingale and the Rose

Jan 23

There is nothing in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter and good humour.

– Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

Dec 22

All good things are wild and free.

– Henry David Thoreau, Walking

Nov 22

Blue daysAll of them goneNothing but blue skiesFrom now on

– Ella Fitzgerald / Irving Berlin, Blue Skies

sky, clouds and sea

Oct 22

Mere colour, unspoiled by meaning,
and unallied with definite form,
can speak to the soul in a thousand different ways.

– Oscar Wilde, Intentions

Centennial Park, Sydney, Australia

Aug 22

except change.

– Heraclitus of Ephesus

Jul 22

I can see
My rainbow calling me
Through the misty breeze
Of my waterfall

– Jimi Hendrix, May This Be Love (aka. Waterfall)

Brisbane Water National Park, NSW, Australia

Jun 22

Life is like an unsolved Rubik’s cube.

Maroubra Beach, NSW, Australia

May 22

But the fool on the hill
Sees the sun going down
And the eyes in his head
See the world spinning round

– The Beatles, The Fool On the Hill

Sunset on the Rhine River

Mar 22

I’ll be your mirror
Reflect what you are, in case you don’t know
I’ll be the wind, the rain and the sunset
The light on your door to show that you’re home

– The Velvet Underground & Nico, I’ll Be Your Mirror

The Opera House, Sydney, Australia

Feb 22

His soul swooned slowly
as he heard the snow falling faintly
through the universe and faintly falling,
like the descent of their last end,
upon all the living and the dead.

– James Joyce, ‘The Dead’ from Dubliners

Franz Josef Glacier, New Zealand

Nov 21

“Bring me the two most precious things in the city,”
said God to one of His Angels;
and the Angel brought Him the leaden heart and the dead bird.

– Oscar Wilde, The Happy Prince

Oct 21

Nobody sees a flower really; it is so small.
We haven’t time, and to see takes time – like to have a friend takes time.

– Georgia O’Keeffe

Sept 21

Who said

You’ll never find your gold on a sandy beach?

Jun 21

The sky is on fire
And I must go…

The sky’s changing color
And I must leave fast…

– Bob Dylan / Joan Baez, Farewell Angelina

Apr 21

The blue ocean is sometimes green.

Mar 21

Did you ever see the way the clouds love a mountain?
They circle all around it; sometimes you can’t even see the mountain for the clouds.
But you know what? You go up top and what do you see? His head.
The clouds never cover the head.
His head pokes through, because the clouds let him; they don’t wrap him up.
They let him keep his head up high, free, with nothing to hide him or bind him.

– Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon

Mount Robson, BC, Canada

Dec 20

performing her last dance
before descending into the bottomless ocean…

Nov 20

An imitation of an imitation

Sept 20

Let’s go.
We can’t.
Why not?
We’re waiting for Godot.

Ah! You’re sure it was here?
What?
That we were to wait.
He said by the tree.

-Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot

Aug 20

There is nothing more musical than a sunset.

– Claude Debussy

Bondi beach, Sydney, Australia

Jul 20

A glimpse of heaven from underwater

Jun 20

The story of a bird and a fur seal

May 20

Life imitates art far more than art imitates Life.

– Oscar Wilde

Apr 20

Ah, my friends from the prison, they ask unto me,
“How good, how good does it feel to be free?”
And I answer them most mysteriously,
“Are birds free from the chains of the skyway?”

– Bob Dylan, Ballad in Plain D

Mar 20

manipulating reality

Templetown Church ruins,
County Wesford, Ireland

Feb 20

Singing to an ocean, I can hear the ocean’s roar
Play for free, I play for me and play a whole lot more, more!

– Led Zeppelin, The Ocean

A man playing the guitar on the edge of a cliff
NSW, Australia

Jan 20

To be is to be perceived.

– George Berkeley

Dec 19

Real equality

St Peter’s Church in Woolton,
Liverpool, UK

Nov 19

Sunrise, sunrise
Looks like mornin’ in your eyes

– Norah Jones, Sunrise

Sydney, Australia

Oct 19

…and then, I have nature and art and poetry,
and if that is not enough, what is enough?

– Vincent Van Gogh

E.C. Manning Provincial Park, Canada

Sept 19

In the pines, in the pines
where the sun don’t ever shine…

Aug 19

Time moves slowly, but passes quickly.

– Alice Walker, The Color Purple

Ireland

July 19

Liverpool, UK

May 19

… gain the whole world
but lose your soul…

For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?

– Mark 8:36 (KJV)

Burragorang, NSW, Australia

Apr 19

Just a little green
Like the color when the spring is born

– Joni Mitchell, Little Green

Kenya

Mar 19

No space of regret can make amends for one life’s opportunity misused.

– Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

Charles Dickens Statue in Centennial Park
Sydney, Australia

Feb 19

The ending is always a surprise.

– Daniel Wallace, Big Fish

Berlin, Germany

Jan 19

Like a bird on the wire
Like a drunk in a midnight choir
I have tried in my way to be free…

– Leonard Cohen, Bird on the Wire

Dec 18

Land really is the best art

– Andy Warhol

Nov 18

Life is a domino effect.

Oct 18

All the world’s a stage…

– William Shakespeare

Sept 18

We are like parallel lines.
We have a lot in common.
We are so close, but we can never meet.
Never be together…

…a sad love story from mathematics.

The Anzac Bridge, Sydney

Aug 18

When the night has come
And the land is dark
And the moon is the only light we see

Westland Tai Poutini National Park, New Zealand

Jul 18

Life is both sad and solemn.
We are led into a wonderful world,
we meet one another here, greet each other,
– and wander together for a brief moment.
Then we lose each other and disappear as suddenly and unreasonably as we arrived.

– Jostein Gaarder, Sophie’s World

Maastricht, the Netherlands

Jun 18

Wherever you go
Whatever you do
I will be right here waiting for you

Centennial Park, Sydney, Australia

May 18

I am obsessed with beauty.
I want everything to be perfect, and of course it isn’t.
And that’s a tough place to be because you’re never satisfied.

– Robert Mapplethorpe

Inspired by Mapplethorpe’s flower studies
and his characteristic attention to light and shade,
I created this picture.

Apr 18

Nature is not only all that is visible to the eye…
it also includes the inner pictures of the soul.

– Edvard Munch

Lake Matheson, New Zealand

Mar 18

Who are you waiting for?

The Rocks in Sydney, Australia

Feb 18

At some point in life the world’s beauty becomes enough.
You don’t need to photograph, paint or even remember it.
It is enough.

– Toni Morrison, Tar Baby

South Island, New Zealand

Jan 18

The human faculties of perception, judgment, discriminative feeling,
mental activity, and even moral preference, are exercised only in making a choice.
He who does anything because it is the custom, makes no choice.
He gains no practice either in discerning or in desiring what is best…
He who lets the world, or his own portion of it, choose his plan of life for him,
has no need of any other faculty than the ape-like one of imitation.
He who chooses his plan for himself, employs all his faculties.

– John Stuart Mill, On Liberty

The artwork in photo: Stephen Marr, Under One Sky,
at Sculpture by the Sea, Bondi 2017

Dec 17

Yesterday love was such an easy game to play.

Centennial Park, Sydney, Australia

Nov 17

Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces,
I would still plant my apple tree.

– Martin Luther

looking up from under The Luther Oak,
the location where Martin Luther burned the Papal Bull of
Excommunication in front of the Elster Gate in 1520.
Wittenberg , Germany

Oct 17

The one thing that doesn’t abide by majority rule is a person’s conscience.

– Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

Woolloomooloo, Sydney, Australia

Sept 17

What is my life worth even if I remain alive?
Whom to return to in my old home town of Warsaw?
For what and for whom do I carry on this whole pursuit of life,
enduring, holding out – for what?!

– Herman Kruks (1897-1944), diary entry, 30 September 1942,
written with the news of mass murders in occupied Poland hanging over him.
Kruk was the chronicier of the Vilna Ghetto (now Vilnius, Lithuania).
He was murdered in a German concentration camp in Estonia on 18 September 1944.

Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, Berlin, Germany

Aug 17

I dream a dream that dreams back at me.

– Toni Morrison, A Mercy

Overlooking the Rhine
Kaiserpfalz Kaiserswerth, Düsseldorf, Germany

Jul 17

There are no lines in nature, only areas of colour, one against another.

– Edouard Manet

a fragment of a painting by Edouard Manet (1832-1883),
Die Barke (Monet Peignant dans son atelier) 1874,
Monet Painting On His Studio Boat 1874,
at Neue Pinakothek, Munich, Germany

Jun 17

No animal has more liberty than the cat, but it buries the mess it makes.
The cat is the best anarchist.

– Ernest Hemingway

Okinawa, Japan

Apr 17

He has made everything beautiful in its time…

– Ecclesiastes 3:11

Cherry blossoms along the bank of Tama River in Tokyo, Japan

Feb 17

You may say I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one

The Lennon Wall in Prague, Czech Republic

Jan 17

Now the whole world had one language and a common speech…Then they said, ‘Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves; otherwise we will be scattered over the face of the whole earth.’

The Lord said, ‘If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.’

– Genesis 11:1,4,6-7

The view from the 148th floor of The Burj Khalifa in Dubai, UAE

Nov 16

In all things of nature there is something of the marvelous.

– Aristotle

Lahbab Desert, Dubai, UAE

Aug 16

For me, a landscape does not exist in its own right, since its appearance changes at every moment; but the surrounding atmosphere brings it to life – the light and the air which vary continually. For me, it is only the surrounding atmosphere which gives subjects their true value.

– Claude Monet

Maasai Mara, Kenya

Jul 16

Wrong will be right, when Aslan comes in sight,
At the sound of his roar, sorrows will be no more,
When he bares his teeth, winter meets its death,
And when he shakes his mane, we shall have spring again.

– C.S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe

Maasai Mara, Kenya

Apr 16

And the vision that was planted in my brain
Still remains
Within the sound of silence.

Centennial Park, Sydney, Australia

Sept 15

⁴Show me your ways, Lord, teach me your paths. ⁵Guide me in your truth and teach me,
for you are God my Savior, and my hope is in you all day long.

– Psalm 25:4-5

English Bay Inukshuk on the Sea Wall, Vancouver, BC, Canada

Aug 15

I life up my eyes to the mountains – where does my help com from?

Psalm 121: 1

Obertauern, Austria

Jun 15

Why did they make birds so delicate and fine as those sea swallows
when the ocean can be so cruel?
She is kind and very beautiful. But she can be so cruel…

– Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea

Apr 15

Mother duck and her ten children

Mar 15

Two women

Maastricht, the Netherlands

Feb 15

A generation goes, and a generation comes, but the earth remains forever.

The sun rises, and the sun goes down, and hastens to the place where it rises.

…and there is nothing new under the sun.

– Ecclesiastes 1:4, 5, 9b

Tanyuan Garden in Nanxiang – Shanghai, China

Jan 15

A silent sea of clouds, so peaceful and so calm, underneath it is a colourful world.

Photo taken from a plane window

Dec 14

photo taken at: white swans: River Thames, Windsor, England

black swan: Avon river, Christchurch, New Zealand

Nov 14

The chief forms of beauty are order and symmetry and definiteness…

– Aristotle

the Basilica of Saint Servatius in Maastricht, the Netherlands

Oct 14

We all want progress.
But progress means getting nearer to the place where you want to be.
And if you have taken a wrong turning then to go forward does not get you any nearer.
If you are on the wrong road progress
means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road
and in that case the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive man.

– C.S. Lewis

Obersalzberg in Berchtesgaden, Germany

Aug 14