Remembering mom, Mother’s Day, and the sunrise and sunset of it all…

/ Kim Weiss / Leave a comment

Mother’s Day is bittersweet for me. Three years gone, it’s sill hard to believe that my mother is no longer with me. This year her day falls on May 10th. My eldest sister will have to share her birthday with all the moms of the world and I’ll be remembering mine from Paris. How she would have loved to vicariously visit the city of love with me. I would bring back photos on my iphone, sit close to her in her small kitchen, and take her on the trip I’m about to have. And, she’d meet my fiance, John. How unfair it is for her to miss these landmark events in my life. As my number one cheerleader, she embraced every adventure of mine that she wasn’t able to have herself. Sharing them with her was almost part of the experience for me.

But loved ones come and go, and as I age, they seem to go more frequently. Many are in picture frames than glance back at me from dressers and desks and all are in my heart. Mom and Dad. Grandma Esther and Grandpa Benny. When I meditate I feel their presence as part of the particles in the atmosphere that surround me. I sometimes revel in the idea that everything that ever was still is– taking varying forms at different junctures and remaining as an integral part of the cosmos. My cosmos, when I have these visualizations, feels warm and full, comforting and hopeful.

And, the book, my book. My mother’s refrigerator wouldn’t have been large enough to pin up all the clippings its garnered. They’d have to find space around the one Miami Herald clipping that she shared with me where we were photographed together for another book story. She looked happy and proud in her denim ensemble holding tight to her body her blue leather shoulder bag. She loved books, she would have loved my book, and all because of how she loved me.

I miss you mom. I would have taken you to a fancy brunch this Sunday maybe not in Paris but some place you’d like.  I would have put a special copy of my book in a basket with daisies and chocolates and written a message to you that would last a lifetime. So instead, here I write: Thank you, mom, for encouraging my creativity, supporting all my endeavors, and loving me unconditionally. I love you to the moon and back, Kim.

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April fools and the disappearing sun

/ Kim Weiss / Leave a comment

Did you know that that sun actually moves on the horizon? Disappearing so that I can no longer photograph it rising these spring mornings? April Fools! We all know from grammar school science that the Earth is doing the moving and that exquisite star just shows up in a variety of places throughout the year. But, what about us loyal photographers who begin their day shooting the first hint of light as it pops up on the horizon? The spoiled ones who stumble outside onto an elevated terrace in their bathrobes and bare feet, coffee waiting on the dresser inside? Where can I lodge my complaint?

A prisoner of my tony terrace, my alternative is to get my butt over to the beach and make like a real nature photographer. So what that I have to prepare myself for a long drive to work and feed and water all the domestic critters living with me. I’ve been doing this for nearly eight years and now that I have a book and a community on Facebook and Instagram it seems SO IMPORTANT!! What will these people who see my photos daily do without me? And, what did I do those prior years?

I’m sure that the social networking friends will survive and in fact, punt for me with their wonderful photos that pop up on my pages daily. As I’ve remarked before, this is my favorite part of this photography book journey that a community has sprouted this way. I’m pretty sure that I’m screwed until June so I’ll be searching my brain for some creative ways to use this time and space. I am meditating.

More meditation. That’s it.

Picturing a sun coming over the horizon.

Enjoy the spring, the spring holidays, and your own sliver of happiness, wherever you find it.

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Spring has sprung and the sun showed off all week!

/ Kim Weiss / Leave a comment

Nature is definitely toying with me. Soon the morning sun will disappear into the horizon obstructed by the building I live in and everything in front of it. I don’t remember what I did last year but I’m sure I’ll find a resourceful way to stay current in my sunrise postings. Or find a way to quell the shimmy shakes when they start to jar me for the lack of morning camera events.

Perhaps to prepare me for the troubling event of nature aka the inconvenient revolution of the Earth, I was treated to some magnificent sunrises this week. (Giving a whole new meaning to the universe revolving around oneself, no?) Whereas I awoke to predominantly gray skies, by the time I paged through morning emails and sipped the last of my Italian roast, a very pink-red sun plopped out over the sea and wooed me no end. Without killing either of my cats, I was fast enough to just catch the shots that some Facebook posters thought I’d doctored with color enhancements. Not that I’m above doing that, mind you, these shots needed almost no help. Maybe just a left-side crop to minimize the terrace balcony. I’ve included the shots in the slide show below so you can see for yourself.

The week of pink-red sunrises also leads up to the opening of a new season, spring is springing precisely today, and what we call a new moon (no moon) is begging for wishes to be made and dreams to be dreamt. I have plenty, all right, and hope who’s ever reading this does, too. Many of them are happening in real time, and my little bookie book keeps motoring along both with publicity and public events. First for Women, the mega-grocery store tabloid gave it a sweet review and a story of mine was published in Nothing But Good News magazine.(make sure you go to page 30) To round things out, I’ve been asked by a bunch of PROFESSIONAL PHOTOGRAPHERS to make a presentation on Tuesday, 3/24 at their photo salon in West Palm Beach. I was thinking of stopping at Sports Authority to pick up a catcher’s mask, but maybe they’ll go easy on me. What I’d almost prefer is to have a Q&A session with ME asking the questions. However it goes, I’m looking forward to it. (Maybe I should bring my guitar?)

As the sunrise perspective slips away I do have my sunset accessibility back and am thankful for that. Nature is so good at keeping things in balance and after work bike rides and terrace sunset shooting continues. And, my humble Facebook community of 8K + grows daily and the picture posts and the comments tickle my heart.

Wishing you a wonderful entry into the season of abundance, love, and hopefully much joy. Your roving (raving?) sun reporter saying, over and out.

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Friday the 13th is really a great day. Don’t let them fool you.

/ Kim Weiss / Leave a comment

Whenever anyone gets all superstitious about Friday the 13th I just wave my invisible Pollyanna wand and declare: “the number 13 means ‘love’ in Hebrew, so I deem it to be a very auspicious day.” You can borrow that one, no problem, mixed metaphors and all. Being a superstitious person myself, I can cower, throw salt over my shoulder and fold up my umbrella before entering a building with the best of them, but a whole day of bad luck? That’s a curse I’ll gladly bow out of. It’s been a week, yes it has.

Daylight savings time was the highlight (sorry), in its very mixed blessing sort of way. As much as I don’t like tampering with nature, natural light, and most importantly, my sleep patterns, I do dig the after work walks and the return of sunsets that I am around to see and snap from the terrace. Like an old missed friend waiting for me in the distance, except most days this week my friend was hiding in thick grey clouds. That didn’t discourage me from bringing my homemade soup (which lasted all week) onto the terrace along with my camera and my scoundrel cats. It’s a wonder that I almost never see neighbors spending this time on their balconies. Except for Wednesday morning when I turned around from the sunrise and saw three people on the terrace to the west of me and up one level. Thankfully, I was not in my pj’s, aka a huge green T-shirt that says “Cobra” on the front of it, which is how I’m dressed many a morning out there.

Oh, I forgot to mention, I’m engaged. Engaged, as in, engaged to be married. Can you believe it? Someone (wonderful) actually wants to put up with my strange jump-out-of-bed habit of snapping sunrises and my sometimes disturbing dinner ritual of capturing a setting sun. Yup. it’s happening, and I’m still a little dazed by the whole thing. Dazed and truly happy, if not a little blessed. The glistening rock on my finger reminds me that it is really happening. The best news of all: there IS love later in life and in my case, worth the wait. Someone said we should just get married at Sunset Cove… a park in Boca Raton. That would be just too perfect, right? Well, we have plenty of time to entertain that sort of thing. So far, we’re in Las Vegas for a drive-through wedding, a public park for the world’s largest pot-luck wedding, or at the courthouse with no fanfare at all. (I highly doubt that’s going to happen!)

May your days be bright, your skies clear, and whatever the sunrise and sunset means to you in your life, may it be good, and sweet and filled with love (and joy). And, remember to share what YOU snap on my Facebook page.

Until next time. Over and out!

p.s. new revelation: viewing the sunrise or sunset – the AWE is the intake of the breath, GRATITUDE is the exhale. think about that. I may have more to say about that soon.

Ciao

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And, all I had to do was wake up!

/ Kim Weiss / Leave a comment

How to literally Emerge Spiritually from Slumber (into your new day)

◄ Index ►by — March 1, 2015

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How much more obvious can it get than a magnificent star rising every morning on our horizon to wake us up to our own magnificence? So obvious that it’s easy to miss. This giant gift we’re given every day escapes us in our busy lives; who takes the time to drink in the blessing that warms our planet on a daily basis, keeps us alive?

I do.

Every day.

Okay, so I picked a home in the sky, a high-rise apartment with a terrace on the 14th floor where I can “emerge spiritually from slumber” quite literally by filling my vision first, even before brushing my teeth, with the blessing of a sunrise. We talk about the dawning of a new day, we cite the magic of the rising sun in spiritual text, acknowledge the sun’s vitamin D powers in our scientific literature. Could it get more obvious?

I’m not suggesting the sun to be a false idol of any kind, but surely it’s one of the more miraculous orbs of creation from which we can draw spiritual sustenance. There are trees and roses, azure waters and many miracles of nature all around us, but the rising (and setting) sun is a constant that we can universally access from almost anywhere. The places where darkness seasonally prevails (around the North and South poles) notwithstanding, most of where humans choose to reside come replete with daily doses of sunshine.

weiss2What about it makes the rising of the sun so spectacular — so often photographed, painted and used in poetry and song lyrics? Its beauty is constant but its visual manifestation is different every day. Just like us. So much of who we are is made of the same predictable stuff, but a space seems always left for the unexpected, for change, for untold beauty that’s never before been seen. We are like the sun in our penchant for showing up, but our rays of expression vary from day to day, moment to moment.

Maybe we love the sun so much because it reminds us not only of the divine, but the divine in ourselves. We can “stop and smell the sunshine” or we can sleepwalk through our day and make the motions of a fluid, forward-moving life.

I choose to remember my divinity as I jump out of my bed each morning, peer through the blinds and make my way onto the terrace, cats at my feet and camera close at hand. My tribute is to document what I see and share it in pictures. The moment of magic enters my eyes, concentrates in my heart, then is absorbed and embraced through the lens of my camera. When I “develop” my pictures onto the computer screen, it’s like opening a door in my heart. From this place, I hope the feeling I experienced is conveyed to the person admiring the photograph. I’m less after the technicalities of a perfect shot and more about the magic of the moment stirring inside of me. Keeping it all to myself just doesn’t seem fair.

Seven, almost eight years, of snapping these photos morphed into a serious hobby, then a book, now a growing Facebook community of backyard shooters who send and post what’s greeting them on the horizon either morning or sunset times. Or both. I feel blessed to be a part of this grand circle of appreciation. Taking a moment to look at what is always around us can cause waves of joy and well-being exponentially throughout our day that ultimately spill over onto the people around us.

What could be better? And, all I had to do was wake up. (emerge from slumber).

(story from The Edge – the link:http://bit.ly/1zT3xQ8)

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Noah’s (Avian) Ark, Palm Beach Reading Council and how the HECK did I get an invitation to speak to the Palm Beach photography salon people?

/ Kim Weiss / Leave a comment

I’m finally getting this slide show thing down and really digging it. If I were to tell you all that’s gone on in the last weeks we could be here a while. There’s been lots of love, some episodes of loss, a bad cold and a whole lot of sunrise and sunset shooting going on. I spoke to some lovely teachers at the Palm Beach Reading Council, had an encore appearance on Valentine’s Day at my hometown Barnes & Noble in Boynton Beach and am about to see my book on the tables of the annual AVDA luncheon, the charity to which proceeds from my book are going. Translation: 400 people will get a copy! Then, before you know it, it’ll be March 12th and my little book will grace the goody bags of 800 people who attend the annual Love of Literacy luncheon put on by the Literacy Coalition of the Palm Beaches. I love this event and this year’s speaker is Kate DiCamillo, the author of Because of Winn Dixie (among other award-winning titles).

I had some pet bird disasters. Rashi, my magnificent cockatiel left his earthly perch for birdy heaven and Tito, the nearly bald miniature parrot almost joined him at the claw or tooth (we’re not sure which) of one still-partly-feral cat, Sachi. There were two visits within two weeks to the birdy veterinarian after not having seen him for 10 years. Poor little dears. I miss having Rashi to the left perched on my book shelf, shredding the tops of cookbooks in my morning field of vision as I post my photos and meanderings. Now and then, he was directly on the computer preening and breaking out into his version of revele. RIP good buddy. You were a good bird. Maybe the only “normal” one living under this roof. Tito’s come around and I actually think he’s missing his twice a day dosing of antibiotics – three kinds, that is. In his world, any attention must feel like good attention. Poor little bald bird.

We had our “cold snap” here in South Florida and as of today, it may be officially over. Let’s hope not, as I’m not anxious for the multi-month heat wave that typically follows. I did see, however, in our local lagoon, a huge celebration of the warm weather and sunshine in the form of iguanas, turtles, pelicans, green herons, Mallard ducks, coots, wood storks, and great big herons of every kind. It was miraculous. Looked like Noah’s (avian) Ark.

Look for my book in First For Women, the grocery store tabloid magazine on March 19th and coming in April, Avenue magazine in tony Delray Beach. The Happy Herald just did a wonderful feature here in the South Florida market and I was actually asked to speak a the monthly salon for photographers at the Palm Beach Armory in late March. What the heck am I going to tell them? Methinks I better wear protective gear should they show up with things to throw at me.

I kid, but am a little nervous. I’ll tell them all about the publishing and marketing parts. Then, I will beg them all to be my mentors. Please teach me camera settings beyond automatic, pretty please?

Over and peace out.

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Closing in on January – hello (almost) February

/ Kim Weiss / Leave a comment

Whew! Is this year going super fast or is it just my brain slowing down? I was without John for 19 days while he worked away in tugboat land, this time in Shanghai. He hated being there (sorry to say) and I couldn’t wait for him to come back. My sunshine comes in more packages than one, and John is an essential ray in my life. I realize that even more when there’s a gap like this. But, he did send pictures of a brand spanking new tugboat suspended in the air ready to get placed on the vessel assigned to bring it to Panama – what – ? Never mind. Let’s just say, I’m one of the few lucky ladies that you’ll meet who receives tugboat pictures. (That’s why we call him Tugboat Johnny!)

Meanwhile, there was my favorite opera, La Boheme, an Audra McDonald presentation (disappointing – too much talk, not enough singing), book club, radio interviews and dinners with friends. Last night a beautiful meditation group invited me to present my book (John was MIA in Panama). Even a pre-Panama jaunt with John to Ormond Beach had me taking sunrise pictures from the ground for a change.(Loved the sparkling on the sand!)

The constant in my life was/is the waking up to the awesome-ness of the day through the miracle of a sunrise. It’s like a shot of adrenalin straight into my heart every morning. I beat myself up sometimes for my lack of discipline in the ways of sitting meditation but I show up for the sunrise every morning. Workday or on the weekend, it matters not. This is where I am juiced. This is the vitamin D that floods my entire being. This is the only time of day where my face isn’t slathered in sunscreen. Nothing gets between me and this moment of connection. It’s big, it’s universal, it’s personal, it’s indescribable.

So photograph it, I will. And, when I can catch it, I’ll continue to celebrate the day’s majestic endings. If it’s not on the page, or in the camera lens, the sunset is in my imagination. Bounced in all its yellow-orange-red glory to the same place where the sunrise lives. Inside of my heart.

I am solar powered 24/7. Enjoy, all!

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