This writing is naked and nude enough Jamie. I've read pieces of photography but this one is super naked that I've never seen photography to be this beautiful. It's emancipating and uplifting reading this.
Thank you and have a lovely day. I'm Ral, and it's amazing meeting you.
Thanks Alice-Ann! Undressing those layers one by one is always a gift. Thanks for being here. Thank you for reading and for reaching out. Hope Spring is singing in the Cotswolds. 🙏❤️
Jamie, I love how your beautiful, soulful reflections and poem pulse with life, like light weaving through leaves, ever shifting yet endlessly profound. The way you explore nakedness and nudity feels like peeling back layers of the Self - not to expose, but to reveal the Truth that lies beneath. There's so many great lines and I would have to quote your entire post yet these really stood out for me. "Nakedness reveals itself. Nudity is placed on display.” Oh, the truth of it! The truth of it!
Being married to a photographer, who’s also a body therapist of thirty years (she’s retiring this year), I’ve often reflected on the interplay of mind, body, spirit and soul. When we first met, I said something like, “Well, that’s mind and body taken care of; together we’ll work on spirit and soul.” Poets eh?! It feels fitting to mention this here, as your words resonate deeply with that search for connection and meaning. Naturally, "Ways of Seeing" sleeps and dreams on our book shelves.
Thank you so much for inviting us to see the beauty of being - to dance in the tension between what we hide and share, what we know and seek to understand. There’s exquisite grace in how you paint the soul’s canvas, each brushstroke alive with vulnerability, memory and connection, gently unfolding with raw honesty that calls us to stand still with the wonder of it all. It’s truly a privilege to witness your soul in motion. I shall return to read again and again and again! ❤️🙏
Thank you so much Deborah! I really appreciate how deep you dive! As a bodyworker myself, I’m not sure we ever retire! Yes, it sounds like that is one deep house of soul! Peeling back the layers. Yes to the tension. The dance of self. Of selves! The ladder of selves? An un-finished painting of a soul in motion. We are the poem. I’m studying up on those archetypes getting ready for your books to arrive! Rest up while you can- the questions are coming! Thank you for being a Poetic Witch of Being. Thanks for being here. 🙏❤️🌀
Wow Jamie, what a masterpiece. I can trace the brushstrokes of thought and feeling between the lines. I hear you. Somehow the digital picture is not only instant gratification, it also can be modified, filtered and deleted. I remember the times when we had to wait in sweet anticipation for the film to become a picture. When I left Germany, I took pictures from friends and family with my little (new aged) "polaroid", and flipping through it sure feels different than skipping through the digital album. Everything is energy, polaroids contain crystals, books are printed on paper made of trees, they speak to more than just one sense. A picture online can be only experienced through the eyes. A printed picture carries energy, can be smelled, touched and be seen. With the internet we are often using just one sense. In former times we didn't need mindfulness, as we used a variety of our senses. Now we only use the sight which takes us away from believing first, then seeing. I hear you, I find it hard to read online! Sounds like it is time to let your words become another book! I would be delighted to hold it in my hands and experience your writing with all my senses! Thank you for sharing your wor(l)d with us!
“Books are printed on paper made of trees”! Yes! Thats it! Energy! Well said. Like the hand of the painter! The hand of a tree! I can smell the roots when I hold a book. Taste the must of the wood. Energy! Thanks Sadhbh! For diving into a feeling! Beyond seeing. Another book? Maybe a few lol! Stay tuned! Thanks for swimming here. These longer posts get fewer reads lol! I appreciate you! Thanks for being here 🙏❤️
The longer posts get fewer reads because they need paper to be printed on, a marker in hand to be marked and, a pencil in hand to write "a-ha" or "yes!!" Or "wow" in big letters next to it and a notebook next to it to capture the wisdom and take notes for oneself! They are not lost here, it's just the draft for a pretty amazing book! Keep writing!
Jamie, the deeper you go the lighter you become. 👍
Delft of the delta, the river silt, that floatation, the flatlands, a Parnassus reaches the sea. We forget how wide the horizon... bright northern colours abound in season, astonishing over snow, or blue as a Jay's feather, and how bright the green will shine against the wall, many treasures.
So they say, looking down from the walls, these dukes of the dyke, 'We are not here forever, go and see likewise, these are for your hand...'
I have been at a loss since there seemed no poetry coped with the broken ceasefire on innocence. You have brought many of us together. This morning it was pen and paper again on reading your post... a new poem came to hand. Thank you and the others here, and the shadows talking on the walls.
Phillip you are a poet of soul! You break my heart wide-open! You are a gift! As a man, I look up to you and can only say thank you for what you are. For who you are. Bless you! Thank you! 🙏❤️
This is fabulous, Jamie. Words on pages need to be read aloud. To be heard. To be shared. To go from nude to naked. In giving voice to the words we can become, be revealed, be naked. Suddenly artifice comes to mind, artifice as opposed to art. I’m trying to make sense of that thought right now. Dishonesty and honesty in expression. The covert the disingenuous as opposed to the baring of the soul, the communication of true feeling. I love listening to your posts.
Charlie, you are a poet! Thank you so much for this! Artiface. So true. Living into these questions is the journey. It’s nice to find some kindred spirits on the way. Who listen a little deeper. Who leave us changed. To know I’ve stood on some of the same beaches as you. Somehow connects to a deeper energy. Thank you so much. 🙏❤️
Oh, you’ve nailed this one, Jamie. I truly loved this post—so deep, so contemplative, so visual, and emotional. Human vulnerability is beautiful. Your poetic inner journey makes us all want to dive into these questions. It makes me want to sit with myself and reflect. As a photographer, I’ve lost my spark. I lost the drive, as you well know, because of this overflow. I can no longer sit and wait (just for myself). No client can sit in silence with me (not yet in my field as a life documentary photographer). Our collective rush doesn’t have time to feel the edges, the texture of the photos, the smell of old paper developed by hand. I remember the time my father spent hours in the darkroom—creating a photograph takes precious time, and as with everything that takes time, we appreciate it more: the crafting, the love, the work we put in. I miss that. I return to that all the time, I'll do this again in order to light the spark again as Veronika inspired me a while ago, reinvent photography in my own way internally first-externally after, will do this soon...
The selfie is about the self, but the self-portrait was about seeing into oneself. Do we truly see ourselves or simply reflect what others expect to see—or how we want to be seen? We are seeing our faces more than ever. Gratifying looks make us dissociate from our skin, from our unique features. The mirror only wants to reflect, and so do our neurons. We want to belong. We need to reflect back so that we can be accepted, to be what is needed from us to feel seen. But rarely do people obsessively taking selfies do so as an exploration, a question, an experience, a vulnerability of life. It’s a way of communicating, “I need to be seen,” so I can know I matter, I am valuable.
You’ve made so many great points here that I feel I can’t cover them all in a short comment (which, I know, is already very long), but the dialogue you’ve opened up is so valuable. It’s about seeing beyond, about putting in the effort to reach the other beyond the nude and into nakedness—the gift that everyone has to offer, the gift we offer to others. We can’t only ask; we have to give, too. We have to respond. We see, and we let ourselves be seen.
Vermeer, Florence, Delft—everything you wrote connects to my own contemplation, my own experiences with painting, with the endless hours spent looking at The Monk by the Sea in my own home. Endless questions about lived experiences, the distant nature of online images, only highlight the loss of something profound in how we capture moments today. An endless flow of pretty, empty pixels and screens filled with beautiful bodies that will simply be seen as objects. Our memories and identities are tied to physical contexts.
Thank you for being such a complex writer. Keep asking those questions loudly so everyone can see them, reflect on them, and create ripples of different perspectives—filled with more love for crafts, for love beyond the skin, for life, and for the smell of oil painting that I miss. Thank you for the quote from Nichita Stănescu!
Wow Katerina! I can’t even begin to say thank you enough. The Romanian poets, you’ve shared have played a big part in the last two posts. Right now I’d say those Romanian Poets are the best I’ve ever read. Thank you for going deeper between the words. Into the shadows of the words. Reflecting in the mirror. Living into the questions. Revealing. It’s nice to find some fellow writers, who still get naked and who speak of soul. Thank you for helping me live into the questions. Thanks for being here. 🙏❤️
Wow, so much to reflect upon here ... An immersive journey into meaning. The thought that came to me at the end, as a question, was: Perhaps only silence and bareness are truly naked, and all else is in some way nude or dressed, depending? Hmmm. Oh, and yes yes yes to those glorious old Dutch paintings, long a love of mine... 🙏
Wow! Thank you for adding the bond effect! Do I hear a Veronika Bond post on this? That would be a naked dancing to nudity and bareness. Or is it bearness lol. Thank you so much you make me smile! As usual, you always give me one more thing to think about that leads down the path of growth. I nope you’re having a lovely time in the Algarve. Dive into that ocean for this sea starved Canadian soul. See you back in the spaces between the words soon. Thanks for being here. 🙏❤️
not sure about diving into the ocean (about 60°F/ 16°C) at the moment. But our family have rented a beachside Villa with heated pool... (oh the luxuries of modern Western living)... and we country bumpkins are invited 😅
Jamie - you have excelled yourself. And you're a Philosopher of Technology too. Great reflections on what can be lost from the 'Analogue world of experience' when attempts are made to digitise it. So poetically put.
Thank you so much Josh! Something tells me I’ll leave the technology to you lol! Engineer-poet! But there’s some thing naked that we might be losing to the nudity of the times. Ironic that I am typing that on a phone that’s a Camera that’s a game that’s a ….
Hi Jamie, I am sitting in my little campervan with a bit of a self imposed foggy brain, so l may have to revisit a few times when l get home after the festival weekend. But here are my initial thoughts about this deeply beautiful exploration. I remember seeing David back in 2000 and could not believe his beauty, that has always stayed with me as one of those wow moments. The point you make about the connection between the painter, the vibration of his/her energy as they create a masterpiece from memory, and or other essences of their being - memories stored in their multidimensionality and their light? And then we travel back with you to our yellowing photo albums, it was always a bit of a treat to get them out as kids, with mum to share snapshots rather than the superfluous streams of doing that interrupts our being, just gotta take another (selfie) photo! Nevertheless l love photography and my grandfather preferred black and white photographs more as he said they showed the light in more natural tones. “To be naked is to be oneself … to be nude…” l wonder about the role of vulnerability, to self and others? l think love is “the mystery beyond the script” and connected to the senses - those you weave in your beautiful poem… they too, are a language as l suppose all energy is, and in that sense perhaps language does not die - as love is expansive and our universe has infinite possibilities, given we are the creators. Thank you Jamie, for such a beautiful and thought provoking post. Coffee time here and a shared breakfast with my fellow festival revellers. 😊💜🙏🎶
Thanks Simone! That festival looks amazing! Campervan! Enjoy! Yes to naked love. We are love. The ultimate energy. Cosmic energy. Unfortunately, I think we get caught looking for it not realizing we are it. Love always wins. The journey from fear to love might just be the miracle of our lives! Bless you Simone! Thanks for being here 💗🌀
Hi Jamie, a mid afternoon pause in festivities. 🤣🍻🎶🪕Yes, we are love and we share our love through stories and poetry, language and the vibrational resonance it brings - our hearts being the place of discernment, because, yes - we do get caught looking externally for what is eternally internal - privilege the intellect and fear will dominate, privilege the heart and surrender to what is greater than and connects us all. We are connected by our frequencies we can harmonise the two. Thank you for sharing the feelings of love through your words - and its wisdom. I respect and honour and appreciate not just the beautiful writing on this platform but the stories of how people are finding their way back to love. We will all meet in Rumi’s field. Bless you too 🙏🏼✍🏻💚
You asked, "What about words? Are words naked or nude?"
Excellent question!! I have a feeling the answers are limitless and are, themselves, a variety of combinations of naked and/or nude.
There is nothing quite like real photography versus digital. It wants to be found, to be seen, to be handled and touched and admired. It's like the difference between holding an actual book in your hands vs. an online book. It takes something away and it lacks something, too. The same way seeing a digital photo is not the same as a printed photo.
I was trained in B&W. There will never be something so marvelous as processing your own film, then the mystery of what the photos will look like when printed. Taking the time to put thought into what you want the image to look like, what kind of paper will hold the image best, not to mention the careful storage of the photos and film.
Thank you for sharing this!! Such a wonderful read. XO
The old Dutch masters did not have to contend with modernity, which separates us from the natural world and the light it has within. So, when we look at the paintings, we get a glimpse of the real. The light of the real world, the light of the sacred over the profane, the light revealing the corruption of all that is good.
Yes, there is too much today that is covered with unreality, profanity and with bad performance art and theatre, but all is not lost. Reality is all around us, not so much among us humans, but chiefly among the non-human beings in Nature.
They are always naked; they are always living in reality. If we humans observe and listen to these beings, I believe that some of the reality will seep into our lives, past the human-made filters and obstacles that bring such darkness.
Perry you kiss the horizon with the lips of soul! You see the world as if we still had wings. Naked and feathered. Furred. Maybe we still do! Maybe we still do! Thanks for helping us remember 💝
Thanks for going layers deep here Jo. Something tells me, you understand the real meaning of naked. Thanks for meeting me there. Thanks for unpacking that mystery here with me. I appreciate you. Thanks for being here. 🙏❤️
This writing is naked and nude enough Jamie. I've read pieces of photography but this one is super naked that I've never seen photography to be this beautiful. It's emancipating and uplifting reading this.
Thank you and have a lovely day. I'm Ral, and it's amazing meeting you.
Thanks Ral 🙏❤️
So much to think about in this. Beautifully written. Deep. Layer upon layer of wealth, exposed and unveiled for the taking. ❤️
Thanks Alice-Ann! Undressing those layers one by one is always a gift. Thanks for being here. Thank you for reading and for reaching out. Hope Spring is singing in the Cotswolds. 🙏❤️
It is - as I write - air filled with rapturous Spring song. There’s a delicious lightness. They sing for me.❤️
Just lost the snow here! Am dancing too 🪴
Jamie, I love how your beautiful, soulful reflections and poem pulse with life, like light weaving through leaves, ever shifting yet endlessly profound. The way you explore nakedness and nudity feels like peeling back layers of the Self - not to expose, but to reveal the Truth that lies beneath. There's so many great lines and I would have to quote your entire post yet these really stood out for me. "Nakedness reveals itself. Nudity is placed on display.” Oh, the truth of it! The truth of it!
Being married to a photographer, who’s also a body therapist of thirty years (she’s retiring this year), I’ve often reflected on the interplay of mind, body, spirit and soul. When we first met, I said something like, “Well, that’s mind and body taken care of; together we’ll work on spirit and soul.” Poets eh?! It feels fitting to mention this here, as your words resonate deeply with that search for connection and meaning. Naturally, "Ways of Seeing" sleeps and dreams on our book shelves.
Thank you so much for inviting us to see the beauty of being - to dance in the tension between what we hide and share, what we know and seek to understand. There’s exquisite grace in how you paint the soul’s canvas, each brushstroke alive with vulnerability, memory and connection, gently unfolding with raw honesty that calls us to stand still with the wonder of it all. It’s truly a privilege to witness your soul in motion. I shall return to read again and again and again! ❤️🙏
Thank you so much Deborah! I really appreciate how deep you dive! As a bodyworker myself, I’m not sure we ever retire! Yes, it sounds like that is one deep house of soul! Peeling back the layers. Yes to the tension. The dance of self. Of selves! The ladder of selves? An un-finished painting of a soul in motion. We are the poem. I’m studying up on those archetypes getting ready for your books to arrive! Rest up while you can- the questions are coming! Thank you for being a Poetic Witch of Being. Thanks for being here. 🙏❤️🌀
Wow Jamie, what a masterpiece. I can trace the brushstrokes of thought and feeling between the lines. I hear you. Somehow the digital picture is not only instant gratification, it also can be modified, filtered and deleted. I remember the times when we had to wait in sweet anticipation for the film to become a picture. When I left Germany, I took pictures from friends and family with my little (new aged) "polaroid", and flipping through it sure feels different than skipping through the digital album. Everything is energy, polaroids contain crystals, books are printed on paper made of trees, they speak to more than just one sense. A picture online can be only experienced through the eyes. A printed picture carries energy, can be smelled, touched and be seen. With the internet we are often using just one sense. In former times we didn't need mindfulness, as we used a variety of our senses. Now we only use the sight which takes us away from believing first, then seeing. I hear you, I find it hard to read online! Sounds like it is time to let your words become another book! I would be delighted to hold it in my hands and experience your writing with all my senses! Thank you for sharing your wor(l)d with us!
“Books are printed on paper made of trees”! Yes! Thats it! Energy! Well said. Like the hand of the painter! The hand of a tree! I can smell the roots when I hold a book. Taste the must of the wood. Energy! Thanks Sadhbh! For diving into a feeling! Beyond seeing. Another book? Maybe a few lol! Stay tuned! Thanks for swimming here. These longer posts get fewer reads lol! I appreciate you! Thanks for being here 🙏❤️
The longer posts get fewer reads because they need paper to be printed on, a marker in hand to be marked and, a pencil in hand to write "a-ha" or "yes!!" Or "wow" in big letters next to it and a notebook next to it to capture the wisdom and take notes for oneself! They are not lost here, it's just the draft for a pretty amazing book! Keep writing!
You are kind! Thanks for the hugs! Question: Would anybody read a book born from these posts? Already on Substack?
Jamie, the deeper you go the lighter you become. 👍
Delft of the delta, the river silt, that floatation, the flatlands, a Parnassus reaches the sea. We forget how wide the horizon... bright northern colours abound in season, astonishing over snow, or blue as a Jay's feather, and how bright the green will shine against the wall, many treasures.
So they say, looking down from the walls, these dukes of the dyke, 'We are not here forever, go and see likewise, these are for your hand...'
I have been at a loss since there seemed no poetry coped with the broken ceasefire on innocence. You have brought many of us together. This morning it was pen and paper again on reading your post... a new poem came to hand. Thank you and the others here, and the shadows talking on the walls.
PS. I have not read enough Berger.... all good.
Phillip you are a poet of soul! You break my heart wide-open! You are a gift! As a man, I look up to you and can only say thank you for what you are. For who you are. Bless you! Thank you! 🙏❤️
This is fabulous, Jamie. Words on pages need to be read aloud. To be heard. To be shared. To go from nude to naked. In giving voice to the words we can become, be revealed, be naked. Suddenly artifice comes to mind, artifice as opposed to art. I’m trying to make sense of that thought right now. Dishonesty and honesty in expression. The covert the disingenuous as opposed to the baring of the soul, the communication of true feeling. I love listening to your posts.
Charlie, you are a poet! Thank you so much for this! Artiface. So true. Living into these questions is the journey. It’s nice to find some kindred spirits on the way. Who listen a little deeper. Who leave us changed. To know I’ve stood on some of the same beaches as you. Somehow connects to a deeper energy. Thank you so much. 🙏❤️
I love the thought that goes into your posts. I’ve met some very kindred spirits in this place. You are one of them.
It’s great to have people to talk to like this. It takes me deeper
Thanks Charlie right back at you! I love how you connect to the land and how some of that mystery and energy goes into your writing and song.
That’s been something that has grown as I have. We are of the land. We rise from it we return to it.
Oh, you’ve nailed this one, Jamie. I truly loved this post—so deep, so contemplative, so visual, and emotional. Human vulnerability is beautiful. Your poetic inner journey makes us all want to dive into these questions. It makes me want to sit with myself and reflect. As a photographer, I’ve lost my spark. I lost the drive, as you well know, because of this overflow. I can no longer sit and wait (just for myself). No client can sit in silence with me (not yet in my field as a life documentary photographer). Our collective rush doesn’t have time to feel the edges, the texture of the photos, the smell of old paper developed by hand. I remember the time my father spent hours in the darkroom—creating a photograph takes precious time, and as with everything that takes time, we appreciate it more: the crafting, the love, the work we put in. I miss that. I return to that all the time, I'll do this again in order to light the spark again as Veronika inspired me a while ago, reinvent photography in my own way internally first-externally after, will do this soon...
The selfie is about the self, but the self-portrait was about seeing into oneself. Do we truly see ourselves or simply reflect what others expect to see—or how we want to be seen? We are seeing our faces more than ever. Gratifying looks make us dissociate from our skin, from our unique features. The mirror only wants to reflect, and so do our neurons. We want to belong. We need to reflect back so that we can be accepted, to be what is needed from us to feel seen. But rarely do people obsessively taking selfies do so as an exploration, a question, an experience, a vulnerability of life. It’s a way of communicating, “I need to be seen,” so I can know I matter, I am valuable.
You’ve made so many great points here that I feel I can’t cover them all in a short comment (which, I know, is already very long), but the dialogue you’ve opened up is so valuable. It’s about seeing beyond, about putting in the effort to reach the other beyond the nude and into nakedness—the gift that everyone has to offer, the gift we offer to others. We can’t only ask; we have to give, too. We have to respond. We see, and we let ourselves be seen.
Vermeer, Florence, Delft—everything you wrote connects to my own contemplation, my own experiences with painting, with the endless hours spent looking at The Monk by the Sea in my own home. Endless questions about lived experiences, the distant nature of online images, only highlight the loss of something profound in how we capture moments today. An endless flow of pretty, empty pixels and screens filled with beautiful bodies that will simply be seen as objects. Our memories and identities are tied to physical contexts.
Thank you for being such a complex writer. Keep asking those questions loudly so everyone can see them, reflect on them, and create ripples of different perspectives—filled with more love for crafts, for love beyond the skin, for life, and for the smell of oil painting that I miss. Thank you for the quote from Nichita Stănescu!
Wow Katerina! I can’t even begin to say thank you enough. The Romanian poets, you’ve shared have played a big part in the last two posts. Right now I’d say those Romanian Poets are the best I’ve ever read. Thank you for going deeper between the words. Into the shadows of the words. Reflecting in the mirror. Living into the questions. Revealing. It’s nice to find some fellow writers, who still get naked and who speak of soul. Thank you for helping me live into the questions. Thanks for being here. 🙏❤️
Wow, so much to reflect upon here ... An immersive journey into meaning. The thought that came to me at the end, as a question, was: Perhaps only silence and bareness are truly naked, and all else is in some way nude or dressed, depending? Hmmm. Oh, and yes yes yes to those glorious old Dutch paintings, long a love of mine... 🙏
Thanks Lizzie! Thanks for being a fellow warrior of love and light 🙏❤️
Wonderful! The masterful dance between concealing and revealing, inviting reader (or viewer) to discover something (perhaps their own truth?)
The pairing of naked and nude are calling (in my mind) for a third member to show up, nakedness, nudity ~ bareness ~ barefoot or barefaced.
Your poem and contemplation made me wonder about the relationship between the three: naked, nude, and bare
Naked: naked arms, naked branches, naked fire, naked flesh, naked flower, naked light, naked promise, naked truth
Nude: nude assumptions, nude contract, nude figure, nude matter, nude statue
Bare: bare all, bare bones, barefaced, barefoot, bare hands, bare teeth, barely there
All three naking* ~ unfolding layers, stripping one skin to expose another, while dropping covers of armour, attire, cloth, garment and protection.
*from nake (verb) = to make naked
Wow! Thank you for adding the bond effect! Do I hear a Veronika Bond post on this? That would be a naked dancing to nudity and bareness. Or is it bearness lol. Thank you so much you make me smile! As usual, you always give me one more thing to think about that leads down the path of growth. I nope you’re having a lovely time in the Algarve. Dive into that ocean for this sea starved Canadian soul. See you back in the spaces between the words soon. Thanks for being here. 🙏❤️
not sure about diving into the ocean (about 60°F/ 16°C) at the moment. But our family have rented a beachside Villa with heated pool... (oh the luxuries of modern Western living)... and we country bumpkins are invited 😅
I’ll take 16! Look out Wim Hoff! It’s been a long winter here lol. Enjoy. 💝
She’s at it again!
Found fuel for a future post?
Bond effect added 😉
no shortage of fuel for future posts... language is (conveniently) full of words 😅
Jamie - you have excelled yourself. And you're a Philosopher of Technology too. Great reflections on what can be lost from the 'Analogue world of experience' when attempts are made to digitise it. So poetically put.
Thank you so much Josh! Something tells me I’ll leave the technology to you lol! Engineer-poet! But there’s some thing naked that we might be losing to the nudity of the times. Ironic that I am typing that on a phone that’s a Camera that’s a game that’s a ….
Yes, "Technology is neither good nor bad, nor is it neutral" (Melvin Kranzberg).
Hi Jamie, I am sitting in my little campervan with a bit of a self imposed foggy brain, so l may have to revisit a few times when l get home after the festival weekend. But here are my initial thoughts about this deeply beautiful exploration. I remember seeing David back in 2000 and could not believe his beauty, that has always stayed with me as one of those wow moments. The point you make about the connection between the painter, the vibration of his/her energy as they create a masterpiece from memory, and or other essences of their being - memories stored in their multidimensionality and their light? And then we travel back with you to our yellowing photo albums, it was always a bit of a treat to get them out as kids, with mum to share snapshots rather than the superfluous streams of doing that interrupts our being, just gotta take another (selfie) photo! Nevertheless l love photography and my grandfather preferred black and white photographs more as he said they showed the light in more natural tones. “To be naked is to be oneself … to be nude…” l wonder about the role of vulnerability, to self and others? l think love is “the mystery beyond the script” and connected to the senses - those you weave in your beautiful poem… they too, are a language as l suppose all energy is, and in that sense perhaps language does not die - as love is expansive and our universe has infinite possibilities, given we are the creators. Thank you Jamie, for such a beautiful and thought provoking post. Coffee time here and a shared breakfast with my fellow festival revellers. 😊💜🙏🎶
Thanks Simone! That festival looks amazing! Campervan! Enjoy! Yes to naked love. We are love. The ultimate energy. Cosmic energy. Unfortunately, I think we get caught looking for it not realizing we are it. Love always wins. The journey from fear to love might just be the miracle of our lives! Bless you Simone! Thanks for being here 💗🌀
Hi Jamie, a mid afternoon pause in festivities. 🤣🍻🎶🪕Yes, we are love and we share our love through stories and poetry, language and the vibrational resonance it brings - our hearts being the place of discernment, because, yes - we do get caught looking externally for what is eternally internal - privilege the intellect and fear will dominate, privilege the heart and surrender to what is greater than and connects us all. We are connected by our frequencies we can harmonise the two. Thank you for sharing the feelings of love through your words - and its wisdom. I respect and honour and appreciate not just the beautiful writing on this platform but the stories of how people are finding their way back to love. We will all meet in Rumi’s field. Bless you too 🙏🏼✍🏻💚
You asked, "What about words? Are words naked or nude?"
Excellent question!! I have a feeling the answers are limitless and are, themselves, a variety of combinations of naked and/or nude.
There is nothing quite like real photography versus digital. It wants to be found, to be seen, to be handled and touched and admired. It's like the difference between holding an actual book in your hands vs. an online book. It takes something away and it lacks something, too. The same way seeing a digital photo is not the same as a printed photo.
I was trained in B&W. There will never be something so marvelous as processing your own film, then the mystery of what the photos will look like when printed. Taking the time to put thought into what you want the image to look like, what kind of paper will hold the image best, not to mention the careful storage of the photos and film.
Thank you for sharing this!! Such a wonderful read. XO
Thanks Danielle! Here is to being- naked! Mountains, forests, pictures, and mystery! Thanks for the support! Great pictures you’re sharing lately! 🙏❤️
The old Dutch masters did not have to contend with modernity, which separates us from the natural world and the light it has within. So, when we look at the paintings, we get a glimpse of the real. The light of the real world, the light of the sacred over the profane, the light revealing the corruption of all that is good.
Yes, there is too much today that is covered with unreality, profanity and with bad performance art and theatre, but all is not lost. Reality is all around us, not so much among us humans, but chiefly among the non-human beings in Nature.
They are always naked; they are always living in reality. If we humans observe and listen to these beings, I believe that some of the reality will seep into our lives, past the human-made filters and obstacles that bring such darkness.
The light will piece the darkness. Soon.
Perry you kiss the horizon with the lips of soul! You see the world as if we still had wings. Naked and feathered. Furred. Maybe we still do! Maybe we still do! Thanks for helping us remember 💝
Naked, nude, bare, brave.
Beauty-full full-frontal words.
No lids, lies allowed.
Skin holds us not in
Words only just a mirror
Body in a Soul
Thank you Marisol🙏❤️🌀
I have just gone through and liked every one of the comments Jamie because they are all so bang on. And I have nothing left to add.
You have stripped it all down here. As you do so well. Stripping away the layers to lay bare what IS.
"Yet, if I hold the photo in my hands, it is more alive." Yes I feel this too.
Thanks Jamie for your insights and reflections. ❤️
Thanks for going layers deep here Jo. Something tells me, you understand the real meaning of naked. Thanks for meeting me there. Thanks for unpacking that mystery here with me. I appreciate you. Thanks for being here. 🙏❤️
a remarkable piece of writing, Jamie, from essay to poem. i had to come back to it and immerse myself more. a lot of layers to sort through.
Hey, thank you so much Sam for reading and for your comment! Coming from someone who’s writing I adore I appreciate you! 🙏❤️