Jim Dollar's Photography and Philosophy

When I was in my photography phase, which ended when my knees gave out, I made every necessary sacrifice to be where the photograph was. Up before sunrise, out after moonset all over the country and into Canada. I met the requirements. Paid the price. And have the portfolio to prove it. The natural world is a fascinating, amazing place and I loved my time spent there. Nature trumps (That word again) everything else about the planet that humans have produced, created. Just give me a marsh road at sunset. And do what you will with the rest.

Letting things be what they are and knowing when intervention is required and when it would only make thing worse is an art to living well upon the earth. Too much the savior is intrusion. Too little the savor is aiding and abetting. When are we being nosy and when do we need to be minding our own business? Where do we draw the lines. The simple path to living life as it needs to be lived is knowing where to draw the lines and drawing them.

This is my home sanctum looking toward my Wailing Wall replica. My office is a memento of me with my prayer beads, my books, my photographs, my rocking chairs and, of course, two windows to look out. This is my retreat, my hangout, my get-a-way, my sanctuary, my creation, and is just like me, who I am.

Liberty, Justice, Equality, Truth are the four foundational values. All of the others, Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Gentleness, Generosity, Loyalty, Troth and however many more there may be all depend upon and flow from the four pillars of Democracy. We should all stand together every Fourth of July and swear our plight and our united allegiance to the four foundations to our life and liberty now and forever, knowing that we have to mean it for it to mean anything.

We need contrasts to see anything. Without contrast everything would be invisible. Where does good end and bad begin? We might draw the line in different places at different times of the day, or of our life. “It all depends,” sometimes. Sometimes “It doesn’t matter.” Who is to say? We are. Each of us is our own authority in the matter of line drawing, of saying what’s what. Of deciding what to do. When. Where. How. Our life is our life. Our tastes are our tastes. Our preferences are our preferences. Who barges into our space, telling us how to live our life? Knowing when, where and how to draw the line, and doing it is crucial to being able to live our own life. Living without the bullies should be a right to life for everyone. It would be my gift to everyone if only I had the power.

Silence itself is a natural wonder. Just being quiet. Looking out the window. Open to the astounding experience of being alive and knowing it. How often do we do that in a day?

Darkness as the gateway to mystery and understanding–understanding that darkness and mystery are just that–darkness and mystery! And some things can be experienced but not understood and some things can be understood but not explained. The proper response to such things is, “Oh, I see!” while not seeing at all. See?

I wish I had spent more time in Dupont State Forest, but I was running out of time, and we make concessions and trade-offs all along the way. It is a great area and under-advertised, but the people who know about it love it, as well they should. Another way of saying, “Nature is there, and we have to do what we can to avail ourselves of it to the extent that we are able to do that, all our life long.

Being present with some aspect of the natural world, where things are as they are because of the interaction with other things being as they are, and so on through all of the aspects of every natural world in the Cosmos, is exactly how I would like to spend eternity. Wandering through nature everywhere. And then, doing it again. For the wonder of it. And the realization, recognition, awareness… that flows from it all–and how transformative that can be just by seeing/knowing what’s what. Which may be why we are here–to be the audience nature deserves, demands, requires. Art without admirers would be a travesty. Truth requires perception. And here we are!

We owe it to ourselves to spend 20 minutes a day sitting in silence for the rest of the time left for living.

We know what we want, but what we ought to want? Not so much. We want to do what we want, but not what we ought to want. How are we going to know who we ought to be? Who we are? It takes a lot of looking to be able to see, and a lot of looking to be able to see. And a lot of silence to be able to know what we know and what we need to know. Listening to the silence 20, or 30, minutes a day would not be too much. How many days before things begin to occur to us “out of nowhere?” Before we begin to know things we don’t know how we know? What is stopping us? Seriously. What is stopping us? Get to the bottom of it. Then, get to the bottom of everything. You could even ask Gemini on Google. That isn’t cheating.

I enjoy the times between times, when nothing is called for and everything is “steady as she goes,” and we all can enjoy the simple pleasure of breathing and knowing that we are breathing and can listen between breaths for whatever joy or realization makes itself visible for its own joy, perhaps, and life delights in itself for a while.