Sun Beams and Alchemy (and Photo Gallery) by Christopher J Ananias

When the world is a dark pit, and you find yourself locked up with lunatics. Sometimes, a person needs a slice of sunshine. So that’s what this series of photos will try to capture, but alas, it’s hard to catch a sunbeam.

Then again, I don’t need my baseball glove or butterfly net. Not when I have this magical weight around my neck. It’s left the dark room behind, this is true, but I have my own just in case.

I try to explain this alchemy, as if to a five-year-old or my giant German shepherd dog, to these folks on the ward, but they just cock their heads. I talk about apertures, f-stops, and blinking eyeballs.

No respondo, Ernesto just gazes away from me and talks to people who aren’t there. All of their heads turn, and I finally have an audience.

I’m free again, on Antabuse, so I’m back with the camera therapy of nature and sunshine. The technology that I couldn’t explain to them—resting in my hands. Like a thousand picture books.

The shutter is eager to slide over its mechanical eye, snapping pictures of the sun and everything under it, but you have to be careful taking so many pictures of God.

12 thoughts on “Sun Beams and Alchemy (and Photo Gallery) by Christopher J Ananias”

    • chrisja70778e85b8abd's avatar chrisja70778e85b8abd says:

      Hi Leila

      Glad you like this series! The CO OP that day really did have pink clouds, but now, sadly, for some so-called progressive reason they tore it down.

      I really like the layout with the prose.

      CJA

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  2. Bill Tope's avatar Bill Tope says:

    Christopher, you characterized your noble obsession as “taking…pictures of God” and I believe that says it very well. Your photos are breathtaking and worthy of exhibiting in any venue. Thank you for showing them here this morning. You have made my day!

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  5. DWB's avatar DWB says:

    CJA

    You’ve said so much here in so few words that the prose (which is prose poetry) really needs to be reread and studied to get the full effect, even though it also has a powerful and memorable, enlightening effect the first time.

    The point-of-view and the back-story in the prose are amazing and they summarize an entire life, and an entire WAY OF LIVING, in a handful of words! That is biblical and amazing!

    Alchemy is an utterly brilliant metaphor to bring together with sunlight. The original alchemists were far more ahead of their time than they are usually given credit for except by a small coterie of people; that is why none other than Carl Jung himself actually practiced alchemy in the 20th century. Wallace Stevens called himself a worshiper of the sun, which for him was a kind of metaphor for God.

    And the way you discuss God in this is amazing. Anyone who can discuss God in such a lighthearted, non-judgmental, non-dogmatic way has seen the light, or at least glimpsed the light, which is all we ever really get here on Earth (except probably at the very end, depending on the life we’ve led).

    DWB

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  6. DWB's avatar DWB says:

    UTTERLY BRILLIANT PHOTOS WHICH TURN THE MIDWEST INTO AMERICA AND SHOW THAT AMERICA IS THE MIDWEST!

    (How cool it is that both Indiana and Illinois can claim Abe Lincoln, even tho’ he’s now become our second-greatest president according to the bumbling idiot in the White House…)

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  7. DWB's avatar DWB says:

    HELLO to the Light Bringer!

    I know she wanted you to do stuff with your photos! That kind of support is just as important as making the photos themselves is, without any doubt whatsoever at all! You’re a lucky man!

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  8. DWB's avatar DWB says:

    Boo, Bandit and Colonel say hello to Django and your other Canine Companion (can’t remember the name at the moment but I remember s/he has reached a venerable age and therefore is filled with wisdom)!

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