Earth, Wind & Fire

#4Elements

I figured my title was as good as I could get considering I did not get any pictures of water. Well, not exactly. I caught an image of the sewer. But this first image that I took standing in the middle of my street might be my favorite. I am a dreamer and I have a pretty vivid imagination. Most of the things I wonder, dream or ponder come from me looking up to the sky in clouds. When I pray even though I get down on my knees and knew I still look up toward the sky to seek for answers and pray for inner peace. I could stare at this picture all day. I could also lie in backyard staring up at the sky at a view like this as well.

I thought the way the light shone in on the rocks was pretty cool in this picture. I snapped this shot several times trying to eliminate the light that was cast upon it. Then when I looked through the shots I had taken this one stood out. This picture seems to tell a story about both light and dark can exist at the same time. And both are equally are beautiful. The dark is not the darkness that we see at night. More like a darker shadow that can only be cast in places where there is light. It works together in beautiful symphony. This is a wall in front of the gate of house around the corner from me. The houses in my neighborhood are over 75 years old. Some as old as 100 as this is the Historic District in Plainfield. So I wonder how long this rock wall was here. How long did it take the ivies to burst through the seems and show its dominance. 

This image was captured further down the wall. And here the ivies have totally covered all of the rocks. This is all the eye can see. In fact, when I was capturing this image the wind was blowing causing a graceful dance between each piece of ivy. I like the ivy when it is all together it looks beautiful. But, in this beauty I know that ivy can be the death of your home. However, I still can see the beauty in the face of a potential home owning disaster.

So in my quest for water I came across this drain. Now I walked past this several times looking for a spot that held water. I saw a stream running along the street and it led to this drain. It was very interesting to me to see that in the city of Plainfield our drain says "City of Newark" Plainfield is at least 30 minutes away from Newark and yet we share a drain system. I didn't know that. But why would I know that because it was never something that interested me. Yet, in this new world where the people in Flint, Michigan don't have clean water and Donald Trump is our president and he's signing executive orders all over the place-- I wonder a little but more about pipelines and clean water systems. While this is not water. This is a place where the water goes when it rains.

So I thought about walking around until I found someone sitting near a bonfire. Then I thought about just lighting my fireplace but then I realized that I was out of firewood. My favorite candle. My vanilla bean candle from the Body Shop will do just fine for fire. Burning candles is peaceful for me. I think my favorite part other than the smell is to watch the light of flames switch and flicker between different colors. Looking for and closely at these elements forced me to connect with nature in a way that I don't usually do. It was hard to turn off the sound and focused in my eye to see beyond what was right in front of me. Overall it was a very interesting experience.

I looked through my phone and found pictures I had taken of the elements in other seasons. The is my favorite tree at my house.

Apple picking with my girls and we didn't find too many apples. 

Last summer the drains were backed up and there was a terrible flood at my parents' house in Scotch Plains the water came up to the porch.