Category Archives: Travel thoughts

Farewell and Thank You 2012

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Today is the last day of the year.

It’s been an amazing one for me with many joys and challenges. It was hard to choose but I have chosen one photo for each month of the year. I hope you enjoy them and have a wonderful 2013.

January in Mexico. Beautiful bright days and chilly nights.

February. Year of the Dragon (my sign!) in Auckland New Zealand.

March. Holding up the hanging rock in Australia.

April. Meeting up with my old friend and sweet boy, Perth Australia.

May. Worrying about my Sister, Singapore.

June. Discovering the wonders of Ankhor Wat. Cambodia

July. The wonderful joy of washing with elephants. Thailand

August. Happy birthday. Thailand

September. One of my favourite places with some of my favourite people. Tintern Abbey with my hubby, nephew and niece.

October. Being a celebrant for a wonderful naming ceremony. London.

November. Getting reacquainted with the lovely lakes. Coniston, Lake District.

December. Home for Christmas with my parents (and dog!). Ulverston Cumbria

Home.

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After one long year and sixty nine beds we arrived home.

We felt a thrill of excitement as we rounded the bend in the train and saw the lighthouse on top of the hill guiding us back.

We spent a weekend hugging friends, singing in our local pub and huffing up the hill to see the wonderful view over the hills to the Lakes.

There’s no place like home.

 

 

Grateful List

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I’m grateful my big Sis is safely through her operation.

I’m grateful for my explorations and discoveries in photography.

I’m grateful for the honour of being celebrant for my dear friend’s baby’s naming ceremony.

I am grateful to my dear husband for organising a fantastic birthday suprise. He e-mailed all my friends and asked for a contribution towards a Celebrant course.

I’m grateful to have found Lisa Sarick.

I’m grateful and excited about my programme of creative workshops and launching myself as a celebrant.

I’m grateful for collecting some gorgeous shells and gifts from the sea.

I’m grateful for my many travel adventures and I’m glad to be going home.

I’m grateful for chatting with my funny gorgeous niece on Facebook and I’m ecstatic about seeing her very soon.

 

“Please let me never forget how rich my life is right at this moment. Please let me never forget that all I have is all I need. Please let me never forget to give thanks.” 

Sarah Ban Breathnach

Screwing up the Sacred

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We have just spent three weeks in the beautiful languorous Luang Prabang in Laos. It is such a peaceful place sandwiched by a mighty river and full of wonderful bars and restaurants.  One of the major contributing factors is the presence of many ‘Wats’ or Buddhist temples, the golden elegant curlicued arches that grace almost every street. To complete the picture of beauty and spirit just add the saffron cloaked Buddhist monks going about their business bare foot under orange umbrellas.

They have a wonderful tradition which is endorsed by the local community which supports them spiritually and practically.  Early each morning at sunrise the locals position themselves along the road, squatting in anticipation for the arrival of the monks. They all have offerings of food which they bless before placing them in the monks bowls. Mostly it is rice which is made into small balls and given to each of the monks, that’s a lot of monks and a lot of rice. This is such a generous continual sharing from people whose average income is less than $1 a day.

What could upset this peaceful balanced exchange? Enter the tourist.

There are notices up everywhere asking us to respect this tradition and spelling out what not to do if respect is something that holds no meaning for you. Namely stand on the other side of the road, turn off your flash and only make a food offering if it has particular meaning to you. We saw people breaking every one of these suggestions.  In one particular spot they were clustered around the monks like a pack of hyenas, one idiot even preventing a monk’s progress by jumping in front of him and shoving a flash camera in his face. I can only wonder how these gentle cloistered young men must feel having their sacred rite turned into something akin to a paparazzi frenzy. Somebody likened it to tourists taking communion because of the quaint ritual, while their friend stands in front of the alter loudly taking photos of them.

This has been a familiar and sad trend we have noticed on our year’s travel. There is a real interest and hunger for places of natural beauty and traditions that are spiritual and noble. But true to the consumerism of the Western world it seems most have forgotten how to respectfully witness these wonders, without needing to consume them. There seems to be little awareness of the fact that if too many people do this for too long, there will be nothing left to feed this hunger.

Precious Stones

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We have been in the beautiful city of Luang Prabang, Laos for a week now. It is a peaceful and lively place, and somehow these two words are not contradictory.

I was inspired to begin writing ‘Small Stones’ again; small, sharp and smooth pieces of writing about being in the moment, catching that fleeting glimpse with spontaneous words. The phrase was coined by Fiona and Kaspa from Writing Our Way Home, it’s such an immediate way to free your writing voice and appreciate the details of life. I did one of these every day in January and christened this web site with a month’s worth of ‘Stones’ with accompanying photos, have a look back to my January posts if you are interested.

In this instance I have either written the ‘Stone’ and taken a photo to illustrate it, or the other way around, I’ve written a piece based on my photo.

I hope you enjoy sharing these precious moments with me.

‘The Magic shop treasures invite my curiosity and pull me into their story.’

 

‘The quiet is broken only by the comical cock crow, stupidly strident in the silence.’


‘Drifting without direction, supported with no ground,always in motion.’


‘Two boys stop to chat about the kittens, one tells me he wants to be a English butler.’


‘I find some new reading glasses, my vision clears and I’m stupidly happy as I begin my new book.’


‘The clash of complements, orange and green, grace the place with peace.’


‘Cool blue dissolves the scratch of the bite and the gnaw of impatience.’

Angkor Vision

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I have put together a slideshow of some of some of my favourite images I created during our time in Cambodia. I was very inspired, especially by the remarkable serene beauty of the carvings of Buddhas in the Angkor Wat temples.

I’ve tried to capture how I felt when gazing at these mysterious images, in the hazy heat a sort of dream like wonder. I have used a layering technique in photoshop to add to the sense of time and mystery. The backgrounds are collages and paintings from my travel sketch book. The peaceful music was composed and played especially by Matt, my man. It’s ten minutes long, sit back make a cup of tea and share this lovely sultry experience.

I’d love to know what you think.

Love Fran

Layering Images

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I have been getting very inspired by a technique of superimposing one image on top of another. I love the textured effect you can achieve and the marrying of the precise and the random can result in some happy surprises.

There is something about a layered image which suggests a story to me. Much like meeting a person there are qualities which might strike you immediately and some which are more subtlety visible and take a more sensitive eye to see.

This image is a combination of a photo I took in Angkor Wat of a Buddhist monk having his breakfast. We had gone to watch the sunrise which was unfortunately obscured by cloud that morning.  It was still a worthwhile experience being part of the silence and the beginning of the day in the temple.

The painted image is from my sketchbook. I will often play around with colour and texture (this one has bits of loo roll incorporated!) I do this with no particular purpose in mind and will take photographs, keeping them in my ‘backgrounds’ library where they wait patiently to see if there is a further use for them. I found the dead butterfly on our first visit to the temples and wanted to include it in this image, lending a sense of beauty and transience.

Here is the techie bit… you drag both of your images into photoshop. Choose one and click select all, then copy it. Then go to your second image and paste the first one on top of it creating a new layer.  Next you noodle around with the opacity control until you find a marriage of the two images that looks good to you. Then flatten the image, you can further fiddle with the filters, colours, saturation etc if you choose. Once you know a few basic techniques it’s easy, don’t forget to have fun and play around!

Temples of Ankgor

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I feel so lucky to have the opportunity to be here in Cambodia to visit the Angkor Wat temples. What I didn’t realise is that there is a whole complex of Temples, the place is vast, we have been three times now and have only just scratched the surface. It is truly stunning with images of sacred Hindu and Buddhist deities, my favourite religious iconography, they are so peaceful and contemplative.

The place is still an active centre of worship with golden buddhist shrines and the smell of incense wafting around.

Even amongst the gaggles of clicking tourists there is a timeless beauty and compassion that emanates from the faces that gaze at you. I found a real sense of peace and a feeling of being very small in the larger perspective of things.

Smile

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We are in Cambodia and one of the most striking things about the people here is how ready and how beautiful their smiles are. It’s particularly affirming of the heart and spirit when you consider the hideous warfare that is only recent history.

I find I’m smiling more too, in spite of the sadness about my sister I am lightening my face and my heart too in response to those beautiful rays of light, which need no translators. It’s much easier to initiate the smile exchange too when you can pretty much be guaranteed a gorgeous response. It’s sad to think that we often withhold a smile for fear of being ignored or rejected when that simple exchange of human warmth is exactly what we need.

“We shall never know all the good a simple smile can do.” Mother Teresa

Smiling is good for you, it’s a fact! The brain responds by reducing the stress hormones of cortisol, adrenaline and dopamine and increases the happy hormone of endorphin. It’s a wonder we don’t smile more and leave some of the fake mood boosters alone.

Wishing you a radiantly smiling day.

 

Compassion

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I made this image yesterday as a reminder to myself.

The day before I discovered my only Sister is to have a mastectomy. I was shocked and saddened by the news and immediately offered to cut my travels short and be with her if she needs me. I imagined myself in her position and my heart hurt for her gorgeous children.

Yesterday I was behaving very erratically, flying into tempers over trivial things and crying about anything. Any kind of song had me oozing, and the Winnie-the Pooh story my kind hubby read to me about Eeeyore’s birthday had me positively blubbing.

I consider myself pretty sensitive to the emotions of others, I’m naturally attuned from childhood and my training as a psychotherapist developed it. But I can be pretty slow when it comes to defining and responding to my own feelings. This ‘bizarre’ behaviour brought my family of inner critics marching out in force accusing me of weakness and craziness and so on and so on.

It took a while to realise, doh!, I’m sad, and maybe I need some compassion too. It’s relatively easy to self love when behaving nobly and selflessly, but it’s harder when thrashing around in wordless pain. That’s when it’s most important to wrap yourself up in love and hold yourself in kindness until the hurt diminishes and you can see straight again.

Have a compassionate day.