Walk in beauty

[Roger Hicks]

This is unashamedly based on the 'Photography and Personal Identity' thread, which I acknowledge with grateful thanks.

In 2000 my wife and I decided to move somewhere more beautiful (and affordable -- we had moved to south-east Englqnd from California in 1990). We ended up in the northern Aquitaine, currently known as Haut-Poitou, about 200 miles/300 km south-west of Paris. Attached (I hope) is a picture of my back yard, under the studio.

Who else has made similar moves? If not, why not? And if you have, where do you recommend and why? Especially, is there anyone in India?

Cheers,

Roger (www.rogerandfrances.com -- and Photo School is now up and running)

 

[bmattock]

Roger,

You're somewhat new here on RFF, so you probably don't know my story - in fact, the site has grown so much, I'm sure many here don't. So if any are reading this who have heard this before, have patience.

I was a traveling software consultant, based in Denver. I was on the road 6 days a week. Collected vintage cameras, did some travel photography (all around the US, China, Brazil, Germany, South Korea, etc). But mostly it was tourist type happy snapping - I was in and out too fast to get in-depth anywhere. I made good money and had great perks, but it was killing me. I'm 44 years old - my body was falling apart from the abuse I laid on it.

I got married three years ago and moved to Albuquerque, but I was still on the road 6 days a week, so did not get to know New Mexico as much as I'd have liked, although I got to meet and hang out with many 'famous' LF photographers - New Mexico is where it all happens, mostly in Santa Fe, I guess.

Last year, my wife and I decided that it was time we found a new thread for our lives. We wanted something slower. It meant giving up a job that paid a lot, giving up all of the perks we'd come to expect in our lives - maid service, house-sitters, travel on demand, comp'd hotels and food and so on, etc. I found a job with a bank in Wilson, North Carolina, which is a small town of 40,000 about an hour's drive east of Raleigh. It's in the middle of nowhere, pretty much.

It is just what we wanted. Our pace of life is slower. We drive 3 miles to work. We own a great restored bungalow house built in 1923 with solid wood floors and 10-foot ceilings. We've got two dogs and two cats and we know all our neighbors. We go to ballgames in our town's restored 1930's era ballpark (think "Field of Dreams") and we see fireworks and we meet the mayor at public events like the annual Veteran's Day celebration and the annual Christmas Tree lighting ceremony. I've joined the Knights of Columbus and the American Legion and do volunteer work here and there. I've had time to work on my photography - and have seen small succcesses here and there. My local newspaper has published my photos several times, I've written an article for a local magazine (with photos) that I've been paid for, so I guess that's a step towards my eventual goal of becoming a professional writer/photographer.

Is Wilson, NC, as beautiful as the moors of Scotland or the low country of France or you-name-it photographic paradise? You bet it is. And so is Papillion, Nebraska, and East Peoria, Illinois, and West Bottoms Kansas City, Missouri. Or wherever YOU might live.

My point is that I find beauty where I look - and I look with the expectation of finding beauty. No, I don't have Niagra Falls or El Capitan in my backyard; and yes, I'd love to see and photograph those places. But if my goal is to see the beauty around me and share that with others - then it is more important to me that I learn to see with eyes that see beauty - or sadness - or ugliness - or desolation - or whatever it is that I wish to convey to the viewers of my photographs.

Many photographers say they make photographs for their own pleasure, and not so much to be understood or appreciated by others. I make mine because I wish to communicate something - and for that, I must speak a language with a photographic print that others can grasp and understand. It is fine to challenge the viewer, to confuse them, to blast them, even; but ultimately, there must be communication. And I don't need Paris or an Adobe church under a full moon to make my statements. It would be nice, but I'll take my beauty where I find it.

When I was a child, growing up in rural Illinois, my dad and I would take long walks together. In silence, just out walking together, dad and son. We'd walk along the railroad tracks, abandoned even in those days. And my dad would bend over and come up with an arrowhead. Not once. Not even twice. Over and over. I never found one. I wanted to. I stared at the ground and I looked and I did everything I could think of - never found one. His secret? He says he just looked for arrowheads, so he saw them when they were there to be seen.

Look for beauty and you find it all around you.

Best Regards,

Bill Mattocks
Hunting for Arrowheads
Wilson, North Carolina

 

[Pherdinand]

I have a french friend. He was a programmer at Philips, Netherlands. Worked here for a few years then he got sick of the thing, bought a van and went to Turkiye for a short while. Planned to go to India for some years. But finally he went to Mexico for a few months, teaching in a school for handicapped kids. (Nope,not with his van.) He is home now in his village learning carpentry, which he plans to use in Mexico later. Or maybe in India, he's not sure yet.
There are people like that.

 

[doubs43]

Roger, do you collect FSU photo equipment? Is that why your wall has the "Hammer & Sickle"? 😀

Seriously, you're doing what many people wish they could do. I'd love nothing better than to relocate to the rural mountains of Virginia but my wife wants to stay here where she has many friends. I dragged her around the world with me when I was active duty military so she's earned the right to stay here.

50 years ago I don't think there was a prettier place on God's green earth than Frederick County, Maryland...... a view I still take after seeing a whole lot of the world. After 50 years of "progress", Frederick County has been ruined by people trying to escape the Washington, DC area. They've only succeeded in expanding the world they were trying to leave behind.

There are still unspoiled places but you have to look. Where I live is experiencing the same sort of growth - with all of the associated problems - that I had hoped to escape. Maybe my wife will change her mind about leaving here some day. Sigh.......

Walker

 

[cbass]

Last year my wife and I got tired of the densely crowded and costly suburbs of Northern New Jersey and moved to Plymouth County, Massaschusetts. We're about 15 miles from Upper Cape Cod. It's very nice here. I commute daily to Boston where I try to be a street photographer on my lunch hour. My wife is a library director in a neighboring town.

Cape Cod provides many photographic opportunities. I have had to learn to shoot more nature subjects and landscapes and it has been fun to learn a new style. Tomorrow, I am going to make photographs of the fiddlehead ferns coming up in my backyard.

I also find it very enjoyable to read about fellow RFF members who live in other parts of the world. I've learned a great deal about rangefinder photography by participating in these forums.

 

[Roger Hicks]

Wow. This is why I love this forum. All these grey people who do the same grey things...

Beauty is where you find it? Maybe. There are some places it is harder to find than others. I fully take the point about people who 'escape' and bring with them the world they wish to leave behind. It doesn't work that way!

Thanks very much for the stories so far. There is hope for the world yet -- like someone else I know, a CERN PhD turned potter in rural Portugal.

At the local vide-greniers (lit: emptying-attics) there are all kinds of props like the ones hanging on the wall: the hammer and sickle just seemed like a natural pairing. I also write for Foto Magazin in Russia, and my editor reckon,s I know more about communism than he does. But then, my great-grandmother joined the Party in 1917 (the last member of the family to do so, as far as I am aware).

And to those who dream of escaping: it can be done. Man is born free and is everywhere in chains: take what you want, and pay for it, saieth the LORD. (Incidentally does anyone know the orign of this proverb?)

I loook forward to more musings from Bill, Pherdinand, Walker and others. This thread really is heartwarming.

Cheers,

Roger (www.rogerandfrances.com)

 

[nwcanonman]

Bill,
I'm glad you finally found your bliss!
I have to laugh though, when you say "a small town of 40,000". I grew up in towns of less than 3,000 most of my life, but I guess it's all relative to one's own experience.
Friendly towns can be 200,000 or 200 population, made of concrete or dirt roads - but as you say looking to find beauty is the key. ~ ; - )

 

[jwcat]

Until 1994, the longest I ever lived in one place was four years...stationed in Naples, Italy. I left Naples in 1973 and went to Guantanamo Bay Cuba. I retired from the Navy there. Since then, I have lived in Pensacola Florida, rural Alaska for three years, ten years in three different places in the Bahamas. 1994 we moved to Ocala FL because the cost of living was low, the people nice and my wife loved the horse farms around here. Now we sit in traffic to go anywhere and would move if it wasn't such a pain to sell the house. Getting hit by three hurricanes last year didn't help. I am not as bitter as this sounds, but I wish I would get out and shoot a project on something around here. That is an excellent idea!

 

[Honu-Hugger]

I grew up in a large metropolitan area (population 250,000) and came west in 1987 for a vacation; ended up never leaving. Although I miss the Great Lakes back home I really enjoy the mountains here, the clean air, and everything that goes with living in a small town (less than 3,000 people -- a few more during ski season😀). It's a horrible place to fly in and out of, but a great launching pad for motorcycle excursions and other traveling. If not here I wouldn't know where -- maybe New Orleans, or the Keys?

 

[bmattock]

Bill,
I'm glad you finally found your bliss!
I have to laugh though, when you say "a small town of 40,000". I grew up in towns of less than 3,000 most of my life, but I guess it's all relative to one's own experience.
Friendly towns can be 200,000 or 200 population, made of concrete or dirt roads - but as you say looking to find beauty is the key. ~ ; - )

I haven't so much 'found my bliss' as I would say I am seeking my bliss. It is a journey that I hope never ends. On the one hand, I am quite comfortable where I am now. On the other hand, I produce better writing and better photographs when I am in pain. Misery is a powerful motivating factor for me.

40,000 is small for me after living in Denver, Albuquerque, even Omaha. However, I have also lived in San Jose, Illinois - population 400.

To me, 40k is about the 'right size'. It is big enough to have some infrastructure, and small enough to get to know your neighbors and have a sense of community.

Best Regards,

Bill Mattocks

 

[bmattock]

All these grey people who do the same grey things...

Meaning?

Beauty is where you find it? Maybe. There are some places it is harder to find than others.

And that much more worthwhile when you do. Just an opinion from the great unwashed.

Best Regards,

Bill Mattocks

PS - And here's what it looks like where *I* live.

 

[nwcanonman]

Bill,
Looks pretty blishful from here. Matter of fact, looks a lot like places here in the South Puget Sound area ~ ; - )

 

[bmattock]

Bill,
Looks pretty blishful from here. Matter of fact, looks a lot like places here in the South Puget Sound area ~ ; - )

Well, lemme tell ya. Yesterday, I put a couple of Azalea plants in the front yard - I got 'em for my wife at a gas station for $10. Took me awhile, because I never did anything like that before. Now my back hurts and I've sunburned my neck.

Then I got all ambitious and decided to toss some grass seed and fertilizer on my yard. It's just a postage-stamp yard, in the 1930's, they built the house to take up the whole lot, because houses were cheaper than land was. But I tried to kill all the weeds earlier this spring and that was bad because it was mostly weeds so I murdered the whole dang yard, pretty much.

So my wife is reading the instructions, and they say to 'aereate the yard' or some such before watering in the grass seed. Well, I have no idea how to aereate a yard. So I figure it means punch some holes in it. Which I have nothing to do this with.

So I remember that I still have my late father's golf bag and shoes - and those shoes have golf spikes on them. Ah-ha!

So I spike myself up and out I go.

Grab a beer on the way, of course. Yuengling, to be precise.

Oh, by the way. Do not wear spikes inna house. Bad thing on wooden floors. OK.

So I stomp up and down on the lawn for awhile, then water it all in. Wife takes photos because she finds this amusing. Says she married a lunatic.

And here's the proof. Me in my blissful life. And yes, after Yuengling number three, it got kinda blishful, too.

Best Regards,

Bill Mattocks

 

[back alley]

i was born in brooklyn new yawk, raised in queens and worked in manhatten.
i moved to dillsberg, pa. for a few months before i wound up in edmonton, alberta canada.

new york city had about 21 million people in it (i think) back in the early 70s when i left.
dillsberg had 437 people when i moved in next to the town post office.
canda had 19 million people in the country when i moved here.
edmonton has about 500,000 people now. not a bad size.

i never moved for bliss, i mostly moved cause i was young, dumb and followed women.
now, i'm thinking i'm too old to move and start over.
i've never had bliss so i'm not really sure what it looks like or where to look for it.

i'm at my best when i'm depressed. i write better and take better pics. i can't write worth a damn when i'm happy but that doesn't happen too ofter thankfully.

in my life i shoot for comfortable. not too down or to up, i prefer level.

the top section of my blog says it all, pretty much...

joe

 

[jlw]

In 2000 my wife and I decided to move somewhere more beautiful...

Who else has made similar moves? If not, why not?

Why not? Because except for people who are very lucky, jobs are difficult to find, and you have to live where you can get and keep one. Then you have to spend most of your waking hours doing it, and pursue your personal goals only with whatever time and energy you have left over.

And despite all the wishful thinking doled out by self-actualization hucksters, that's the way it has to work in order for the economy to throw off enough surplus to support a minority of people pursuing different-drummer lifestyles. If one guy's going to get to enjoy a late breakfast every day on a sun-splashed terrace overlooking the park, that means several other guys have to get up early to make the donuts.

In other words, every person who stands above the herd of common humanity, breathing the fresh clean air of a lifestyle of his own choosing, is borne up on the backs of several thousand drab cubicle-dwellers and shop rats. Sure, we'd all like to be the guy living the kind of independent, appealing life we read about in magazines and on blogs, but we know that it's impossible for the poker deck of life to deal out straight flushes all around and that we have to play the hand we're dealt.

Don't worry, we don't resent those who are able to live a life of their own choosing in pursuit of Beauty or whatever. We like being able to see that it's possible, even if we're not doing it ourselves. We do get a little peeved if you start to gas about anyone could do it if they only had your superior personal qualities, or if you attribute your good fortune to anything other than 95% sheer dumb luck -- because we know that's all it is. But other than that, feel free to enjoy. Everyone loves a winner.

Besides, no matter how mundane and crummy we may feel our lives are compared to yours, we can take some comfort in knowing that they could always be worse. I spend my workday sitting in a gray box, slumped in front of a computer doing crap for morons with MBA degrees, in a high-rise building in an office park surrounding an artificial lake infested by urbanized geese. It seems like a lousy way to grow old and die. Then at lunch I'll be sitting in the cafeteria looking out at the lake, and I'll see a young Hispanic guy in overalls walking slowly, head down, along the sidewalk with a pushbroom. He works for the lawn-service company, and his job -- day in and day out, regardless of weather -- is to sweep goose poop off the sidewalk back into the lake. Then I don't feel like my job is so bad (although the poop-sweeper doesn't have to worry as much about his job being outsourced to India...)



Well, you asked "Why not?" Now you know.

 

[Little Prince]

I don't really feel like I belong in this thread, mostly because I guess I'm much younger than most of the others who have participated in it. But Roger asked if there was anyone living in India and I thought I'd reply saying I was from India though actually living in the US for the past few years.

Anyway, going from what I have seen of other people I know it's quite likely I'll be feeling like most of you someday. But today is not that day for me and this is all making me feel very mellow (which is not a bad thing considering it's close to 1am and feeling upbeat right now makes the prospects for Monday rather bleak). So I'm going away to read some other thread for now.

 

[Fedzilla_Bob]

I am originally a Washingtonian by birth (that is, Washington DC). I lived there all my life with the exception of a 6 month stint in Burbank, CA overlooking Warner Bros Studios.

Last year the company I worked for was bought by a Canadian company that is doing well by outsourcing in the global economy. Nearly my entire department was cut. My wife and I felt this was the best time to join the remainder of her family. And, I had always wanted to move west.

Even with all the rain we have had (more than Seattle I think), I really enjoy it here. Now if I can just find another job. My current employer is being bought out. C'est la guerre.

 

[cp_ste.croix]

you know, i love where i live, in vancouver canada...though the romantic in me has always wanted an Europen life...or at least what I imagine would be an European life. Wine, Terraces, local markets, cooking seasonally, weird cars, community festivals people actually take part in, crappy bicycles, ease of international travel, and a real sense of history (not the erradicated one N Americans live with). Who knows, maybe I'll do it one day, but for now, I'm working to move out of my Mom's basement again. 🙂


I wish everyone here bliss or at least the creativity conducive melancholy the so desire. And Joe, that wasn't intended as an insensitive shot, I feel the same as you do much of the time.

 

[nwcanonman]

you know, i love where i live, in vancouver canada...though the romantic in me has always wanted an Europen life...or at least what I imagine would be an European life. Wine, Terraces, local markets, cooking seasonally, weird cars, community festivals people actually take part in, crappy bicycles, ease of international travel, and a real sense of history (not the erradicated one N Americans live with). Who knows, maybe I'll do it one day, but for now, I'm working to move out of my Mom's basement again. 🙂


I wish everyone here bliss or at least the creativity conducive melancholy the so desire. And Joe, that wasn't intended as an insensitive shot, I feel the same as you do much of the time.

.............................................
Gee, must be a Canadian thing 😛
Many of us are quite proud of American history. We've made some mistakes, but who hasn't? I can't think of a free'er, more geographicallly beautiful place on the planet.
Bill,
I did the same thing about 5 years ago. Found a $2 pair of golf shoes at 2nd-Hand store (whitle/black Saddle oxfords) and spray painted them all black - LOL. Sure beats my nieighbors paying a landscaper $200 a year to run an aeriator over his yard. And my yard looks just as green, HA! :angel:

 

[cp_ste.croix]

Skip this post if you have no sense of humour.

Skip this post if you have no sense of humour.

Gee, must be a Canadian thing 😛
Many of us are quite proud of American history. We've made some mistakes, but who hasn't? I can't think of a free'er, more geographicallly beautiful place on the planet.

....must resist....America....bashing....nice forum.....must be....polite......no comments about unelected presidents and freedom.......infant mortality rates.........AARRRG! *

😉 Where I live there aren't too many buildings that existed much before a century ago. There is lots of natural history, but nothing of the deep rooted cultural history that seeps into a place after a thousand years of sustained (and validated) habitation. Canadian history, for what it's worth is sort of boring, but maybe that's a good thing after all.


*note: the above section was intended as humour and gentle neighbourly teasing and was in no way intended to point out how much better Canada is than the US...**


**note: ok, seriously this time, the note explaining the text above was not intended to inflame any political debate, nor to insult or cause harm. You all are so nice I don't even think of you as Americans***


***note: clearly I suffer from the Canadian inferiority complex. :angel: