Gaylord Returns!

Dear Diary,

My first photograph of Gaylord. He's been back a couple of times but I haven't had the camera at the ready so I missed photographing him. He is such a cheeky little fellow and I've missed him. He'll be coming for his sunflower seeds now.

Last winter I tried only photographing what came to me. In Taoism it is called Wu Wei; the practice of doing without doing. Of course I have my pond to visit this winter but I still practice Wu Wei all the time. I try to stay open to those things that present themselves to me and I never seem to be at a loss for things to make photographs of. One of my favorite books is The Tao of Winnie the Pooh. The author explains the practice non-practice of Wu Wei beautifully...

"Using Wu Wei, you go by circumstances and listen to your own intuition. "This isn’t the best time to do this. I’d better go that way." Like that. When you do that sort of thing, people may say you have a Sixth Sense or something. All it really is, though, is being Sensitive to Circumstances. That’s just natural. It’s only strange when you don’t listen.”

― Benjamin Hoff, The Tao of Pooh

(Try Gaylord large...you can just make out me standing in the door in the reflection in his eye!)