Visual Insights to Shift Your Perspective

An Equinox celebration gift for you

Throughout my travels, my photographer’s eye has always been caught by the odd, the colorful, the metaphorical images that shift my perspective and makes me wonder about the world and my place in it.

Now, I am delighted to share some of these photographic moments with you, along with questions they have suggested to me, questions I’ve chewed on, journaled about, and explored the shifting answers prompted by them. These visual prompts and questions are joined by bits of wisdom they attracted.

This small flipbook is my equinox gift to you … the first of what I hope is a long series of periodic, small books of images and words to come in the future. While this one is free to all, future ones will be reserved for paid subscribers, and some will be available in print versions.

Let’s Celebrate the Sun

By the time you read this, it will be fall (for some of us and spring for others) and for a while days and nights will be somewhat in balance. Our sun will have crossed an imaginary extension of the equator and for a hairsbreadth moment day was as long as night was short. Here in California, I will have slept through it as I do most things celestial that happen in the dark hours.

It feels like we should raise a rousing “yay, sun!” before we continue on our way. I do wonder why we celebrate the shortest and longest of days but show little respect for the moments of balance in our lives. And, when you think about it, why do we celebrate so few of the sun’s successes?

It’s always where we expect it to be,

doing what we expect it to do,

but we seldom say thanks or give it a raise.

I know there are some cultures that have considered the sun the supreme ruler, worshiping it in hopes that it kept making its daily rounds. That seems to make a lot of sense because without it, we wouldn’t exist. Nothing living would exist … well, not exactly true … there’s a lot of living things where no living things should be living. Some of those extremophiles such as the sulfur bacteria that live in deep caves in Mexico exist completely without light or oxygen, apparently happy “eating” hydrogen sulfide gas (rotten eggs).

The rest of us, though, wouldn’t make it long without the sun, so I want to celebrate it in my small way with this gift.

In this community where creativity pretty regularly runs amuck, my “thing” is making small, digital flip books through the auspices of Issuu. Here are three pages from the 32: (the first one is also a “shadow selfie” from my days in Ajijic, MX.

Feel free to send the link below to any of your friends who might like them. And, if you use these prompts in any way, I would love to know about your usage, either through comments or by email to jwycoff@gratitudemojo.com.

(Plus, if anyone wants to use any of these images in a post, I’m all for it!)

Thank you again, Sun, for all you do and please forgive the way too many times I’ve forgotten to be grateful for you.

To open, simply click this link: Visual Insights.