RON HENGGELER

March 7, 2024
A gallimaufry of color and light

"Art evokes the mystery without which the world would not exist."

Rene Magritte

"All art is autobiographical. The pearl is the oyster's autobiography."

Federico Fellini

"The artist is a receptacle for emotions that come from all over the place: from the sky, from the earth, from a scrap of paper, from a passing shape, from a spider's web."

Picasso

San Francisco City Hall

Election night March 5th

San Francisco Symphony

Prometheus

March 2nd

"The feeling of awe and sense of wonder arises from the recognition of the deep mystery that surrounds us everywhere, and this feeling deepens as our knowledge grows."

Anagarika Govinda

There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.

Albert Einstein

We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Alice in Wonderland

Morning sunlight

"My idea is that there is music in the air, music all around us; the world is full of it, and you simply take as much as you require."

Sir Edward Elgar

"What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night. It is the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset."

Crowfoot, Blackfoot warrior and orator

the attic

"Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year."

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Hope

Smiles from the threshold of the year to come, 

Whispering 'it will be happier'. . .

Alfred Lord Tennyson

"You've gotta dance like there's nobody watching,

Love like you'll never be hurt,

Sing like there's nobody listening,

And live like it's heaven on earth. "

William Purkey

"Time stays long enough for anyone who will use it."

Leonardo da Vinci

February's full noon rising,

with San Francisco's City Hall lit for the Chinese Lunar New Year

Mark Anstendig in Berlin during Fasching

circa. 1959 - 1963

Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment.

Buddha

"Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy. Music is the electrical soil in which the spirit lives, thinks and invents."

Ludwig van Beethoven

"When one realizes one is asleep, at that moment one is already half-awake."

P.D. Ouspensky

Van Ness Avenue at Grove Street and the San Francisco City Hall seen from outside on the half-circular balcony of Davies Hall

during Intermission

"Without music, life would be a mistake."

Friedrich Nietzsche

Twilight of the Idols

"Many people who are in reality dead are walking in the streets; many who are in their graves are in reality alive."

Idries Shah

Learning How to Live: Psychology and Spirituality in the Sufi Way

"The biggest cliche in photography is sunrise and sunset."

Catherine Opie

"Everything you can imagine is real."

Pablo Picasso

A coyote in our backyard howling at a distant siren

"It's the possibility of having a dream come true that makes life interesting.”

Paulo Coelho

The Alchemist

"Ah, music", he said, wiping his eyes. "A magic beyond all we do here!"

J.K. Rowling

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

"It’s no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then."

Lewis Carroll

Alice in Wonderland

Every step is on the path.

Laozi

. . . preparing to hand-wax the wood floor in the front room on the first floor.

freshly waxed wood floor in the front room on the first floor

recent eviction

"This is my simple religion. There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness."

14th Dali Lama

"What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make."

Jane Goodall

"We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars."

Oscar Wilde

Lady Windermere's Fan

A headdress to a jar with a piece of the old Doyle Drive resting in a broken ceramic cat's head. Doyle Drive is an elevated roadway that passes through the Presidio on the way to and from the Golden Gate Bridge. The old Doyle Drive was damaged in the 1989 Loma Preita earthquake. It had been built in the 1930's when the Golden Gate Bridge was constructed. During the old roadway's demolition, I collected rivits and pieces of concrete with the iconic red paint of the Golden Gate Bridge.

"Treat the earth well: it was not given to you by your parents, it was loaned to you by your children. We do not inherit the Earth from our Ancestors, we borrow it from our Children."

Ancient Native American Proverb

"Music in the soul can be heard by the universe."
Lao Tzu

"What makes photography a strange invention is that its primary raw materials are light and time."

John Berger

"Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened."

Dr. Seuss

"Essentially what photography is is life lit up."

Sam Abell

"Music expresses that which cannot be put into words and that which cannot remain silent."

Victor Hugo

"When we pay attention to nature's music, we find that everything on the Earth contributes to its harmony."

Harat Inayat Khan

"This withdrawal from the day's turmoil into creative silence is not a luxury, a fad, or a futility. It is a necessity, because it tries to provide the conditions wherein we are able to yield ourselves to intuitive leadings, promptings, warnings, teachings, and counsels and also to the inspiring peace of the soul. It dissolves mental tensions and heals negative emotions."

Paul Brunton

"To me, photography is an art of observation. It's about finding something interesting in an ordinary place... I've found it has little to do with the things you see and everything to do with the way you see them."

Elliot Erwitt

"The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool."

William Shakespeare

As You Like It

Louise M. Davies Symphony Hall

San Francisco

"Find ecstasy in life; the mere sense of living is joy enough."

Emily Dickinson

"Photography takes an instant out of time, altering life by holding it still."

Dorothea Lange

"Truly there would be reason to go mad 
were it not for music."

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

"Practice love on animals first; they react better and more sensitively." 

G.I. Gurdjieff

"Out of the Indian approach to life there came a great freedom, an intense and absorbing respect for life, enriching faith in a Supreme Power, and principles of truth, honesty, generosity, equity, and brotherhood as a guide to mundane relations."

Black Elk, Oglala Lakota Sioux

The smoky aftermath from fireworks at Union Square, signifying the end of the Chinese Lunar New Year's Parade in San Francisco.

"One ought, every day at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and, if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words."

Johann Wolfgang Goethe

Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship

"Life is a dream for the wise, a game for the fool, a comedy for the rich, a tragedy for the poor."

Sholom Aleichem

"In photography, the smallest thing can be a great subject. The little, human detail can become a Leitmotiv."

Henri Cartier-Bresson

"Art is not a mirror held up to reality but a hammer with which to shape it."

Bertolt Brecht

"Life itself is the most wonderful fairy tale."

Hans Christian Andersen

"There are no words, it's only music there."

Antonio Lucio Vivaldi

"Humanity is the earth’s nerve-endings through which planetary vibrations are received for transmission."

Gurdjieff

"This above all: to thine own self be true, 

And it must follow, as the night the day, 

Thou canst not then be false to any man. "

William Shakespeare

Hamlet

"To take photographs means to recognize - simultaneously and within a fraction of a second - both the fact itself and the rigorous organization of visually perceived forms that give it meaning. It is putting one's head, one's eye and one's heart on the same axis."

Henri Cartier-Bresson

"With photography, you zero in; you put a lot of energy into short moments, and then you go on to the next thing."

Robert Mapplethorpe

"After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music."

Aldoux Huxley

Music at Night and Other Essays

"What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us."

Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Sometimes I go about pitying myself, and all the while I am being carried across the sky by beautiful clouds."

Ojibway proverb

"Whatever you are, be a good one."

Abraham Lincoln