All posts in category Thoughts

In Transit

© CJ Levinson 2013

I am lost
And have no home
But I have all I need -
Love and my dreams

Caves Beach in Black and White

A home is more than
Bricks and stone:
It is the memories
In your heart

Caves Beach Sunset

I took the photos in this post over the course of the last week. All of these photos are from around Caves Beach, which is a small town about two hours north of Sydney, near Newcastle. My mother and I are currently staying here with my grandparents and I took most of these from their balcony, overlooking the ocean.

Caves Beach is a beautiful location and is wonderful for photography. I’ve been spending a couple of hours every day exploring the beaches and lakes nearby and it’s been very therapeutic after a stressful few months.

My mother and I are here because we are essentially homeless at the moment; we both had to take out AVOs against my father as he became increasingly violent after his suicide attempt, which was one of the hardest and most painful things I have ever done, and without his additional income to support us, we were unable to pay the rent on our flat in Sydney and so our landlords kicked us out. All of our belongings are currently in storage while we try to find somewhere more permanent to live and it has just been the most awful time, first coming to terms with what’s happened to my father and now losing our home too. But coming here, being surrounded by such beauty, has been very therapeutic and has given me a chance to reflect on everything that has happened and begin to heal and I feel thankful for that much at least.

Orange Moon Rising Over the Lake

I’ve taken a lot of photos and will be posting more of them over the coming days but I think my favourite so far is the sunset above. I love the colours and how peaceful it feels but also the promise a sunset brings: how, as the sun goes down, you know it will rise again on a new day. That is how I feel at the moment: that despite everything that has happened and losing our home, tomorrow is a new day and will bring better things. Hopefully it won’t be long in coming.

Photos and haiqua © CJ Levinson 2013

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by cjlevinson on April 28, 2013  •  Permalink
Posted in Australia, Blogging, Life, Personal, Photography, Thoughts
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Posted by cjlevinson on April 28, 2013

http://cjlevinson.com/2013/04/28/in-transit/

Come Home

The Long Road Home

Sitting alone with my thoughts
I feel the tears come again
They run down my face
Like rain in the desert
And I’m not ashamed
For I’ve seen stronger men cry
For far less than this
And so I cry and I cry
Until the tears fall no longer
And then I stare at your picture
And wonder where in the darkness
You have gone?

I just hope that
Wherever you’ve gone
You’ll come home soon

All I wanted was to help you
But you pushed me away
Time and again
Like I meant nothing
Until my tears became fortresses
To protect me from your armies of pain
You hurt me so much
That I didn’t think it could hurt any more
And now I know I was right about everything
But it brings me no comfort
I just wish that you’d heard me earlier
So that perhaps we wouldn’t be here today

And I hope that
Wherever you’ve gone
You’ll come home soon

And I know that deep in your heart
You didn’t mean the things you said
And I know that in your right mind
You never would have done it
But something deep inside
Has got its hold on you
A monster eating away
That’s filled you with lies and deception
But I know it’s not you
And so I forgive you
I just hope that in time
You can forgive yourself too

And I hope that
Wherever you’ve gone
You’ll come home soon

It would break my heart if you ended your life
So we’ll find a way through this together
I can’t promise not to be angry
Or not to cry or feel betrayed
But I promise to still be there
And I’ll take your hand and lead you forward
And walk with you through the darkness
Into the light
And whatever the future brings
We’ll face it one day at a time
And get through it together
So please come home soon

Please
Wherever you’ve gone
Come home soon

I wrote this poem over the course of the last week. I wrote it in two sessions and it’s probably the fastest poem I have ever written; it took about two hours to write and each time I sat down, the words poured straight out and needed very little editing, which is unusual for me.

The poem really started as a way of processing a very difficult situation my family has been going through these last few weeks. A member of my family tried to commit suicide two weeks ago; while I don’t want to say who it was publicly, it was someone who is very close to me and it was an extremely close call and it has left me absolutely devastated.

It came without any real warning and I’ve been going through a mix of different emotions since, predominantly shock, and also anger. The anger isn’t necessarily over the attempt itself but over other factors as well and while it’s a natural response, I realised several days ago that I haven’t really been processing it properly and the anger has been making my pain a lot worse as well and it’s something I have to try to let go of. So writing this poem has been my way of trying to do that and to accept what happened.

The poem is probably the most personal one I’ve written and is based on my own thoughts and feelings but I’ve also tried to make it so that hopefully everyone can see a bit of themselves in it too. I wanted it to feel personal but unique as well so that hopefully everyone who reads it can get something different out of it.

The photo by the way is one of the first street photos I took, of a man who seemed a bit lost in his own world. He didn’t even notice me taking the photo and I thought the scene suited the poem.

I hope you like the poem and that it brings some hope and beauty to a dark situation, one I know many people find themselves in. Mental illness and chronic depression are terrible ordeals, not just for those suffering them but their families as well. ~ CJ.

Photo: The Long Road Home © CJ Levinson 2011
Poem licenced under Creative Commons

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by cjlevinson on February 27, 2013  •  Permalink
Posted in Blogging, Life, Personal, Photography, Poetry, Thoughts, Writing
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Posted by cjlevinson on February 27, 2013

http://cjlevinson.com/2013/02/27/come-home/

Sunday Morning at Coogee Oval

CJ Presentation

Just a quick update. One of my photos, “Cricket at Coogee Oval”, won a photo competition last week. I entered it in the Randwick Petersham Cricket Club’s photo competition a little while ago and found out last week that it won first place.

There was a small presentation on Sunday morning at Coogee Oval hosted by Mike Whitney, the former NSW and Australia fast bowler and RPCC President, and my mother took the photo above as I accepted my prize, a Canon SX40 camera and a certificate signed by Mr. Whitney.

It was a really nice presentation and it was a thrill meeting Mr. Whitney, who was one of my favourite cricketers during the late 80s and early 90s. It was great meeting the other finalists as well; all the photos were of very high quality and I was very impressed. To be honest I’m amazed I won – I was just happy to make the final ten and didn’t think I had much chance of winning at all, so it was a nice surprise.

It meant a lot to me as well as the last few weeks have been a bit of a nightmare for my family. I’ll explain more in another post soon but we’ve had a very, very traumatic couple of weeks and getting this news came at just the right time to ease some of the burden.

So I am very grateful for that and thank you to everyone at the RPCC and Canon for running such an enjoyable competition and hopefully it will go from strength to strength each year.

Canon Camera

I took a quick photo of the camera once I’d unboxed it as well, so I thought I’d post that as well. It looks like a great camera so I can’t wait to try it out properly this weekend. :)

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by cjlevinson on February 26, 2013  •  Permalink
Posted in Blogging, Life, Personal, Photography, Random, Thoughts
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Posted by cjlevinson on February 26, 2013

http://cjlevinson.com/2013/02/26/sunday-morning-at-coogee-oval/

O Christmas Tree

O Christmas Tree 2012

Lights and carols
Smiles everywhere
But my heart misses you
This Christmas

Our Christmas tree for this year. We were going to buy a new tree as our old tree broke last year and this spare one is really a bit too small for all our ornaments but as we’re going to be moving soon, we thought it was better to wait. We still managed to get everything on it in the end, more or less.

Putting the ornaments up I found several my grandmother had given us, as well as some beautiful embroidered Christmas pictures she had made for us that I’d forgotten about. I was thinking of her and everything else that’s happened this year when I wrote the haiqua.

With the photo I wanted to try to make it look a little like a Christmas card, so I edited the photo to remove a lot of the detail and make it look more like a painting. I like how it turned out and think I’ll get it printed on canvas at some stage for next Christmas.

The collage below shows a few other angles of the tree as well. I used the Diptic app to create the collage. It’s one of my favourite apps and well worth checking out if you haven’t tried it – would make a good Christmas gift for someone if you’ve run out of ideas too.

Christmas Tree Diptic

Photos and haiqua © CJ Levinson 2012

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by cjlevinson on December 21, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in Blogging, Death, Life, Photography, Poetry, Thoughts
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Posted by cjlevinson on December 21, 2012

http://cjlevinson.com/2012/12/21/o-christmas-tree/

Sleepless Night

Crescent Moon

A long, sleepless night:
My mind wanders far away
In search of answers

Another shooting
More death, violence,
And tears:
Will it ever end?

Life, love, death,
A never-ending cycle -
Is this truly
All there is?

Good and evil
There is no such thing:
We all hide monsters
In our hearts

The clock strikes midnight
Shadows spread across the walls:
Time waits for no one

Silence surrounds me,
An ocean of
Nothingness
I cannot escape

My heart aches -
I loved her more
Than words can say
But it was not enough

Moving on
Is a long and winding road:
I must find
My own way home

A warm summer breeze
Whispering through the treetops
Like a lover’s sigh

Another Christmas
Bright lights shining
On the tree:
It is not the same

Morning:
Haze hangs in the air
While music drifts
From somewhere far away

In the distance
A yellow sun
Begins to rise:
At last I find rest

Birds sing in the trees
Children laugh and play outside:
Life goes on once more

I’ve been working on this poem for a few days and finished it while I was still awake early this morning. I’ve been feeling quite down the closer it’s got to Christmas; I guess I’ve had a lot on my mind after an eventful year and writing this poem has helped me to sort through a lot of what I’ve been feeling, as well as trying to make sense of the terrible events in Connecticut from earlier this week as well.

The poem is inspired by a lot of things – the shooting in Connecticut, the end of a recent relationship, my grandmother dying – but it’s primarily meant as a collection of thoughts and feelings, the kind of thoughts that enter your mind in the middle of the night when you can’t sleep and your mind just wanders. In that way it’s also a bit of a companion piece to another poem I wrote, The Sound of Midnight, which explored the same idea at a different point in my life.

The photo is a photo I took of a crescent moon last year. I haven’t taken many photos of the moon as it’s one of the more difficult subjects to capture as it’s so bright and you need a very long lens to capture it properly. This was actually the first shot I took… not too bad for a first try. I’ll have to take some more at some stage now that I know what to do!

Photo © CJ Levinson 2011-12
Poem licenced under Creative Commons

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by cjlevinson on December 20, 2012  •  Permalink
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Posted by cjlevinson on December 20, 2012

http://cjlevinson.com/2012/12/20/sleepless-night/

Another Year Passes

20120921-000345.jpg

Another year passes
I am older
But no wiser:
Life goes on

I turned 28 yesterday. I don’t like much fuss over my birthday so I just had a fairly quiet day overall; I spent a few hours looking through some old photos and mementos (a bit of a birthday tradition), then had afternoon tea with my parents at our local coffee shop, where we shared a couple of slices of cake (chocolate mud and butterscotch caramel) as a birthday treat. They looked so nice I just had to take a photo. Tasted just as nice too.

On the whole though I spent most of the day at home, reflecting on the past year, something I do most birthdays really. There’s been a bit of a different feel to it this year though, turning 28, knowing the big 3-0′s not that far away anymore. I guess it’s made me think a bit more about where I am in my life right now.

To be honest this last year has been a difficult one for me. I am still not very well at the moment, which is why I haven’t updated this blog in a while. I’m managing for the most part but it’s frustrating, particularly as there’s a lot I’d been planning to do this year like studying that I just don’t feel up to at the moment. It’s also been a difficult year emotionally. My grandmother (my father’s mother) died in May which hit me very hard and a few weeks after that, my grandfather (my mother’s father) suffered a very severe stroke as well. He is improving now but is unable to manage his affairs and assets and that’s caused a lot of division in the family, deciding how best to take care of him and my grandmother. I also broke up with my girlfriend last month, which was very painful. Her family never really approved of me and much as I loved her, it just wasn’t going to work in the end… it was the right thing to do but that doesn’t make it any easier unfortunately.

Given everything that’s happened, I guess I feel like I’m at a bit of a crossroads at the moment and that was what was on my mind most of yesterday, where I am now, where I’d like to be in another couple of years… I guess birthdays often have a way of bringing up those kind of thoughts and reflections. I’m still working out exactly what I want to do but I’m hoping my 29th year will be a better one. I think it will be.

In any case I just wanted to post a quick update to let people know I’m still here. I’ll be posting more regularly again from now on and hopefully will have a new poem to post soon too… I’ve been working on it for about six months now so it shouldn’t be much longer. Honest.

I thought I’d share this song as well as it’s one of my favourites and I think after an eventful year, it sums up how I’m feeling perfectly at the moment. It’s End of the Line by The Traveling Wilburys. Enjoy. :)

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by cjlevinson on September 20, 2012  •  Permalink
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Posted by cjlevinson on September 20, 2012

http://cjlevinson.com/2012/09/20/another-year-passes/

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