Shadow Shot Sunday #44

Oh! How the time flies when you are playing more than one photo meme. The old clock on my desk tells me ten thousand and eighty minutes have passed since last Sunday. That means it is time once again to post my Shadow Shots. My shot this week is of one of my favorite things.



The cause of this shadow is the frame of our deck canopy holding my wind chime

The author of the following certainly captured how I feel about the sound of chimes. I have had several near my kitchen window in every home I have lived in and I have always left them behind when I moved hoping the new occupants would enjoy them as much as I did. Regrettably, the Old Salt does not feel as I do about them so, now we have just this one perfectly tuned chime that he chose.

Wind Chimes
By Dorothy K. Fletcher

The sound usually comes to me on the soft Florida breezes, but in the spring that sound almost comes in blasts as the winds roar through the trees--my neighborhood--my wind chimes.

I can't even remember who gave me my first set of wind chimes--who first set my heart soaring with the magical tinkling sound that they made, but I suspect that it was my father. I believe that he brought them home to me from Japan that he had visited when he was serving in the Navy in the Korean War.

These wind chimes were made of a handful of glass pieces about the size and shape of microscope slides. Each had been cheerfully painted with red and white paint by a worker somewhere in the Orient. The pieces were then strung from little strings from concentric circles of red bamboo. Then we hung them from the ceiling of a corner in our screen porch. I was truly mesmerized by the sound these little wind chimes made. It was such a happy sound, unless, of course, a thunderstorm threatened. Then the sound became a little hysterical, and I worried that they might disintegrate on the spot. They never did, though, until we moved. Then they mysteriously went the way of all "things lost" during great migrations.

When we moved to Florida, I discovered a new kind of wind chime, ones made of beach shells. These chimes were usually strung with strings of mollusk shells suspended from an interesting piece of driftwood. I would like to think that the natives made these chimes indigenous to Florida, but more than likely they too were made in Japan.

Although these chimes did not produce the same sound as my first set, the sound they made was still delightful. They were cheerful in timbre and tone, and their earth colors and origins made for a sixties kind of back-to-Mother-Earth-mentality that I was beginning to espouse back in those days. Whatever happened to these chimes, I don't remember. More than likely they are in a box in the attic along with my bell-bottoms and dashiki shirt and are best left to the past.

My most recent set of wind chimes was made of metal pipes of varying lengths. Supposedly, these pipes were carefully designed by Buddhist monks to create tones that are soothing to the soul. Since I got this set of chimes at Ace Hardware, I seriously doubt my soul was a factor in their design. I have to admit, though, that listening to them sing in the breeze while I sip my iced tea in the summer or a mug of hot cocoa in the winter has been most soothing to my sensibilities.

Of course, I probably am one of those obnoxious neighbors that Ann Landers' readers write about, ones who keep the neighbors up all night with their eccentricities--like wind chimes. What I have noticed about the chimes that hang right outside of my bedroom window is that they have just become a part of the sounds of life out there. They have become like a mantle clock or those grandfather clocks that chime every hour on the hour. At first they keep the family up all night with their noise, but then, as time passes, they become part of the surroundings. Unless a person makes an effort to hear them, he or she usually doesn't.

I guess it is my soul that listens to the wind chimes now. My conscious self rarely hears them anymore, except when the wind really kicks up. Then I am flooded with a variety of wonderful impressions that will surely make me see to it that wind chimes hang always in the corners of my life.

For more great shadow shots click the camera badge to visit Hey Harriet and join in the fun.