Leica Australia have just informed me that the camera body of the  salt water damaged  M4-P rangefinder (circa 1980s) has been repaired and that it is on the way from Wetzlar in Germany to Sydney, Australia.   Sadly, the Leica 50mm Summicron f.2  lens is unrepairable as was the basic Sekonic light meter (a Sekonic L-308 S) that  I'd been using.   I need to buy another 50mm Summicron and,  unfortunately  for me, these  lenses aren't cheap,  even the second hand ones. So it won't be going with me to Japan in October.  

I have missed not using the M4-P (one camera one lens) the last 10 months that it  has been in Germany.  I found the simplicity of the camera (one body, one prime lens) so appealing. The simplicity of the rangefinder is that it reduces the gap between meditative  seeing and the camera's sight. It is a shift towards becoming one with the camera.

I made the above photo  in  the winter of  2022.  It is from one of the 5 rolls of 400 ASA Portra that I'd exposed  prior to  the M4-P becoming  badly damaged. It was the late afternoon  winter light that caught my eye  as I was walking  along one of the various paths in the bushland that were  made by the kangaroos  with Kayla.   

This  was  one of the rare occasions when Kayla and I  walked together in the afternoon   We usually did the early morning walks together. It was a  momentary situation in  the local bushland in Waitpinga as the sunlight quickly shifted lower in the horizon behind some trees and the bark was then in shadow, unnoticed.  A fleeting moment in the flux  or the transience of the world. 

It was a situation in which I was starting to shift towards a more mediative awareness and seeing  -- an intuitive seeing of the now moment.  Rather than the photographing  encapsulating the walking practice  (impossible) it is a becoming more aware of the present moment. This becoming aware of the present moment is usually done  through a process of  “just sitting” in conscious awareness. It is called  Shikantaza in Zen.