I got a new lens today. It is my first one since buying my special camera.
I knew it was “the one” at first sight.
This lens laughs at all my puns. We are very happy together!
PS: we are not registered anywhere, but cash gifts are welcome. We are saving to have a LensBaby.
In the twinkling of an eye, my habit of lunchtime blogging has vanished, replaced by scurrying to dress giant Barbie dolls on photo sets exiled far, far away from the reach of wi-fi. I’m afraid this picture isn’t much of a reward for your visit, since the re-workings at work have drained my tank so thoroughly, there’s no gas left to spark my creativity and photography on the weekends.
This ball of thread is just as I found it, imperfect rewindings overlapping the pristine criss-crosses formed the day it was made, telling the story of a project begun and unfinished, perhaps. Its core remains unexposed. A spool like this is full of contradictions – you only find the emptiness at the center core by using it up completely, reconstituting the perfection of machines into the imperfectable and priceless work of hands.
And if that isn’t a metaphor for the life I live – popping dozens of tops and pants and boxer shorts onto mannequins, luring innocent human beings into imagining themselves somehow improved by wearing the output of factories wherein our brothers and sisters toil – then I don’t understand what a metaphor is.
The day starts out hopeful, but it doesn’t take long. Pretty soon, the camera system breaks, and no one knows why. Once we can make images, the software exports them to a black hole of its own choosing. We have to launch a search and rescue mission for what little work we’ve done. Cheerfully, an assistant wheels over a third cart full of work for me to complete today, even though I already have 2 carts, labelled “1 of 2,” and “2 of 2.” I ask out loud, “Why would I wonder if there was a third cart?” and bless this thoughtful person who has saved me from a very bad mistake. It takes a lot of effort to squeeze a completed capture out of the infrastructure.
This picture was a pretty lazy gesture. It’s only ribbon violets, balanced on a hanger draped with lace, all from my grandmother’s belongings. I didn’t try very hard, and I don’t really know if any magic happened. That’s for you to decide. All the struggle came in the days when I wasn’t making anything. That’s really work. Remembering those days makes me want to sit down and have a cup of coffee. The rest of what I do is just how I keep myself from remembering.
By the time I found the sunflower field, it was not only late in the day, but late in their life cycle. Stems once as stiff and tall as bamboo saplings curved earthwards, weighted by their precious cargo of seeds forming in the wake of the labor of bees and other pollinators. Shriveled petals shivered in the breeze and sun, like feathers ready to float away. The more I tried to look the sunflowers in their soft brown eyes, the more my own eye grew silent. I wanted simply to stroll along, shoulder to shoulder with these friends. letting them be as they were, absorbing the afternoon warmth. I walked the full length of the field, reaching a small grove of oaks, and turned to look behind me.
From where I stood, their lemony radiance was a total surprise. I had never imagined what I might find behind the sunflowers, facing towards their homing compass. I could see what the sunflowers saw, and together we seemed to be wanting the same thing: to let ourselves be drawn into something warm, to be filled with the mysterious power of light, and to become the Self we are already waiting to find.
To Do list for Sunflowers:
Nod in a friendly way to all passers-by
Employ countless bumblebees
Shelter Eastern Kingbird, Eastern Bluebird, Eastern Meadowlark, Vesper Sparrow, Clay-colored Sparrow, Sedge Wren, Orchard Oriole and Henslow’s Sparrow
Turn toward the light
I guess I am always looking backwards, or inwards, which explains why my pictures look the way they do. I like recesses, and shadows, and how the closer you look at something, the less certainty there is around the edges. So, on a day when creating something seems too painful, sometimes I trick myself by saying, “Just use the camera for 10 or 15 minutes.”
It helps to have a miniature Blue Willow tea set under those circumstances. Not everyone is so lucky.
In honor of my sister, Pamela Berkman-Saky, for her efforts to coax a novel from the month of August, these are the heaviest hitters I can currently muster for Intercession with her Muse. That’s Dante on the left, Diana on the right, and the Bard of Avon, center. This is a pretty good crew to have looking over your shoulder. I learned from Wikipedia that Dante’s contribution to the literary language called “Italian” is as pivotal as Chaucer’s was to English. Diana is not only the goddess of the hunt, the moon and birth – things any artist needs in her metaphoric quiver – but a twin. Oaks are her sacred tree. It so happens that her festival is tomorrow, August 13th.
Mull over the synchronicity here in your imaginations for a little while, and get back to me with your insights…Go, Pammy!
While there is no denying that the general usefulness or necessity of today’s picture is debatable, its usefulness and necessity to me is not in question. And while I know that digital imaging has somehow spoiled much of the beauty of the photographic process for many thoughtful and talented artists, I am so deeply, almost inexpressibly grateful for its becoming available to mere mortals like myself, because I know that there is no everlovin’ way I would be making pictures – this picture or any others – if film was still the only word. So I thank you for your forgiveness, and send you some squidgey roses taking form from the nothing, the Great Nothing, which is always ready to Bloom.
She thinks she thoughts in butterflies
that floated on the breeze
Where weightless words their clamor sound
she sinks the deeper on her knees.
Sometimes, I just take the dictation, folks.
So, yesterday I spotted the unmistakable contour of greyhound ribs as I approached the coffee shop. Sorja (or something like that), was sitting on the long covered porch outside the cafe, with her friend, the black lapdog Slick (this name I am sure of), and two humans whose names I never did ask. And when I say sitting, of course, I mean she was standing with her nose at exactly the height of the table top, looking hopeful with large, dark eyes. Slick, being about 10% Sorja’s size, was nestled majestically on his human’s lap, looking serene. I gathered the details of Sorja’s life while scratching her white velvety haunches – a breeder, from Dubuque, finally adopted at age nine. Her life had not involved any table top surfing, of that I am sure. Not wanting to be too much of a greyhound stalker, after a brief mention of my own retired racers, I left Sorja in peace and went inside to get my coffee.
As I waited for my 3 espresso shots (and yes, I let them give me the fourth for free), a little tide of loss and joy surged through me. I thought of Sorja waiting so expectantly for Something Good to Happen for Dogs. I know just how this feels – I experience it myself, an emotional undercurrent so deep I have to close my eyes and focus on it more or less everyday. (I call this lovingkindness meditation, though Sorja might call it A Nap.) I looked around the cafe for something that could make Sorja’s dream come true. Not quiche, not a peanut butter sandwich. In the cooler, below well ordered rows of colorful cans and bottles of organic bubbling sugar water, I spotted Something Good for Dogs. String cheese would do nicely.
“Can Sorja have string cheese?” I asked her Mom. “Oh, yes!” she said. Sorja had her wide, dark eyes already fixed alertly on my hands. She had felt the connection of expectation engage between us, like the moments before the gates crack open and all the world is just this chance to Catch The Bunny. The promising crinkle of plastic peeling apart held her attention. Here was Something Good for Dogs. With flat, polite teeth, she took a pea sized nibble from between my fingers and looked back up at me, as I gave Slick a little treat, too. I laid the remaining cheese in front of her Mom. “You can give her the rest,” I said. (No one appreciates a stranger who makes their dog sick from too many treats). Sorja moved her head towards the cheese, drawn magnetically to the hope of the next nibble., completely ignoring me as I said goodbye and left.
The obvious truth, that Sorja had not stopped expecting that something good might happen, no matter how long the wait, stirred up a painful loss – that I have come to the edge of my willingness to help where I see things have gone beyond me. Sorja the Greyhound gave me a few moments of certainty that I knew how to make some creature happy, knew how to be good enough. All it took, for both of us, was a little cheese.
You must think that something is happening with you, that life has not forgotten you, that it holds you in its hand; it will not let you fall. Why do you want to shut out of your life any uneasiness, any miseries, or any depressions? For after all, you do not know what work these conditions are doing inside you.” Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet
Never knowing exactly what I will say, I sit down with a picture and write. First, I look my exhaustion squarely in the eye, but usually let it slither back to the shadows. No one wants to read about how tired you are, Brenna. Then I wonder if I have a story to tell. This week, in fact, is full of stories, but they are not for telling. The words and their events swoop past each other like spectres haunting the daylight. I know what has happened but it has to stay invisible.
So then I pull back further. This is the view I like, seeing where the edges of what is personal seem to melt into a bigger notion. Maybe I like that grandiose feeling of having something to say about Life In General. I can tell you a thing or two, you know. But sometimes I just need to get far away, to see for myself, “I have been through something.” And get just a little farther back still, where there is room to wonder, “What’s next?” And then to find another edge.
what is beautiful remains 