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!