Could fail to see the flower
Basho
The year has turned. Light drains out of the world from an
unseen opening in the lower sky. Due to
the deepening slant of the sun's rays there is a golden edge to all that is underfoot:
grasses, fallen leaves, acorns. The air is thick with this glow.
Everywhere an entire day lived close to dusk forces a slight shift in focus.
The radiant eye above still watches, but this stare has grown less intense
and it is now possible to stare back up at it without blinking.
Cooler now, the darkness spreads as shadow. I wander
quietly, slipping past tree, field, and mailbox, crouching down to examine the
wide, dry feathers of the thin, dead blossoms of Queen Anne’s Lace transformed
from soft white lace doilies to bird’s nests of brown brittle stars. On close examination, each star bursts forth from the center like a July 4th firework frozen in time.
As I walk, I am everywhere
in the company of these silent, seeded creatures. Clusters of collapsed canopies backlit by grass and gravel
accent field, rock and roadside.
Whether perched as in a gathering of miniature trees, or as a
single dark body, their slow, swiveling heads create a silhouette that
disrupts the sun’s dominion, existing as shadow without being shadow. And
yet, each unique form casts a shadow as well.
In late September while walking
through downtown Graton on my way to the Joe Rodota trail I paid a visit to a building-wide open studio at Atelier One. This two-story red brick
building has provided local artists with affordable work space since 1987. You
can look at the artists and some of their work here: http://atelierone.blogspot.com/
While browsing the hallways, I was drawn to a painting on the
lower level of the artist workspace that reminded me of the brittle, brown
fists of Queen Anne’s lace gone to seed. The painting is the work of local artist Becky Wells. You can
find some of her excellent work here: http://beckywellsart.com/
Hung on the walls of her second floor studio were several other paintings on the theme. My favorite
one was titled “Golden Queen
Anne’s Lace”. The painting highlights the gold of autumn
sunlight, the tight, dark, shadowy vessels of the flower gone to seed, and also
small white airy hints of the flower’s celebrated past, or perhaps magnificent, longed-for
future as the seeds of a new spring season are sown.
"The painting is a response to walking in the field of Queen Anne's Lace in Forestville," explains Becky. "I
was touched by the varied forms the flower takes as it moves along its
journey of one season of life. So many single stems hold the flowers
bursting outward then inward then downward to seed. An often overlooked
botanical beauty, it quietly and gently takes in sun and soil and a tad
of water to become the spidery, nesting flower I've grown to love and
paint."
In his book Becoming Animal David Abram writes “Each being
that we perceive enacts a subtle integration within us, even as it alters our
prior organization. The sensing body is like an open circuit that completes
itself only in things, in others, in the surrounding earth. Only by entering
into the relation with others do we effect our own integration and coherence.
Such others might be people, or they might be wetlands, or works of art”
Becky’s painting now hangs in my writing studio where inspiration
and observation intersect on a daily basis to form words, and those same words intersect to form worlds.
Perception alters, and with it the earth. Seeing is a steady
trading of myself here with the things seen there within a field of feeling. Outside the window where a pane of glass has been newly set within the window frame, I notice cool, gray clouds flattening the sky as
November rains begin.
