Wednesday, December 3, 2008

Moments

I’m in a deep place today, amidst silly season.

Moments in life fluctuate and flit from one depth and shallow into another or from a tidal pool to rock pools full of hidden beauty and treasures.

Moments are a bit like the unnamable scent of earth after heavy downpours – can’t be stored in a bottle for those rainy days when one needs a reminder. Like the colors of a rainbow mingling effortlessly with droplets, basking in sun and mixing into the backdrop of blue cloudless skies with no end as to where it all begun. Yes, moments can’t quite be captured and neither can be taken ownership of...

But we can look back at a glimpse of places and times in photographs, and view them through the apple of our own naked eyes.

Dancing in the sky in elation and plummet to the deepest depths of serious contemplation or hover simply on the brink of what feels like a great discovery, falling in love or out and thus tracing over the seams of one’s very own soul. Do you feel this happening to you during the journey called “life” and looking at your photographs?

Nearly each weekly morning I scurry to the drudgery of work. Set in a frantic mood of mind of the utmost unwillingness of giving myself to the world... again. If only it wasn’t like that. I wish there was a dingy smoky cottage on a pebbled beach by a lake with a small wooden boat.

Before I leave the save haven called bedroom, my eyes are drawn to a frame on the wall to my left. My soul comes to rest, and I breathe again.

There they are. Three framed black and white photos. They speak of parts and fragments of a lifetime ago behind dark black and red mountains. They tell a story only I know. I am so distant from that place, an eternity. Could it not turn around into being only a mere second away?

My three small framed pictures say that all is not lost, a world of good things is – An oyster with hidden pearls if only one look deeper. These images tell me to hang in here and hold on to dreams, never to loose sight. The story is that what was breathed and touched with my own eyes, breathe and skin... and I can still experience it. Just looking at them I focus on the light and dark and know there is more to black and white.

The artist Gavin Collins recently did a range of painting revolving around "Light". In there is a place in the world I could see myself and my three dark photographs. Moments captured in light and shade, and it is there in my soul, free to roam there like an old friend too.

I would like to think the light and shadow so playfully caught in my comforting 3 pictures reflects far more than the eye can see. And then...it gives away so much more than the sum of lightness and darkness, but for something magical that brims with hope, sadness and joy, a stark presence and light, beauty and splendor.

And they are mine.

1 comment:

Brother Tobias said...

There is no light without darkness. Darkness is the whole, the light only our perception of it. Beyond the light are the truths we have not discovered and the roads we have yet to travel. In the darkness is hope and all that the future holds. To fulfill our potential we must find the courage to step out of the light and open our minds to the unknown.

(The Thoughts of Brother Tobias, Volume 1, Number 42)