Moving through Reality at Winter Solstice
21st December 2023
On this Winter Solstice day in 2023, I find myself with an unfamiliar view from my window.
Finally --I have moved.
Gazing at this new pattern of trees in an ever-changing mix of color and light -- offers me a puzzle I don't intend to solve.
Ten years ago I photographed on a Winter Solstice in Florida and produced the image below.
After I completed this -- "Exercise in Blue and Beige"(lame joke) -- I was uneasy with the result and spent an inordinate amount of time (months, years) making another version where all the edges were merged into a seeming one-frame composition.
Is version No. 2 any "better" than this one?
After hundreds of tweaks in real-time, any judgments I might make now seem irrelevant. One reality had become something else.
Back to now -now past. The move from my old farm property was arduous --the physical and mental labor harrowing. This journey seemed endless, with the final push being 6 months of daily mucking, hauling, giving away, - - leaving. The fact that I was able to tear myself from one reality and emerge in another -- was miraculous.. or murderous, depending.
In the moving process, I uncovered artwork completed in graduate school and much earlier. Other items I vaguely remembered appeared to be lost. Hand-written letters opened up to phrases that were wonderfully familiar from dear, now-gone companions. This process of dipping my hand into the caldron of the past, barbs and all, was staggering.
A few weeks before my final leave-taking, I swept the dirt floor of the root cellar in my old house, poking at ancient cobwebs. I was disturbing decades/centuries of debris that had settled at its own pace. I was reaching back into time and could sense multiple life reviews paging forward to the present and beyond.
As I worked, I recalled a 1991 event.
On a Winter's night in 1991, I heard a commotion in my basement. ...Hark.
I pointed my shaking torch from the staircase to find that a woodchuck or some other tunneling creature had broken through old floorboards, creating a tall pile of shards. I yelled and banged - then closed the door on the scurrying sounds. A trusted friend soon poured concrete to keep such visits at bay, but the root cellar was spared this improvement. Entering through a 5' hand-planked door with a tiny irregular-cut window, this sanctuary has remained largely as it was - the huge stones of the foundation and rich soil have not changed significantly, smelling fresh and vital - nature renewing itself in mysterious ways.
And now in a new home with hollow doors and working appliances, I want piled-up artwork and possessions to disappear - to vanish into a climate-controlled vault in the sky -- just bill-me/auto-pay. I keep the door closed to my new workspace, a study in chaos.
Please - can I wake up only to my fresh view of treetops and high-flying birds -- and be catapulted into a new life, without the sinews pulling me back to where I cannot go?
Finally --I have moved.
Gazing at this new pattern of trees in an ever-changing mix of color and light -- offers me a puzzle I don't intend to solve.
Ten years ago I photographed on a Winter Solstice in Florida and produced the image below.
After I completed this -- "Exercise in Blue and Beige"(lame joke) -- I was uneasy with the result and spent an inordinate amount of time (months, years) making another version where all the edges were merged into a seeming one-frame composition.
Is version No. 2 any "better" than this one?
After hundreds of tweaks in real-time, any judgments I might make now seem irrelevant. One reality had become something else.
Back to now -now past. The move from my old farm property was arduous --the physical and mental labor harrowing. This journey seemed endless, with the final push being 6 months of daily mucking, hauling, giving away, - - leaving. The fact that I was able to tear myself from one reality and emerge in another -- was miraculous.. or murderous, depending.
In the moving process, I uncovered artwork completed in graduate school and much earlier. Other items I vaguely remembered appeared to be lost. Hand-written letters opened up to phrases that were wonderfully familiar from dear, now-gone companions. This process of dipping my hand into the caldron of the past, barbs and all, was staggering.
A few weeks before my final leave-taking, I swept the dirt floor of the root cellar in my old house, poking at ancient cobwebs. I was disturbing decades/centuries of debris that had settled at its own pace. I was reaching back into time and could sense multiple life reviews paging forward to the present and beyond.
As I worked, I recalled a 1991 event.
On a Winter's night in 1991, I heard a commotion in my basement. ...Hark.
I pointed my shaking torch from the staircase to find that a woodchuck or some other tunneling creature had broken through old floorboards, creating a tall pile of shards. I yelled and banged - then closed the door on the scurrying sounds. A trusted friend soon poured concrete to keep such visits at bay, but the root cellar was spared this improvement. Entering through a 5' hand-planked door with a tiny irregular-cut window, this sanctuary has remained largely as it was - the huge stones of the foundation and rich soil have not changed significantly, smelling fresh and vital - nature renewing itself in mysterious ways.
And now in a new home with hollow doors and working appliances, I want piled-up artwork and possessions to disappear - to vanish into a climate-controlled vault in the sky -- just bill-me/auto-pay. I keep the door closed to my new workspace, a study in chaos.
Please - can I wake up only to my fresh view of treetops and high-flying birds -- and be catapulted into a new life, without the sinews pulling me back to where I cannot go?