Unexpected Illumination
Whenever day’s grown dark and grim
And life, obscured behind a scrim,
Surprisingly, the welcome light
Through colored windows seems less dim–
Though blue and red may look less bright
By day, and screen the moon by night,
What rays come through and lumens pass
These panes set inner bleakness right–
No sorrow ends its storms, alas,
Merely because the beams amass,
But something blest descends on him
Whose heart is lit by colored glass.
When I sort and edit photos, it helps if I can create categories and subcategories that will help me to find and use them after the fact. If an event or occasion is short and simple in the relative sense of such things, the name of the event or occasion itself may suffice as filing ID, but what of things like our summer road trip that encompass 5 weeks, 6000 miles, a dozen states, 2 countries, 3 music conferences, a dozen members of the immediate family, a half-dozen motels and hotels, and ever so much more?
What I tend to do is create an all-encompassing title that all photos will bear, identifying them as part of the larger expedition, and then putting them into files and sub-files that clarify the who-what-when-where-why-&-how of them. This helps me have at least a slight hope of locating any single shot or group of shots from among the multitude that remains even after I’ve culled a multitude more. It also reminds me of what things became, either because of my continuing interest in them or by natural default of recurrence on the way, thematic in the event.
Not surprising, then, that this extended road trip would have obvious and substantial files of many very familiar subjects. To be sure, there are a quantity of such old favorites of mine that any moderately frequent or attentive visitor to this blog could easily guess. Given my blog header, I can start with my fondness for rusty, rustic old things (like me, naturally), mechanical bits and industrial loveliness. There are hints in that image, as well, of my magpie adoration of all things shiny-metal, glass, water, jewels, plastic and any other thing that glints to catch my avid eye.
My many obsessions also appear in nature: flora, fauna, sea, sky and stone. If there’s a noticeable cloud formation or special kind of light I am lured to admiration of it. Insects draw me like, well, the proverbial flame-drawn moth. I’m an ignorant admirer of all sorts of vehicles that strike me as different or novel when it comes to my everyday experience, so there are always photos in my stash of cars and trucks, boats and trains, heavy equipment and the slightest, lightest personal transport other than feet. Feet, for that matter, can make perfectly entertaining objects of my camera’s affections, since people in general are also on my list, and character-full feet or quirkily clad ones or ones that by position tell a story ought to make marvelous image sources any time.
In the case of human subjects, I do have something of a restrictive love, however. When I know the subjects of my documentation, I’d usually rather be interacting with them, so often, the camera sits idle and forgotten unless I have some sort of mandate to shoot. If I don’t know the people, I am bound by respect for their privacy almost as much as by my shyness not to photograph them at all. So aside from crowd shots and unidentifiably altered distant views, I’m not likely to include too many people in my panoply of for-art photographs.
Where people congregate or what people have left behind, that’s all fodder for my imagination, though. I love buildings–the older or odder, the better–and their endless details, and whether they are homes or hospitals, offices or auditoriums, farm sheds or factories, they all have stories to tell. Ultimately, I suppose, that’s the overarching guide to my photographic peregrinations just as much as to my poetry and essays and drawing and every other expressive form of art I attempt: I am trying to discern, guess, or invent the stories behind those things I’ve seen.
There are, you know, endless stories just waiting to be told.
Her Bones are Glass
Her bones are glass; the diamonds in her eyes
Now shining dust, yet still and otherwise,
Though time says that she must, she still decries
The need, opposes it by effort, will
And awful grief and rage at what would kill
Her body, spirit, mind and heart, until
She mounts the ridges of that final hill,
‘Til battle’s over and the victory won;
So while she harries them, Age sets her sun
A-fade, Time lets her hourglass empty run,
Approach the space where sleep and she are one;
The sands thin silently, passing to less-
Than-empty, right to utter nothingness,
In view but fading, to her pale distress,
Her winding-sheet already worn for dress,
‘Til battle’s over and the victory won;
Comfort she needs, yet I can offer none
‘Til battle’s over and her victory won.
Miss Magpie here, reporting for duty. I have been out and about doing errands and chores, being an everyday sort of person in my everyday sort of way, but as always, I am in a constant state of watchfulness, snapping to attention at the slightest glimmer of a sun-ray zinging off the corner of the windscreen, the flicker of movement that snags my eye (ouch!) on a brilliant yellow weed wildflower (and yes, Steve, it was tiny but beautiful), the broad gleam of a hawk’s white underside lighting up like a beacon as he banks away from the sun over our ravine.
Some things, like this golden gilt cockerel weathervane, are clearly made to dazzle us . . .
While I harbor my exceedingly childlike admiration for the wonderful works of intentional glamor and glitz without any hesitation, I am all the more moved by those things that through their very nature or some moment of perfect serendipity become jeweled treasures to be savored every bit as deeply and wildly. The crinkled aluminum foil from last week’s roast (seen here) becomes in my eyes a stolen bit from the vault of the Crown Jewels; the bottom of an empty jar and its creased shadow on rough concrete is transformed into an alchemist’s beaker bearing a mystical, nearly invisible elixir for eternal romance.
One sip, and I am transformed into an otherworldly being . . .
Even the most mundane of things can–and should–be able to become beautiful to one with a practiced magpie eye. Thankfully, those around me have patience while I crouch at the curb picking up bits of broken glass and shreds of steel that have fallen off of passing vehicles (probably spaceships, to be sure), while I lag behind on a walk to pick up opalescent beetle-wing shields and bent pins and uselessly blunted coins. And the smallest scrap of Japanese tea-chest paper or damaged disposable pie tin or leftover curling ribbon, the parts from a broken watch, keys and candy-wrappers and bits of metallic thread–these have no need of monetary weight, if they can spur the heart to visit places it’s not gone before.
The value of shiny and golden things is not always intrinsic but arises from what can be imagined about them, dreamed about them, hoped . . .
How does the mind conceive of things that defy logic--and then proceed to make them real?
Glass Passages
Strange enough that someone saw at hand,
amid a million million grains of sand,
the only water truly born of fire–
that clarity, deep brilliant light and flow,
refractory and sharp and sweet, desire
that stops in time complete and whole, as though
to freeze all thought and memory and time–
and then took flame to capture its sublime
pure rectitude and stillness; who could know
the alchemy that could and would be wrought
by taming elements to strengthen, stain
and shape anew the crystal, blazing hot
sand silicates and yet somehow retain
such potency, such power that a strand
of history would through it then be drawn
to tell the stories, made so much more grand
in glass by tying evening back to dawn,
and in the light transmitted through that glass,
commemorate the ages as they pass.
Even in the perception of what Is, if it's a discovery of the strange inherent beauty and potential of it, there can be art . . .
From the glorious inferno, a supercooled liquid . . .
Glass Passages
Strange enough that someone saw at hand,
amid a million million grains of sand,
the only water truly born of fire–
that clarity, deep brilliant light and flow,
refractory and sharp and sweet, desire
that stops in time complete and whole, as though
to freeze all thought and memory and time–
and then took flame to capture its sublime
pure rectitude and stillness; who could know
the alchemy that could and would be wrought
by taming elements to strengthen, stain
and shape anew the crystal, blazing hot
sand silicates and yet somehow retain
such potency, such power that a strand
of history would through it then be drawn
to tell the stories, made so much more grand
in glass by tying evening back to dawn,
and in the light transmitted through that glass,
commemorate the ages as they pass.
Sources of inspiration can appear even in places where simple and ordinary beings are able to find them. Sometimes it just takes a particular window--or even a mirror--to make it possible . . .
Art-Colored Glasses 