thus spake the stone

the glare

there is a glare off the glass of the ordinary

it hurts

there is an ordinary hole, an absence, in each of us

 it hurts too

one shape, one sharpening, one keening of light and form might fill the other
can, and does

this hurts also

the world threw open a window

and so the crow...

the language of horses, may 26, 2014

i used to think that photographing animals or nature was a mechanistic kind of job.  one would behold the factory of the world and choose the component of the world they wanted to exert method upon.  i did not then see that it was a dance with mystery.

and i think one needs to be careful because while it is always a dance with mystery, the photographer, it seems to me, is not always aware of it.

and then in my 40th year or so i re-found wellness and myself, not in ideas, nor in words (however in both of these places too), but in the air that moved around a bird's wings, in the musk of moss on my face, and upon the mudded fur of the elder beaver hard of hearing, heavy as wet carpet and as slow as the good time of silence, moving his mute body only some feet from me. each act of the ordinary in nature is extraordinary, miraculous, beyond us in our inattentive functioning, but is the core of us inside of our attention, and of course, is the act of grace itself.

last week driving through farmland after a great many days of rain i came upon a horse at the back of the field.  it was stomping into water, over and over again, its hooves as thick as trees.  i could see no reason for what it was caught inside of, captured by the lust of its doingness, however i could feel its ecstasy, its revelry, in my chest, over and over again its heavy hooves moving the water recklessly with heft, as though the water were not water but something solid that the horse was managing to manipulate.  it seemed like such an act of spirit, and of course, of body, the horse putting its face to the currents and snorting, withdrawing and stomping some more.  i thought of a lover in his lover's lap deep in the smell of sex, intoxicated by desire and being.

i can't care if it means anything to anyone else.  it is my breath, even if not to capture it, even if i fail time and time again, even if the camera stays on the seat beside me as it did with the horse, to be in the same world as the horse without the impediment of human language, but rather deeply bruised by the language of horses, bruised so hard i am convinced, shudderingly, of being here in this moment.

***

due to a series of small events i have no ability to process and post photographs any more. this absence is an absence of myself to myself. and is curious. and so i post these words in lieu of photographs.

to be - ecstatically - with the world

i had just watched this girl and her friends climb down from the immense rock face where the lighthouse is situated, and navigate the natural and difficult structure of the shore. near the water, all three of them paused at their destination and clung for a moment to a small rock, this girl spontaneously slipping four feet or more to the craggy surf beneath them, as i sat safely on a distant rock taking photographs, pausing to gasp in disbelief at what i was witnessing and in fear as to what the outcome might be. it could easily have been to her death that she slid, such a casual and simple gesture, such as slipping, ripe with the power to break the delicate transaction we make, moment by moment, with life.

but it was only a moment later, after proving to herself that she was still alive (by climbing back up the rocks near shore), that she moved again toward where the deep water meets the rocks.

art (not that this is art, but rather that this is a statement i choose to stand by) should be some form or reflection on agony

and living too

and if living is not agony (ecstasy), a new agony is born in the place of nothingness (spiritual bereavement)

either way, we are born of agony 

and this we return to again and again, for nourishment