Equinox sensitizes me to light-dark contrasts. ‘Chiaroscuro’ (clarus: light + obscurus: dark), art’s intense shadowing (Caravaggio, Rembrandt), surfaces from deep memory while looking at stark contrasts in my email in-box: terrifying news and dire philosophies alternating with shiny announcements from a hopeful world, sprinkled with techniques for dealing with the terrifying news. Simultaneously, I’ve felt […]
Syncopated Spring
April 1, 2021 by
These times feel like a familiar beautiful tune struggling to play – but with missing pieces, interruptions. Turns out that’s what ‘syncopated’ means: all chopped up, leaving gaps (syn – together, plus kop – cut). This sense of something missing came to mean fainting, a loss of consciousness (syncope). The word drifted into language too, […]
A Different Spring
March 19, 2020 by
Never have so many plummeted, all at once, into existential dread. When I look back at this Equinox (8:50 PT tonight), I’ll be reminded of the millions caught in a pandemic – and all the lockdowns and financial craziness. I’m having flashbacks – from literary memory – of what it was like for people […]
An Expression of Pink Trees
March 19, 2017 by
I missed it. At least the camera missed it. By the time I realized I wanted to capture the glorious explosion of flowers haloing out from a stand of neighborhood trees, two days had passed and the flowers were turning gray. That was weeks ago, and now it’s a strange mercy: to keep from feeling […]
All Seasons, All the Time
March 16, 2015 by
One small white rose glowed in the sunlight, floating in a dark-green sea. I was mesmerized. This could not be. Yet there it bloomed, staring at me, laughing. This went on for days – no other flowers in the vast hedge, just this one, living its full cycle before the others even began. I wondered […]
Rosebud
March 23, 2014 by
The world blurred. Fuzzy pale-green clouds billowed around a tiny sharp object, close-up: a fierce-feeling hyper-tight bulb shape of darker green, poised on a branch. Unmoving, I felt the wave of its power wash out into the air, into me. Slow joy started responding –apprehensive and a little agog at the task looming in this […]
Re-Oriented Spring
March 19, 2013 by
Rebirth freshens the air, now from a different perspective. My mind’s eye sees Earth tilting, northern hemisphere more warmed and brightened by a fireball, itself hurtling through space at hundreds of thousands of miles per hour in a giant galaxy – a spiral of light among millions. Scoping in closer, I feel, simultaneously, the entry […]