BeautyDialogues

Yellow

The blaze of yellow
Vincent
mistook for God
reveals again
its sacred name.

~ David Whyte, from "The Painter's Hand"

Happy Solstice!

It's Summer Solstice in the northern hemisphere today, the sun comes full circle and begins its cycle anew. I'm off celebrating among redwoods in the Santa Cruz mountains, enjoying my yearly ritual with friends old and new.

I'll no doubt have lots of stories to share when I return, but I wanted to have something here to greet you on this day. So I found this great photo on Flickr (God, I love Flickr!), taken by "Simon & Vicki": Greeting the dawn at last year's Solstice celebration in the great circles of Stonehenge.

Lovely, isn't it?

American Beauty Dialogue

I was watching American Beauty last night and found myself once again mesmerized by that perfect scene where the young videographer-next-door shows his new love the "most beautiful thing" he's ever seen... footage of a plastic bag whirling in the wind, dancing with a pile of leaves.

Apparently it was this very image, which he experienced in real life, that inspired Alan Ball to write the screenplay, and Ball's words, Rick telling Janey about shooting the scene, carry the sensation:

"It was one of those days, when it's a minute away from snowing. And there was this electricity in the air. You could almost hear it. And this bag was just ... dancing ... with me. Like a little kid, begging me to play with it. For fifteen minutes. That was the day when I realized that there was this ... entire life ... behind things. And this incredibly benevolent force who wanted me to know that there was no reason to be afraid. Ever.

Sometimes there is so much ... beauty ... in the world. It's like I can't take it. And my heart is just going to cave in."

The sensibility that went on to provide us with five seasons of Six Feet Under (probably one of the most profound treatises on death American popular culture has ever produced) ends his debut film script with an echo of this moment in a voice-over from Janey's dead father Lester, who's just been shot:

"I guess I could be pretty pissed off about what happened to me. But it's hard to stay mad when there's so much beauty in the world. Sometimes I feel like I'm seeing it all at once and it's too much. My heart fills up like a balloon that's about to burst. And then I remember to relax, and stop trying to hold on to it. And then it flows through me, like rain. And I can't feel anything but gratitude."

I'm struck by the experience Ball describes twice in his film - of expanding with emotion, almost to the point of collapse - juxtaposed with this ephemeral image, which is repeated in the dying father's visual sequence as well.

It's like he's trying to make visible, audible, the sheer, unpredictable, and almost-impossible-to-bear beauty at the very heart of life.

My Friend Fletcher

My friend Fletcher (has a nice ring to it, doesn't it?) started blogging again after several months of hiatus (or neglect, take your pick); check out the new Fletcher's Blog. Fletcher's a digital artist with a keen eye for the bizarre and the wonderful and I think you'll enjoy his work, especially if you're partial to street photography and astute political commentary.

Here's one of my favorites from his Carnaval photo shoot:

Annie

What stays with me from Annie Leibovitz' photographic exhibit (and the book it illustrates: A Photographer's Life: 1990-2005) is her decision to integrate her personal and professional photography into a seamless whole. As she says, "it is one life, not two".

Perhaps being married to Susan Sontag and having close personal ties with many famous people has helped blur her line between intimate and public, but I think it is more to do with the level of her gaze, that seems to see pretty much everything with the same measure. There were many stunning portraits among her collection, but the ones that stood out for me were the ones where it seemed her subjects met this gaze head-on. Here are Annie's photographs of Mark Morris, Eudora Welty and Sarah Cameron Leibovitz, to show you what I mean:

Lily

Most commonly an image is used to illustrate text, but in this case I think the image is the main event, and anything I could write would be secondary (click on it to see a larger version).

Is it speaking to you too? What do you hear?

Blessings

For those who know and love John O'Donohue, a blessing has arrived to help ease the shock and grief of his recent loss. His posthumous To Bless the Space Between Us: A Book of Blessings has been released.

It is a slim volume of his graceful voice offering its blessing upon the world and all things within it. Birthdays, death, marriage, exile, addiction - nothing is too joyous or too sad to receive a blessing from O'Donohue, patron saint of beauty and kindness.

Here is his blessing for the Artist at the Start of Day (and here's one from me):

May morning be astir with the harvest of night;
Your mind quickening to the eros of a new question,
Your eyes seduced by some unintended glimpse
That cut right through the surface to a source.

May this be a morning of innocent beginning,
When the gift within you slips clear
Of the sticky web of the personal
With its hurts and its hauntings,
And fixed fortress corners.

A  morning when you become a pure vessel
For what wants to ascend from silence,

May your imagination know
The grace of perfect danger,

To reach beyond imitation,
And the wheel of repetition,

Deep into the call of all
The unfinished and unsolved

Until the veil of the unknown yields
And something original begins
To stir toward your senses
And grow stronger in your heart

In order to come to birth
In a clean line of form,
That claims from time
A rhythm not yet heard,
That calls space to
A different shape.

May it be its own force field
And dwell uniquely
Between the heart and the light

To surprise the hungry eye
By how deftly it fits
About its secret loss.

Link to Flickr

Ok! I finally got my desert photos up online! Here's a taster, but check out the rest on Flickr:

www.flickr.com

Desert Beauty

The desert is a delicate animal at this time of year. Like a snake shedding its skin it’s fragile, vulnerable, in a state of emergence.

If I were making a list of the 100 things I want to do before I die, visiting the desert in bloom would certainly be among them. 

So when my friend Bridget mentioned that she goes to Anza Borrego every year around this time and suggested I might want to come with her and photograph the beauty, I jumped at the chance (Bridget is an exceptionally talented green architect and landscape designer and also a client of mine – look for an announcement of her site and blog at bridgetbrewer.com soon)!

Ode to Light

If you were reading the Beauty Dialogues last year, you might remember I have a ‘thing’ for the lights of this season, and as the cycle returns I find the love affair has lost one of its brilliance.

Every night I turn on the LED lights that frame my front window and sit happily looking at my twinkling, forest-smelling tree. I faithfully lit the Hanukkah candles each night for the ritual 8 nights even though my mother isn’t Jewish and I don’t know the music or words for the proper prayers.

As deeply as I enjoy these personal pleasures of lucidity, something new dawned on me the other day during walk at dusk. I was looking at all the glittering trees and strings of light in my neighbors’ windows and suddenly it stuck me as very profound that we decorate the OUTSIDES of our houses, and place our trees in the window so that others can enjoy them.

On one level, I thought, perhaps these lights are a way to signal and inspire each other with our knowing that the light will return, a collective celebration of gratitude for the beauty and power of light.