The Sacred
In Things, Places & Photographs
Recent Thing & Meadow Photographs
July - September, 2022
Introduction
I began making Thing Photographs in the early 1980's after I read Robert Bly's excellent book News of the Universe, poems of twofold consciousness. Looking intensely, closely at a thing, acknowledging its presence, putting the thing at the very center of my attention--and often in the center of the picture's frame--has been a continual, conscious photographic preoccupation of mine since the mid-1980's. Thing Photographs are one of the ways I keep myself aware of the divine creative energy which pervades every Thing in the created world, including (according to the yogic teachings) every Human Heart. In this regard, a Thing Photograph, in a certain way, is a Self portrait, a revelation of what, in the Siddha Yoga Path that I practice, is referred to as the Universal Soul, or Universal Consciousness, the inner most divine Self of all.
Bly is clearly in sympathy with this yogic world view as the title of his book suggests. He collected poetry, from all cultures around the globe to illustrate the various stages of the evolution of Human Consciousness and its changing relationship to the natural world. Through his careful selection of poems within each of the book's thematic sections and their chapters, and Bly's excellent pithy introductions to each, he gives a poetic voice and insightful understanding to the various stages of consciousness that have unfolded throughout recorded history.
I was particularly excited by his chapter devoted to the "Object Poem" and the "thing" poets he discusses, including Rainer Maria Rilke and Francis Ponge. Also, in this chapter he presented and commented on an aphorism by an 18th century German poet who wrote under the pen name Novalis:
The seat of the soul is where the inner world
and the outer world meet. Where they over-
lap, it is in every point of the overlap.
Novalis
For Bly, a well known American poet, it becomes clear that the soul is an essential theme that needs to be addressed in any discussion having to do with the human-nature relationship. Interestingly, Bly devotes the last part of his book to poems that deal directly with nature through the transcendent vision of the poet-saints from many traditions, including works by Rumi, Kabir and Mirabi, poets often cited in the Siddha Yoga teachings. (In my Epilogue to this project I have written more about Rumi and his poetry.)
I did not know about Siddha Yoga when I first read Robert Bly's book in 1982. Five years later, in 1987 I met the great Siddha or yogic saint, Gurumayi Chidvilasananda who not only taught about the Universal Soul and the divine Consciousness which pervades all created things, she also was graced with the ability to give receptive individuals who came to meet her an actual experience of her state, her shakti, her union with the inner Self of all.
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Francis Ponge, a French poet who wrote prose poems about "the things of the silent world," was highly regarded by Robert Bly. Ponge wrote a poem entitled Le Pre' (The Meadow), and years later he also published a book about The Making of Le Pre' both of which have been a major influence on my 14 year continuing photography project The Meadow. Ponge has been called the poet "who takes the side of things" and "gives voice" to the things of the "silent world." Thanks in part to his poem Le Pre' and my continued practice of Siddha Yoga, I feel a special sense of gratitude for what feels like a blessed gift to have been able to live for the past fourteen years on the edge of a beautiful meadow, with its two ponds and the wonderful tapering woods that runs along its westside border.
(Besides my project The Meadow I invite you to see my most recently completed project Meadow-Window Photographs to learn more details about the Meadow directly behind our house and and which interfaces our back yard.)
Over the years, my relationship to the Meadow has deepened in a very beautiful, unexpected way. Indeed, I have come to see and experience the Meadow as a sacred Thing, a sacred space, a "sacred Place." (I will elaborate on "the Sacred" and "sacred Place" later, in my Epilogue)
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Before Gloria and I moved to Canandaigua, NY in 2008 (after living and working and raising two kids in Milwaukee, Wisconsin 33 years) we would drive from Milwaukee to Rochester, NY at least once a year to visit Gloria's parents. Each time we drove through the Buffalo-Niagara area of Western New York on our way to Rochester I always noticed how different and very special the skies were in that area. They seemed very close to the earth, as if drawn downward by some invisible attraction. I thought perhaps this special quality of space had something to do with Niagara Falls and the atmospheric mists generated by the falls. (Visit my Niagara Falls project Falling Water.) However, when we moved to Canandaigua, I experienced this same sensation of closeness between the Meadow we lived next to and the space and the light directly above the Meadow. That space seems filled to overflowing with a feeling of sacred presence. And the feeling has grown more and more palpable over the fourteen years we have lived here.
The grace that pervades the Meadow, the sky and the light above it, seems to flow continually into our house, its full basement and the attached garage through their many windows and permeate the objects and spaces within. The light that illuminates some of my most meaningful photographs made inside our house over the past few years* seem charged with the Meadow's sacred presence, and that presence seems to embody the picture's space as well, transforming the images from serving merely as representations of outer appearances into images that function for me as True, living Symbols.
(*Note: If you are familiar with my work, you will already know that since May of 2020 I have been nearly continuously working on a series of projects entitled The Pandemic Inspired Photograph Projects which consists of images of the things and spaces inside my house, and images of the Meadow. ~ When I wrote about the sacredness of the light that flows into our house from the skies over the Meadow, I should have also included "the light from the night skies." See my my project entitled Nocturne.)
True Symbolic Photographs are visual images radiant with grace, the creative power of the universe, and it is this sacred energy within the images of things and places which invokes in me the experience of the Sacred, the divine Self, the Oneness of Being.
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Of the 29 photographs in this project the last three are devoted to the Meadow itself, and 7 of my Thing photographs include a visual presence of the Meadow within the picture's frame. There are also several "window-thing pictures." See my most recently completed project entitled Meadow-Window Photographs. That Meadow-Window project helped me become more conscious of the impact the Meadow has been within my creative process especially in recent years, during the Pandemic. And thanks to another of my recent projects, Nocturne I have found in this project a renewed pleasure in photographing in the gentle glow of early morning twilight, before the sun flashes forth over the Meadow.
I have placed the photographs in this project into eight sub-titled sections according to the time-of-day, the light and the place in which each of the photographs were made. Two of the sections make reference to the "twilight of morning" and the "twilight of evening." In my Afterword to this project I have elaborated upon the concept "twilight."
I also want to draw attention to the "captions" I have included under each image. Each caption begins with the section's sub-title and then it continues with additional descriptive information about what is in the photograph. I'm not quite sure why I felt compelled to do this. The captions seem to create an interesting text-image tension for me, perhaps because most of the photographs are noticeably "poetic," atmospheric or intimate rather than descriptive.
Truly speaking, my photographs are only meaningful to me to the extent that grace has made its way into my creative process and has illuminated the things and spaces I have photographed. In general my experience of the photographs, when they are functioning for me as True, living symbols, is that their "meaning" have no adequate verbal equivalents. If an image has a numinous presence, a sense of mystery, an attraction that cannot be adequately expressed in words, I am completely satisfied with this kind of response, and indeed it motivates me to seek deeper levels of meaning in my experience of the image through a process of contemplation. Ultimately, True living symbols are open-ended in meaning, and they are the visual embodiment of the Universal Soul, the Oneness of Being, that realm of meaning associated with the Heart rather than the intellect, mind and human language--all of which are limited in their ability to move beyond meanings based in dualism.
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After my presentation of the photographs, below, I have included an Afterword in which I have written briefly on three themes: 1) Twilight, 2) The Seat of the Soul and the Symbolic Photograph, and 3) Henry Corbin's Imaginal World. Then there is a section devoted to commentaries I have written on several selected images. Then I conclude the project with an Epilogue. ~ Welcome to the project.
The
Photographs
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I. Early Morning Twilight
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1. Early Morning Twilight : A line of raindrops, in the form of a soaring bird, on our misted picture window.
The meadow's presence is represented by the wavy horizon line of tree tops seen in the background
2. Early Morning Twilight : An unidentified red form outside the rain-covered window nearest our back deck
(Note: This image, and the one above, was first published in the project Window-Meadow Photographs.)
3. Early Morning Twilight : A bush in the north meadow near the large pond in the early morning fog
4. Early Morning Twilight : Two red tomatoes (from our back yard garden) ripening on the inside sill of our picture window.
5. Early Morning Twilight : Reflection of a small box of tissues in the picture window, backyard cloths line, raised bed & apple tree
The east edge of the meadow that interfaces our back yard is visible in the top right section of the photograph.
6. Early Morning Twilight : A framed photograph
8. Early Morning Twilight : A large hand painted ceramic bowl; a smaller bowl of bananas and tomatoes in the background
9. Early Morning Twilight : A glass bowl, four peaches, one melon on the granite kitchen counter
9. Early Morning Twilight : Toilet paper roll
10. Early Morning Twilight : A small cardboard box sitting on our granite kitchen counter;
a bowl of tomatoes is in the background
Early Morning Twilight
II. Basement
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11. Early Morning Twilight, Basement : A curved piece of paper laying on the ping pong table
12. Early Morning Twilight, Basement : Evacuate pipes for the newly installed sump pump
Early Morning Twilight
III. Garage
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13. Early Morning Twilight, Garage : Hanging plastic bottles bound together with twine
14. Early Morning Twilight, Garage : The wire, curved and bent
Early Morning Sunlight
IV. Garage
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15. Early Morning Sunlight projected onto a wall from a curtained garage window,
plus a hanging garden hat & its shadow
Early Morning Sunlight
V. Main floor
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16. Early Morning Sunlight on the curtain behind a small still life : Vase with dried poppy seed stems
17. Early Morning Sunlight on the laundry room floor with Mr. Blue's front legs , shadow of his ears & chair legs
18. Early Morning Sunlight : Houseplant shadows on a wooden table top
VI. Early Morning Light
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19. Early Morning Light from the picture window : Kitchen towels hanging on the oven handle
20. Early Morning Light after the morning fog began to lift : Two tears on the picture window over ripening tomatoes
21. Early Morning Light after the morning fog lifted
Box of tissues on top of a square wooden table near the picture window with the meadow and woods in the background
22. Early Morning, overcast sky above the north meadow, pond and woods
Large bowl of little tomatoes on the square wooden table near the picture window
23. Early Morning light : Two bowls of tomatoes by the picture window with a reflection of an illuminated lamp
(the smaller bowl on the left contains our first large tomato)
24. Early Morning light : Deck hanger attached to our deck railing & reflections of kitchen ceiling lights in the picture window
I saw this image while doing my early morning exercises on the floor in front of the picture window
VII. Late Afternoon Sunlight
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25. Late afternoon sunlight : Ripening tomatoes on the picture window sill with the window shade pulled down
26. Late afternoon sunlight on the microwave door
VIII. The Meadow, Evening Twilight
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27. Evening Twilight : The setting sun behind the woods' horizon line;
the illuminated clouds are being reflected in the south pond in the invisible meadow
28. Evening Twilight : The setting sun skimming the underside of dark clouds over the north meadow & pond
Afterword
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~ Twilight ~
Twilight : That ineffable, mysterious world of soft illumination that manifests between day and night. It is the light which precedes sunrise, that turning point moment just before the sun ascends above the eastern horizon . . . and the light which follows sunset, that turning point moment just after the sun has descended below the western horizon.
The "horizon" is different everywhere in the world; in the photographs you have seen in this project the horizon consists of the top of the trees within the tapering woods that runs (north and south) along the full length of the Meadow's most distant, western border. The woods appears to get smaller and smaller until it dissolves at the Meadow's north and south ends. The tops of the trees, silhouetted against the lighter tones of the sky above them, form a wavy horizon line (as in Images #1 & #2).
The Meadow's eastern border interfaces our back yard and the back yards of the 39 other properties of our "Meadow Community." These property lines make a series of snake-like twists and turns along the eastern border of the Meadow thereby providing each of our picture windows looking out over the Meadow with a surprisingly different view its ever changing tapestry of textures and colors, its two ponds, and the woods. ~ We share equally in the ownership of the Meadow and the responsibility for taking care of it. And the Meadow is protected by New York State Watershed laws, plus we abide by certain guidelines established by our HOA and the state of New York. ~ I think most of us who live in this community have chosen to live here because of the Meadow. I personally have never before seen such a beautiful natural setting for a community like the one we live in.
The Seat of the Soul
and
The Symbolic Photograph
The seat of the soul is where the inner world
and the outer world meet. Where they over-
lap, it is in every point of the overlap.
Novalis
When I first read this simple, beautiful statement in Robert Bly's book News of the Universe in 1982 it affirmed for me an idea that I had felt strongly about and had written about ten years earlier when I was in graduate school at the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque. The Art Department required a written thesis for all MFA candidates in its Photography Program, and my paper, entitled The Symbolic Photograph, A Means to Self-Knowledge was essentially about photographs that conjoined images of the outer-world with their corresponding inner-world psychic-image counterparts through the intuitive or creative unconscious perceptual phenomenon known as synchronicity.
(Note: fifteen years later, after I met Gurumayi I began to attribute the experience of synchronicity to the grace of my creative process rather than intuition or what Jungians called the "creative unconscious.")
My MFA thesis was based on several ideas that CG Jung had developed over his career as the founder of what has come to be known as depth-psychology. His profoundly revelatory ideas about the unconscious psyche, symbols, archetypes, medieval alchemy*, and the modern day theory of synchronicity continue to be relevant to me today. Jung's ideas are closely aligned with the teachings I later became familiar with in 1987 when I met Gurumayi Chivilasananda and began practicing Siddha Yoga, her teachings and those by Swami Muktananda, her beloved teacher.
(*Note: the alchemical aphorism "As above, so below" is very similar to the aphorism of Novalis, which invokes the terms "inner world" [i.e., above-heaven] and "outer world" [i.e., below-earth]. See my project As Above, So Below.)
After I experienced Gurumayi's grace my practice of photography and my practice of yoga reinforced each other and then gradually merged into each other. My photography has helped me in my contemplations of the yogic teachings, and my understanding of the yogic teachings has helped me experience the True meaning of those photographs which function for me as symbols, images alive with the grace of my creative process. I consider images which function for me as True symbols the visual embodiment of Novalis's aphorism regarding the soul, "where the inner world and the outer world meet." In Siddha Yoga the soul is often referred to as the Universal Soul, or the inner divine Self, or the Oneness of Being.
The term Self-Knowledge, which I used in my thesis title, belonged to Jung's world view and writings. His definition of the Self, I learned later, was very close to the yogic use of the word Self, or God. Knowledge of the divine Self is a kind of knowing that transcends the human mind's inherent dualism, in particular the ego which divides True reality into inner (psychic) and outer (physical) forms.
Swami Muktananda wrote a book, a spiritual autobiography, about his inner journey to union with God entitled The Play of Consciousness, which provides a detailed description of his experiences leading up to and including his final realization, his merging with God. He writes that Self-realized beings see, understand and continually experience . . .
. . . the entire world as the Self. This knowledge, which reveals itself from within, allows one to perceive the whole universe, animate and inanimate, in the light of the Self. Outside and inside is perceived as only one Shakti. The sense of differences, of separation, of individuality is dissolved. Only the Self exists. (Excerpts from his chapter "The Secret of Renunciation.")
Muktananda's teacher, Bhagawan Nityananda taught similarly:
This universe is infinite and it is your own Self. See the world
as a form of the inner Self. The world is not separate from
you and you are not separate from the world. This is
Vedanta, this is devotion, and this is worship.
Dwelling right within you is your own Lord.
(from Swami Muktananda's book Bhagawan Nityanada of Ganeshpuri)
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Henry Corbin's
Imaginal World
I have discovered only one other author who has impacted my understanding of the idea of the True, living Symbol and the Oneness of Being since meeting Gurumayi and studying the Siddha Yoga teachings. Henry Corbin knew Jung personally and they were very much aware of each other's unfolding research. Like Jung, Corbin was more than a scholar. They both wrote from their own deeply personal experiences as well as their in-depth scholarly studies within their own particular fields.
I love Corbin's work, but his writing can be challenging at times to grasp. To prepare for reading Corbin, I found it was essential for me to first read Tom Cheetham's four books about Corbin and Corbin's ideas. I will conclude this Afterword with an excerpt from Cheetham's book Green Man, Earth Angel. Once I understood Cheetham and Corbin's world view of the spiritual realm of Angels I realized I became more comfortable in speaking of an angelic presence in relation to my experience of the Meadow, and I have done so, briefly below, in one of my commentaries. (Please visit my multi-chaptered photography project The Angels which includes a page of quotations about Angels from Corbin's books and Chetham's books.)
The sacred, Angelic nature of the Meadow relates directly to Henry Corbin and Tom Cheetham's ideas of an Earth Angel, and the "light" of Twilight, and the "light" of grace, the light that pervades the space hovering closely above the Meadow, the sacred effulgence of Angels and the radiance of True, living symbols. All these various forms of transcendent, transformative illumination are aspects of an ineffable, unknowable kind of sacred Knowledge that Corbin says exists in a world "between sensation and the intellect." Corbin named the source of that "light," that "knowledge" of in-between-ness "the Imaginal world." In the yoga that I practice, it might be called the "Light" or "Knowledge" of "the Heart."
The great yogic sages have taught about this in-between reality for ages in relation to the practice of meditation. They continue to teach today that focusing on the space between the in-breath and the out-breath can lead one to the goal of yoga; that the seat of the Supreme Soul, the divine Self, exists in the space of perfect stillness, the space of perfect silence that exists between the two breaths, at that turning point in which the in-breath turns into the out-breath; and at that turning point in which the out-breath turns into the in-breath.
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I will conclude my Afterword with the quote from Tom Cheetham's book Green Man, Earth Angel:
In order to experience the Earth as an Angel, to hear the voices of beings calling to us in the twilight, to encounter another person in any sense at all, we have to be able to perceive . . . the Presence at the summit from which they all descend. All of us, however dimly, perceive events in the Imaginal world,* and the task of transformation requires the development of the senses that open into that world.
(*Note: Corbin does not want his readers to confuse "the Imaginal world" with the what we usually think of as imagination. They are, he says, two distinctly different "worlds." Corbin wrote that the Imaginal world is the source of True, living Symbols, and that the symbol is one of the means to gaining access into the Imaginal world, the realm of the Oneness of Being, the realm of the divine inner Self.)
Commentary
~ on selected project images ~
This Meadow image, which concludes the project's sequence of photographs, fascinates me the way the two similar shapes in the sky look like eyes, one blue (an opening in the clouds) and the other golden, from a shaft of the warm light from the setting sun projected upwards onto the underside of the clouds above the north pond, which in its slight tonal difference can serve as a mouth to help fill out the face of this "Angel." In certain fleeting moments of my experience of the Meadow, those moments when it seems so alive with what Henry Corbin would say is an Angelic presence, I have sometimes seen the two ponds in the meadow (when the light is just right) as "eyes" illuminated with consciousness, eyes which are looking at me.
I think, in this particular image, you may be able to get a sense of how the sky above the Meadow looks and feels--to me: as if it is being drawn close to its sacred ground, perhaps by some creative energy that likes to conjoin divided things into one. The image below, which I have borrowed from my project The Meadow, has (for me) both that Angelic feeling and the feeling of the sky being drawn close to the earth (the Meadow):
This is love : to fly toward a secret sky,
to cause a hundred veils to fall each moment.
--Rumi
(What would a photograph look like that depicted the Earth and the Sky merging into each other?)
(See my collection of symmetrical meadow photographs.)
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Image #14. Early Morning Twilight, Garage : The wire, curved and bent
When I made this photograph I remembered the great jazz performer and composer Steve Lacy. In the late 1970's I made a series of photographs in homage to this gentle man who made intense, deeply creative music on his soprano saxophone. I loved above all his solo performances. I purchased an early solo album in the 1970's in which he performed his composition entitled The Wire. The white strip on the right edge of this photograph reminds me, in the way the white tone turns gray, of the way he would stretch sounds during his solo performances in order to create aural images of the things to which he was making music about . . . things to which, like Ponge, he was "giving a voice." (See my project The Steve Lacy Series)
The apparent simplicity of this image reminded me of a poem by William Stafford. I associate Lacy's sound to the poem's "wind." By the way, Lacy wrote another piece which he entitled The Tao ("the Way").
straw, feathers, dust--
little things
but they they all go one way,
that's the way the wind goes.
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I have made many photographs of rolls of tissue paper since the early 1980's when I caught fire with the idea of Thing Photographs after reading News of the Universe. I do not know why I have been so attracted to rolls of toilet paper, but I can tell you this: the image above is a good representation of what I saw and felt when I took the photograph recently with my camera. The soft, textured gray form appeared just barely present physically, suspended in dark space, but the form nonetheless presented itself to me with a palpable presence.
(Note: this image looks best when you click on it so that it is seen in a black viewing space (if your viewing device permits such a procedure). And when this image is viewed magnified, the texture in the paper becomes its own simple visual pleasure as well.)
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The "thing" in this rather odd Thing Photograph is the reflection of a square box of tissues. I have placed the reflection squarely in the center of the picture's frame between the weeping crab apple tree, the tilting cloths line pole, and one of our raised garden beds. All of our back yard seems askew though I am looking directly at the reflection. I attribute this lack of levelness in the image to the oblique angle from which I photographed the reflection on the inside surface of our picture window. Also, I believe the oblique angle of view is impacted by its "arial" perspective. Our picture window is about 12 feet above our back yard. ~ I like the tension created by the way all these factors have come together within the picture.
If you look closely, beyond the raised bed in the upper right corner of the picture frame, you will be able to see a little bit of the Meadow, where it interfaces our back yard. (My project Window-Meadow Photographs includes several other photographs of our back yard and and the way it interfaces the Meadow.)
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This is the box of tissues that was reflected in the image I wrote about above. The image is a most satisfying composition of hard lines and soft spaces, geometry in alignment with organic red shapes and light softened by mist on the picture window. ~ Behind the tissue sticking up out of the box, echoing the tops of the trees in the woods bordering the Meadow, there is on the left side of the darker diagonally leaning shape a reflection of the tissues. The reflection of the tissues in the picture window conjoins with the actual tissues on the lower left side of the leaning diagonal line just above the illuminated top edge of the box. It's a fascinating space, where substance and reflection conjoin and adds an animated life to the central space of the photograph. ~ Below the highlighted top of the box I can see a design pattern dancing in the shadowed front side of the box. ~ At the bottom of the picture frame there is another conjunction that draws my attention. There is a darker tone that extends below the side of the box, and past the "horizon line" which is part of the wooden table, a grooved line etched into its top surface.
There is a pleasure for me in writing what I am seeing in a photograph. I see more . . . but I have written enough. The light, for example, how it pours and glows over the edge of the horizon line of the woods; the horizon line of the back edge of the table top conversing with the horizon line of the bottom of the picture window; the triangle of light on the top right edge of the glass covering the taller table to the left of the box . . .
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This photograph was first published in my project, Window-Meadow Photographs. The red glowing form behind the fog-misted window (the smaller window, nearest to our back deck, just to the right of the picture window) surprised me when I first encountered it in the early morning pre-dawn light. The day before, I had hung our very first (red) humming bird feeder from a metal rod with a hook at its top that I clamped to the back deck's railing near the window (see image #24). I had completely forgotten about the bird feeder until I unexpectedly came upon the "UFO" behind the misted window.
(A few days later we took the feeder down because it did not succeed in attracting humming birds. Perhaps I had placed it too close to the window. Since then, as our tomatoes have begun to turn red as they ripen on the picture window's sill, we have seen several humming birds looking through the picture window at the red round things.)
The presence of the soft red form in this photograph is quite strong, and I enjoy seeing it against the Meadow space which has been reduced to a nearly black spatial void behind the window's mist-covered surface. The wavy horizon line of the tree tops that run along the far side of the Meadow can just barely be seen against the slightly lighter tone of the pre-dawn sky. The wood's subtle presence in this picture is enough to define for me the sacred Meadow space that lies between the woods in the distance and the outside surface of the window's glass.
I have used the word presence in this project quite often. My Thing photographs are usually about presence, an invisible and yet living sense of consciousness that exists in the things and the spaces around them. It's difficult to say much about presence because the sacred can only be felt and known intuitively, in a way that words cannot touch. The feeling originates within the heart, the origin of all created things. When we experience presence we are experiencing the most intimate thing within our own Being. ~ Only absorption in those images that function for me as True, living symbols can help me get to a symbol's deepest if ineffable meaning, and this absorption is possible through a process known as contemplation. It's a meditative process which allows me to experience an image from its inside rather than with the intellect. (See this link Contemplation to learn about the process of contemplating photographs. It also defines the difference between "commentary" and "contemplation.")
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25. Late afternoon sunlight : Ripening tomatoes on the picture window sill
There are seven photographs in this project which includes tomatoes and each is presented in the sequence in the order in which it was made. Image #4, the first image in the sequence, presents a small glass bowl containing our first two small longish tomatoes that had been picked and placed on the picture window's sill to ripen. ~ Image #23, the next to last tomato photograph in the sequence, presents two large bowls of tomatoes, celebrating the proliferation of our crop and recognizing our first large Brandy Wine tomato of the season. Image #25, the last of the six tomato photographs (above) presents the tomatoes ripening on the window sill being flooded with the clear light of the late afternoon sunlight. The image celebrates that light which makes tomatoes and most all other living things grow to fruition.
(There seems to be no end to the number of tomatoes we get each summer. Gloria chose and purchased the young tomato plants in early spring from local garden centers and a few mail order places she likes; and she placed them by the picture window to get as much warm sunlight as possible; then she watered them with lots of love and blessings. (See my related project Growing Light.) I helped her place the plants in our raised beds, and I helped with watering them outside almost daily. When Gloria started picking the tomatoes she placed them on the picture window sill to ripen. [Our cat Mr. Blue tries to walk on the window sill covered with tomatoes but finds it nearly impossible.] Gloria has begun to cook the tomatoes down, grind them up and but them in jars and freeze them for later use and as gifts for loved ones when occasions arise. She fears there will not be enough tomatoes this year despite all her efforts because of climate change and the strange weather that began this year's growing season and currently turned cool and too rainy.)
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16. Early Morning Sunlight on the curtain behind a small still life : Vase with dried poppy seed stems
Many of the "still life" photographs I have made around our house are to varying degrees based on Gloria's initial arrangements. She is often the one who creates the events I eventually end up photographing, as in the image above. She puts her beloved things together as acts of love. In this image it seems as if the light is dancing behind her arrangement in full and loving celebration of her love. Even the green behind the curtain pulsates with a kind of happiness or enthusiasm.
I have watched Gloria make some of her arrangements on our many little tables, like the image above, or wherever space permits in our house. As she proceeds it appears as if she enters into something like a state of meditation. The final results, in a way, are the manifestations of the grace she has allowed to take over the creations of the compositions. If I fail in allowing grace to create an articulate photograph of her arrangements, I cannot allow myself to present that image in my blog projects.
Swami Muktananda taught that we practice Siddha yoga, we mediate, in order to experience and understand that it is the shakti that is the creative power of the universe. Shakti is often referred to as "universal Consciousness" which is another name for the divine Consciousness that appears as the universe. Muktananda wrote:
This Consciousness is an independent power that
makes the world appear full of differences . . .
It makes the One appear as many
and the many as One.
Similarly Muktananda writes that
God reveals Himself in millions of forms.
Even though He is free, He assumes a body.
Though He is the giver of all, He takes on the form of a beggar.
(All quotes are from Bhagawan Nityananda of Ganeshpuri)
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I sometimes move things around before I make a photograph when it feels there is a need to do so. One of the photographers I admired most, Fredrick Sommer, made fascinating Thing Photographs, often of neglected things he found laying around in his environment. But sometimes he would bring things home with him and place them into arrangements of his own, along with other things he had found. ~ He was asked about this, about photographing things he had tampered with upon finding them, or about putting things together himself with the intention of making a photograph; and he said something like this: if your actions are performed with a natural sense of spontaneity, if you become as if a creative force of nature in your actions, then it's perfectly OK to make photographs in that way.
(Note: I have found that if my mind or the intellect gets too involved in the creative process, the True creative process can get corrupted by the ego or the intellect.)
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22. Early Morning, overcast sky above the north meadow, pond and woods
In regards to image #22, above, I did move the little wood table with the bowl of tomatoes from where it was originally--off to the left side of the picture window--into the center of the space in front of the picture window. I did so spontaneously, probably in a gesture of wanting to simplify the situation before me, to isolate the bowl of tomatoes and give it a less complicated visual context.
I am not saying that this picture functions for me as a symbol, or that it does not. Certainly not all of the photographs I publish in my projects function for me as True, living symbols. And even when at first some images seem to be functioning as symbols, they can lose (or regain) their radiance for me sooner or later. ~ In any case, I give grace all the credit for the more lasting successes that come through my creative process, and I give myself credit for those images that end up being not so successful. It takes time to know for sure about how pictures mean, and those meanings can change later because any creative process is an ongoing process of transformation.
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17. Sunlight on the laundry room floor with Mr. Blue's front legs & the shadow of his ears
18. Early Morning Sunlight : Houseplant shadows on a wooden table top
These two photographs, #17 & 18 in the sequence, could be Thing photographs (of shadows) or Place photographs . . . or both. Truly speaking, according to the yogic teachings, there is no thing or place in this universe that is not pervaded by the Sacred, the creative power and divine presence of the universe, otherwise known as grace or shakti. Since I started making Thing photographs in the early 1980's my idea of what constitutes a thing (or a place) has shifted and expanded. In Siddha Yoga, the primary teaching is this: "Nothing exists that is not Shiva," meaning everything in this created universe is a form of God including those spaces absent of light which we humans have named "shadows." ~ There is something menacing about the shadows in both of these photographs. They share similar shapes that appear to be animated, as if belonging to an animal or perhaps an evil force. Nonetheless, the right understanding according to the yogic teachings is that the Lord takes all forms, dark and light, good and evil. Swami Muktanada calls all of life in this universe a Play of Consciousness. ~ Our adopted Mr. Blue has been with us for a year now and he is the most loving, considerate cat one could ever hope for . . . but, he is a hunter, and unbelievably strong and fast. Hunting is part of his natural being. From time to time, he brings us presents from his intensely focused hunting adventures on the edge of the Meadow and lays them on our deck floor at the foot of our sliding door which opens into our dinning area.
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I will conclude my commentary section with these two photographs which follow each other near the very conclusion of the visual sequence (note: the sequence ends with the Meadow photograph with the "two eyes" in the sky, which I discussed above in my first commentary).
These two images look as if they belong together in some pretty obvious ways. For example, they share the same colors and the same drama of light; indeed it's possible that the two images were made within minutes of each other. The picture of the microwave would have had to have been made first, while the sun was well above the horizon (the tops of the trees of the woods bordering the west side of the Meadow). ~ In the Meadow picture, the setting sun is nearing the completion of its journey below the horizon line. I can see in a reflection on the surface of the south meadow pond the tops of the trees and the sky. The pond is but a floating presence in a very dark picture space that represents the invisible meadow which exists between the pond and our back yard, and beyond the pond back to the woods.
What I especially like about both of these photographs, and which also "links" them visually as a fascinating, related pair, is their similar visual structures and more generally their near abstract appearance. That is to say, both images succeed at representing the the world that was before the camera at the time of the exposure, and yet they both share a similar appearance of having been transformed . . . by the play of light and shadow. Indeed, both photographs are dominated by dark shapes and lighter-toned horizontal planes and lines which define their overall similar horizontal, vertically layered structures.
Both images are seated in that Imaginal world between representation and abstraction. In that regard, in that ineffable space, they do carry on something like a visual dialogue with each other.
I tend to enjoy photographs that border on abstraction. I like being able to see what was photographed, and at the same time, I like seeing the stuff of the visible world dissolving into abstraction, or into darkness, just as the world transitions from light, to twilight, to the darkness of night. These transitional stages of seeing and visual representation each provide their own unique kinds of visual meanings, many of which are difficult or impossible to but into words. Both of these images are on their way to leaving behind the apparent world, a world that was perhaps nothing more than an illusion, a memory, perhaps a dream.
Epilogue
~ "the Sacred" & "the Friend" ~
The seer and the seen are One.
When Gloria and I were looking for places to live in the Rochester, NY area in the spring of 2008, we had reached a point of frustration. Nothing we looked at in our search, in many places we looked at between Milwaukee and Rochester, was quite right for us. Then, when we "accidentally" fell into the opportunity to see a house in Canandaigua, with a Meadow behind it, everything changed. The house seemed to fit all our search criteria, and the meadow, the two ponds and the woods behind it seemed both literally and figuratively like a breath of fresh air to me. When I saw the Meadow it was "love at first sight." I remembered Ponge's poem Le Pre' and I thought perhaps I could do a photography project about the Meadow.
When we moved into our new home in August, 2008 the Meadow made the future seem full with promise. After living several years with the Meadow and photographing it, a more intimate friendship began to unfold between us. Eventually a bond formed between myself and the Meadow that was based on a deep interior sense of the Sacred. The Meadow had first become for me a sacred Place, and then it became a "sacred Friend."
I had experienced a very similar relationship with Lake Michigan when Gloria and I lived in Milwaukee. I was hired to begin a new photography program in the Art Department at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in 1975, and during the job interview I was taken to a high bluff near the University that overlooked the Lake, and near the house we would be living for the next 33 years. When I looked out over the Lake from the bluff I was struck with awe at the vastness of the spectacle. The unfathomable body of water, the feeling of infinite space, the magic of the light playing on the water's surface . . . it all both frightened me and sparked something deep in me that felt like inspiration. I promised myself, there and then, that if I got the teaching position I would find some way of photographing the Lake in a way that would honor what I had been feeling as I stood there during that initial, initiating encounter.
It took me five years to get up the courage to begin making the photographs that would become known as The Lake Series, 1981-82. I spent nearly two years photographing the Lake from Milwaukee's shores and bluffs throughout the changing seasons. Gradually, through the process of being in the presence of the Lake over a sustained period of time, and photographing the changes in light and atmosphere and water throughout the seasons, my initial fear of the Lake became transformed into an intimate, spiritual friendship.
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A few years earlier, while I was working on a project entitled Negative Print Series : Memories of Childhood 1978-80 I read a book by Thomas Hess about the painting of Barnett Newman in which Hess explains a life-transforming experience Newman had while standing before some American Indian mounds in Ohio. Newman sensed the Sacredness of the mounds, and the place in which he was standing, and at the same time he experienced the Sacred within himself. The experience had a profound impact on Newman's painting.
Hess tells this story in relationship to a project Newman had become interested in regarding the design of an interior space for a Jewish Temple. The story introduces the Jewish concept of Makom, which means "the Place" (where God is present.)
I was deeply touched learning about Newman's experience and the Makom idea for I was experiencing something very similar as I was making photographs in Milwaukee back yards for my Memories of Childhood project. And learning about Makom shed light on my experience of the Lake. So I began subtitling several of my Milwaukee photography projects as being part of "the Makom Series." See my blog project Makom : "the Place" which provides a full detailed account of Newman's experience at the mounds and how his epiphany inspired my "Makom Series" projects.
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A few years later when (in 1982) I read Robert Bly's book News of the Universe I realized that Bly's writings about the "object" or "thing" poems and the consciousness in "things" was directly related to the Makom concept, that the Sacred existed in Things just as it existed in Places. Ponge's prose poems about things -- and in particular, his poem about the Meadow, Le Pre' helped me see more clearly that the Sacred pervaded everything, that "things" and "places" were essentially One and the same--equal parts in the Oneness of Being.
Of course this new understanding was more fully confirmed for me after I met Gurumayi in 1987, experienced her grace, and began practicing Siddha Yoga meditation with her guidance and her teachings.
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In June, 2000, during a visit to the Grand Canyon I encountered the Sacred within myself as it was projected out into the vast spaces of the Grand Canyon. It was an amazingly intense visionary experience of the yogic teaching The Seer and the Seen are One, that everything in the outer world originates from inside, from the inner Self. I have written about this experience, in full detail, in my essay Seeing the Grand Canyon ~ Perception & Projection.
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Another very important experience of the Sacred involved my encounter with various forms of Islamic Sacred Art during a two week tour which Gloria and I took thru Turkey in 2011. There were many related experiences, but the most personally dynamic one occurred in a museum in Istanbul while I was looking at an exhibition of ancient hand-made illuminated Qur'ans. See my project Prayer Stones, the first chapter in my multi-chaptered project "An Imaginary Book" for a full detailed account of that experience and others related to it. It was during the creation of this project that I discovered the work and ideas of Henry Corbin.
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My most profound and life-transforming experience of the Sacred occurred during my "shaktipat" initiation while participating in a two-day meditation Intensive with Gurumayi Chidvilasananda in August, 1987. It was the first time Gloria and I met Gurumayi and attended a Siddha Yoga meditation program. During the Intensive I experienced Gurumayi's divine presence, her shakti, her grace. It seemed she had entered and filled my entire Being and the infinite space of my Heart with her grace, her love. I have written about that experience and many others in my multi-chaptered project Photography and Yoga.
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The Poet-saint, Rumi & "the Friend"
In 2018 I made a photography project entitled I Was So Happy To See My Friend's Face. The project's title came from a poem by the great Sufi poet-saint, Rumi, who often referred to God in his poetry as "the Friend." Rumi's poetry also makes frequent mention of his "friendship" with a mysterious man named Shams who appears to have been an enlightened Sufi Master and Rumi's teacher. In any case "the Friend" was Rumi's poetic way of referring to the Sacred, the divine presence of God and his teacher Shames, all simultaneously (as if all were One and the same, which for Rumi, indeed that was the case).
In my Afterword to I Was So Happy To See My Friend's Face I also write about Coleman Barks, the great American translator of Rumi's poetry. In his book Rumi : Soul Fury Barks writes not only about his relationship to Rumi and Rumi's poetry, he also writes about his own personal relationship with a teacher, a Sufi Master. It was a fascinating book for me, especially because I could identify with some of the things Barks experienced because of my own relationship with a Master of yoga meditation, Gurumayi.
I began the project I Was So Happy To See My Friend's Face with a selection of quotes including the brief quote, below, from the Qur'an, and then the poem by Rumi:
Whithersoever ye turn, there is the Face of God.
Qur'an 11 : 115
Something looks inside
and outside at once.
That something has great skill
at seeing how it is with those
who are lost in love.
Now look at all these eyes.
How do they see, and who
is looking out?
Rumi, trans: Coleman Barks from the book Rumi : Soul Fury
I am concluding this project with the Sacred words of Gurumayi, words effulgent with her sacred energy known as shakti, her state of Union with God, the inner Self of all. Following the quote I have included one additional image of the Meadow in honor of her divine power and as a way of expressing my gratitude for her presence in my life.
As a Siddha, her words also carry the blessings of the entire ancient lineage of Siddha Masters including her beloved teacher Swami Muktananda, and his beloved teacher Bhagawan Nityananda.
Gurumayi's gentle, loving words, which are simultaneously a compassionate command and a blessing upon whoever reads and imbibes them, also summarizes why I make photographs and practice Siddha Yoga meditation.
Gurumayi said:
Let your desire be to see God. Always. Whatever you are doing, wherever you are going, with whomever you are speaking, let your deepest wish be: "Oh Lord, reveal yourself in this
person, in this object, in my dharma, in this action. Whatever I know, whatever I find, may you be there."
Gurumayi Chidvilasananda
from the Siddha Yoga Website search "Darshan and Wisdom"
29. Epilogue: for Gurumayi : Evening storm cloud and rays of light from the setting sun, over the South Meadow and woods
This project was published September 10, 2022 and
announced on my blog's Welcome Page September 11, 2022
Welcome Page to The Departing Landscape blog, which includes the complete hyperlinked listing of my online photography projects dating from the most recent to those dating back to the 1960's. You will also find on the Welcome Page my resume, contact information . . . and much more.
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