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animals
November 2009 
some thoughts about collusion and capture
Laura
I wanted to write something today about how animals call us back into the moment, how they summon me away from my drifting thoughts, my errant mind. How birds, too, retrieve me from my sorrow, my worry, my preoccupation with time and things. They do this when they fly over a marshy north Georgia meadow, a tag of crimson brightness on dark wingspan in the gray late afternoon, and when they haul their spindly heronlegs and arching neck up over that same still brackish water and out to the edge of the woods. It's always been this way. A friend reminded me recently of how this works, of how fast the mindfulness of being with creatures can come upon us if we let it, if we're open to it. I thought about how immediate this could be for me as a child, how eager I always was for the experience of smelling my horse's warm sweaty hide when I rode her or went to feed her. for the joy of seeing the raised flare of whitetail over deerhaunch, springing through high pasture grass. For the starlike spread of a possum's pink paws on the wood of our porch, stealing cat food, and for the dry wheathusk of a kingsnake's recently shed skin at the base of my favorite tree. The other day I went to a gathering of strangers to hear them play their flutes, and I began my time with them by hunkering in the grass with a fat bumpy toad and its big eyes, shuttered beads of black and bronze shimmering in the May heat. The toad hopped about in the weeds for a bit while I tried to photograph it. then I stood a ways off from it and let it abide under the tassel of something green. I got down on my belly and noticed the pulse of its creamy amphibial throat, the ridges and curves of its back and neck, the shapes of its nostrils. I thanked it for letting me see it so close and I took my pictures. That moment, a small one of felicity and sweetness, laid out a template of calm attention and inner peace that spent the rest of the afternoon with me.
Lately, on a website I belong to that features independent artists and photographers, I notice that when people compliment each other on their photographs they often say "nice capture." While I appreciate their sincerity and encouragement, something about this language bumps up against me in a way that seems kind of goofy but which I understand. For me taking pictures is less about "taking" per se and more about watching, honoring, noticing, and being. The picture will come if it's meant to. And sometimes, even when it seems meant to come and it does come, perhaps it isn't meant to stay, I learned recently. Back in April, one late afternoon during spring break, I was walking around up on Fort Mountain, about an hour north of where I live. The mountain was just starting to green up. It's a sacred Native site and I won't say much more than that about it other than to make mention of the long gray tumble of stone that spreads across the mountainface and the place's aura of hauntedness, of the slightly melancholy sweet spiritpresence that is always there for me. I was standing around outside the old WPA tower on top of the mountain when my attention was directed towards the butterflies tumbling and rushing through the woods. Tiger swallowtails, mourning cloaks. i couldn't get any photos of the swallowtails but the mourning cloaks offered themselves right up to me. They were big and slow and tired from mating. Two in particular came right up to me, even brushing my forehead over and over as I lay on the ground near a big old log that seemed to hold some pull for them. They kept coming back and back to the log. I was able to get very close and the tattered wings and furry bodies of the mourning cloaks showed up gloriously on my camera. One mourning cloak paused on a branch near a big brown leaf that mirrored its body's hues softly, earthily, eloquently. I was moved and thrilled by my photographs, and I thanked the butterflies when I left.
The next day I was in the little mountain town of Dahlonega, standing outside a café, taking photographs of pansies and their expressive curling faces when I did it. somehow, in my eagerness to take better macro shots, I reformatted my entire memory card, deleting all the splendid mourning cloak shots as well as photos from my father's house at Eastertime and other pictures that I loved. I was sick at heart but tried to lean into the incident as a lesson in nonattachment. I'd never done anything like this before, and I pretty much know my way around my relatively simple little Canon. Though what I'd done seemed stupid and careless, cavalier even, I decided to feel into the emptiness a bit and try to learn what I could from it.
And here it is: photographs for me are gifts of spirit. They're a collusion between my eye and the world with its tenderness and its sternness. They're not about capturing but about witnessing and being there to let something come through. This process isn't about passivity or even just receptivity, though: I think one has to seek, or at least open up, in order to receive. But it can and for me should be a sort of prayer, even in the goofiest and most playful of moments. If I carry this sensibility with me then my photographs will do the same thing for me that animals can: ground me in the thisness of now in a way that will nurture and befriend the spirits that see them.
Access: Public
To me, the best part of this story is not about the picture your canon snapped…it was in the words you used to paint the picture.
Thank you, Maze. It's so nice to hear that, and I'm glad this little piece worked that way for you.
Laura I've always felt that about photographs.. without ever putting it into words, and I love the words that you've used to express it. It's clear from your pictures that you understand the gift within them … it's why yours are always, without exception, so moving.
Thankyou,too, for reminding me of 'leaning in' to the things I might otherwise pull away from… it seems so gentle and much more fruitful put this way.
Thankyou x
Thank you kindly for your encouraging and kindred words, Lynx. a wonderful way to start my day. It's nice to know someone else gets it, what I'm saying about photographs. actually I think lots of people do. I wish I heard it expressed more often.
Laura, I remember a time when my friends and I gave rise to a the most beautiful music that we have ever played together… In a sense, I was out of body as I played. I was present, watching my left hand's fingers fly over the violin's strings in a violet blur. Each of us was so 'dialed in' to each other that the 'conversation' of instruments was a sublime dialog of emotion and meaning. We had always made it a point to record EVERYTHING; yet, this time we did not…
When we finally stopped and came 'down' from this exhalted, transcendent, state. We initially mourned the 'loss' of that music; but then, as what happened to you, we each realized that we had been playing for 'god'; and that the music was immanent in the ALL and not lost at all, since each of us, the music, the violin, everything, was arrisen from the same source….
BTW: If you magnify the Toad's Eye, I can almost (its blurry for lack of pixels) see you, standing, taking the picture within it's reflection–an apt metaphor to this line of inquiry :)
yes. thank you for sharing your recollection of this experience. a sort of turiya, yes?
I do believe you expressed it about right, dear Laura.
That means an awful lot coming from you, Geo. thank you.
Laura,
I was here maybe a week ago, captivated by the splendid Toad you captured a photo of. We love these creatures. They are all around us and having learned their sounds, what I had thought were insects, turn out to be frogs and toads and my life is richer for the knowing.
Your descriptions of the joy of seeing wild creatures resonates with the feelings deep inside me. We have all to these too and it is a delight to see any one of them.
What a poignant lesson of non-attachment, a lesson that seems to come repeatedly for me, though I try to let go ever quicker and accept more readily what is.
And in closing, I'll just echo what the others said, your gift of words in conveying these stories reflect the love within them and you.
Deborah
Thank you, Deborah. such words are very sustaining for me. I do love toads, frogs, lizards, and salamanders. there's something so poignant and vulnerable and tender about the contours of their bodies and the way their eyes move.
Lovely way of explaining this. Thank you.
butterflies and toads in the north georgia mountains…you really take me back…
something you can never capture, but i can breath it in and out and through me and through the eye of a toad i find a portal to a magical world full of life…
the ecstatic, erratic, ariel ballet of my industrial butterflies who loved to sit upon my shoulders and watch me weld…who is this lord of fire who holds the sun within his hands? we had a mutual awe for one another in our daily communions…
In the evening the frogs would come as I worked late into the summer night. One night in particular it was raining and the frogs came from everywhere and surrounded me in a semi circle. Hundreds. Engaged in mutual awe for hours, sharing a sense of amazement.
Farland and Darin, thanks. yes that burbling cauldron of playful frogsound is a wondrous summer thing, isn't it? and the wall of cicadasong that puts me to sleep at night.
what a wonderful thing for me to read and see as I prepare to put words and images on a wall in a cafe tomorrow.
“For me taking pictures is less about “taking” per se and more about watching, honoring, noticing, and being. The picture will come if it's meant to. And sometimes, even when it seems meant to come and it does come, perhaps it isn't meant to stay, I learned recently.”
me too!! I had a big, big lesson in non-attachment of the digital variety not so long ago. :-)
and I love this whole essay and conversation. thanks!
You're most welcome. I figured you would probably relate to this. : )
Laura,
I linked to this excellent discussion in the Living Metaphysics group here - http://pods.gaia.com/living_metaphysics/discussions/reply/292514
I am also happy to have made a passing acquaintance (he certainly doesn't know me yet) with doolang(Darin Lang) here as well. His video on Feeling the Feminine fit right in with a discussion we had been having the in Tao Te Ching discussion board (see link above).
Deborah
Darin's an old friend of mine and someone who challenges and inspires me. Thanks for the link, Deb.
thank you laura. you inspire and challenge me too.
I'm glad. thanks. I hope you and Darina are incredibly happy and having lots of fun.
Thank you. I hope you and Ron are having a great time too! School is just about out…do you have any plans?
Darin/a spent the weekend roaming around the north cascades mountains from one cascading waterfall to the next, and camped on the bank of two different rivers, and even went for a boat ride. We enjoyed the weather, whether rainy or sunny or snowy. We filled the car with wildflowers and even found a few morel mushrooms, met many interesting people, and of course we laughed and laughed and laughed and laughed and laughed…back home we tilled under the old garden and planted a new one full of all sorts of soon to be yummies: visually, olfactorily and gustatorily.
Plans, hmm. Maybe travel a tiny bit. write. I have some ideas for writing something along the lines of the beginning of a memoir. will likely thus spend some time with my dad. and take pictures. : )
Talk about yummy: a memoir by laura…you are taking me back again, back to 2007's “I am from….” Absolutely delicious.
Not long ago a friend of mine let me read her diaries and it was amazing to be immersed in such a personal world. Incredibly intimate. Memoir took on a whole new meaning at that point. It's easy to overlook the simplicities and commonalities of living that we tend to deemphasize, and yet which shape us so completely.
We get caught up in the bigger activities of life. The big splash that gets all the attention but in the end isn't so much a part of us. It's the little things that endure and that mean so much to one but are lost on those around one at the time. You have an amazing way of making life's simple moments so meaninful, so full of life. I do hope you will share with me…