Going to the show

One of my photos (the sunset scene on the Speed River) was chosen for the show at the Red Brick Café in May. You can see all 17 images chosen in the Flickr contest by visiting this link.

Driving to Fergus

Once in a while a certain image takes residence for a season in my mind. It is always a real image, a place and time, but evolves gradually into a metaphor. Frequently these images come while I'm driving, perhaps because that's one of the few times I'm naked and alone with my thoughts, not distracted by things I give myself to do.

The most recent one descended one morning, like an angel, into my psychic pain as I drove to work. Wellington County Road 28 suddenly became the unfurling coil of a tender fern, and I rode like an iota along the length of silver frond.

Every day I pass and admire a particular line of great maples, an avenue approaching a farmstead on the crest of a low hill. I had photographed and posted here, weeks earlier, an image of that farm, but so far the maples themselves have defied my ability to photograph adequately. That morning they erupted like a boundary of fractals into my vision, a leading edge into mysteries of the universe, the future. But above all my vision transplanted me back to the present, the place in which I must remain alive and open.

Every moment is new life, an opportunity. In the midst of depression, loneliness and despair, my mind awakened to the sensual ministries of the landscape, grace of the cosmos. Fields and sky carried me aloft. I drew deeply from that breakfast of pleasure.

I can't attach a specific date, but it must have been March. I have struggled to put the experience into words, a poem, but its essence is largely inexpressible. The bout of depression evaporated weeks since, and likely the silver-fern moment assisted my healing, yet even in happiness and contentment I yearn to continue that experience.

I'm so happy with my job that I've actually considered moving to Fergus to be nearer. But there are too many good reasons to stay in Guelph—one of biggest being: I so love driving that half-hour of countryside each morning and afternoon.

In the board game, Masterpiece, my favourite painting was always "The Avenue" (also known as "The Alley at Middelharnis"), by Meyndert Hobbema. What was yours?