Its warm in the garden this evening, the first time I’ve been enticed to sit on the bench warming myself in the sun, a geriatric with a camera. The term comes from Greek roots—”geras” meaning old age and “iatros” meaning physician. In a broader sense, it can also just describe something characteristic of older individuals. I tell myself this old man tries to heal souls with a search to share beauty – a search conducted to my own reward throughout life. This geriatric sold his first photograph at 16, won his first art prized at 18 and realised beauty could reward physically as well as spiritually.
The Art of Zen Photography
Sixty years on from the first prizes I now have the ultimate prize of old age – life and time to enjoy the beauty of Gods creations, to praise him by sharing the beauty I see, for an artist is just a conduit for beauty to pass through. So I prepare my own soul for the afterlife. I sit and watch the bumbles and see the delicate skeins of web spun from branch to bush as natures hunters seek to harvest the delicate hoverflies and midges that are already, in late March, filling the scented air.
Ten of the thirty-one days in March we had frosts, but bumblebees have been around for a couple of weeks, and I saw my first caterpillar of the year and heard the first skylark on the Down above the town this last week or so. I have gained some beautiful images of sea mist shrouding the Seven Sisters, watched the flood waters of the Cuckmere rise and fall and seen the storm waves subside to turquois seas with the golden ferry cruising to Dieppe glowing across the horizon, Now I watch as the garden slowly comes back to life.
The daffs are curling, many ghosts of themselves, brown shrivels, some still delivering a gold to shame the ferry colours. Reds are appearing along side blues and greens – the first bluebells appearing across the greensward from the brilliant red of the first tulip.
The gold of daffodils
Although close to being a ghost I am alive to the joys of the garden. The crimes and world of our city slickers in Parliament do not disturb this tranquillity. Cowslips flower on the down, primroses, buttercups and blackthorn colour the roadsides almost hiding the slobbish litterings. I have found my haven in the garden and try to share some of the beauty I see through the studio. It is calming to move away from electronic media and to seek out loveliness where you are. Its there, you just need to open your eyes, your mind and ultimately your heart to reap the rewards of being a fool on the hill, whose eyes in his head see the world spinning around, as the song has it.
The gold of the ferry to Dieppe
I made my first garden in my 20’s taking up flagstone and digging ground undisturbed since the 1860’s. I watched seeds of my lupins sucked by passing trains to flower along the tracks to Manchester. I used to stand on the back step looking above the outside loo to the thunderstorms rolling along the ‘tops’ lightning flashing and crackling, black clouds pouring their water for the mills onto the moorland. I once spent a night sleeping up a tree (perhaps explains my bad back now, although more likely falling off a motor bike is to blame) and blame my childhood roaming the woods, making dens and bow and arrows for my love of nature. Blame? Thank: thank fate that I had the wilderness of RAF stations around me, not oppressive city streets.
Morley-1994-approx 28 feet high by 10feet wide: Lupin image based on drawing made in my first garden
Yet now our lucid rulers protect us by covering the woods and fields with poisonous solar panels and concrete excrescences to save us from some weather. These are city slickers intent on self-enrichment not nobles obliged or populists set on doing their best for us. Our world is being trashed, trampled by ignorance and arrogance but not for our futures, but for their profits. The people of the Hive don’t care, only seeking to loot.
Cowslips as nearly I did taking the image
My future is here, sitting in this garden listening to the plants rustle, the insects buzz and using my eyes to devour their beauty, using my abilities to share as I have always tried to do.
Art and science fade to nothingness by comparison with the power, beauty and delicacy of a bee’s wing. Stop, sit, watch, feed your soul.
Enjoy a world of beauty before ‘they’ destroy it. Its not like a bus, another one won’t be along soon. Care for yours as I care for mine – its much humbler than Monet’s garden, my first was just ten feet by four, but the joy gained is a high reward.
(oh – and the cow slipped when it saw the bulrush.)
Recent Comments