Give sorrow words. The grief that does not speak whispers the o'er-fraught heart, and bids it break. ~ William Shakespeare

JACK DANIELS DISTILLERY
LYNCHBURG TENNESSEE
Photo By: John P. Ford


I appreciate the complexity of this photo from the photographic point of view and even more from the representational emotional point of view. The colors range from a blood orange red to misty white with mid tone grays. Color is emotional life in representation.

Red orange is the courage to go forward. Most of us will reach the need for this color quality at many points in life. Sometimes that courage is needed to just keep walking.

Visually, there seems to be a cottage type dwelling in the foreground. As the eye moves upward, more complex buildings present with the image culminating in a misty hill top structure that literally seems above it all with a feeling of mystical and magical qualities. Our lives are like that with many levels of the simple and the complex, the magical and the mundane.

Looking on the path, the water offers reflection of a kind that feels like an abstract painting. We are not sure what it is but we want to take a closer look!

Each of us is a work of art . We are like tapestries that form a beautiful complex pattern on the surface yet reveal errors of imperfections on the underside. The
errors are what make the beauty in the final pattern.

This photo is like a representation of life lived to me. We move from one spiritual dwelling or life space to another. We try to integrate the experiences into one cohesive whole. None of these buildings look as if they really belong together yet they make a lovely whole picture.

Sorrow is one aspect of life that can be devastating yet open doors to self exploration that we would have passed by if invited. Instead, we often find ourselves throw into experiences we would not choose.

No one would seek the kind of sorrow life losses or serious illness can bring. Sorrow and loss can be one path to personal integration and the resulting need for reinvention of self.

In Memoriam is a poem written after three years of grieving and living and learning to regroup after the loss of a love who was instrumental in helping me define who I was and now who I am.

In Memoriam

Approaching midnight
eve of April one
we sat in flickering candlelight
reviewing glorious old dreams and
spinning new ones
In rainbow colored threads.

Our voices high on life and promises
hearts open, fears shared
forgiveness given, energy pulsing
connecting our hearts with hope.
You spun fantasies of
What our life would be.

By December I'll be in
better shape than ever, you claimed.
In a year, I'll be hard and healthy.
I listened and I believed it.
Do it with me, you said do it all..
O.K., I agreed - - while I wished for
a tape recorder.

We danced slow
with no music.
Holding my hand
going up the stairs
one or two steps ahead of me
you turned and caught my eye.

I have always loved you
Even when you were with someone else
Even when I was with someone else
Even when I loved them too
Maybe even in another
Lifetime - you said with a smile

No one has known me
as you know me, you said.
I know - and I, you also
I shared , truthfully

Touching, holding, drifting
on the gentle waves
of your waterbed
we missed the entrance of
The April Fool Trickster.

Startled into wakefulness
I saw your eyes and
knew you were no longer there
Even though you body was
Still.......breathing.

Disbelief - belief
Terror, deadly calm
Sirens, phone calls, pain
Hospital waiting rooms.
Hard to keep breathing.

Am I still breathing?
People we loved surrounded us
With an invisible inner circle
of those I have loved and lost.
Why am I still breathing?

A thousand times
in my imagination
I have died with you
the death you died but once.

Today I am alive
In love with life
Breathing, full of plans
time filled with
what I want and love.

Yet even now or
Tomorrow, tonight,
next year, this afternoon
the trickster's shadow
will cross my path as
I reach one thousand and one