Tangled Beings
We are tangled into the universe in distinct ways, enmeshed with particular plants, animals, and people that somehow belong in the spaces of our lives. They become ours and we become theirs. They pull us into their fields and demand our care. They invite us into their homes and ask for compromises and submissions. They extract our energy in work and care until we are drained and overwhelmed. They mess things up. They make things beautiful. They hate. They love. We grab on, considering how and when to submit to those other lives and when to run, leaving them to fall through the holes that we’ve left. I want to think about this predicament with you. How do we live gently among these demanding beings that trap us and connect us in the tangles of our lives? How do we bravely nurture within the tiny frames of our short lives while stepping fiercely up to the face of the universe?
I suppose these flowers are a good enough image for the face of the universe. They are my mama's iris. Now that Carmelo, my youngest is in Kindergarten, I can spend a little more time with them, recuperating some fierceness that I seem to have misplaced in the last few years. That time period went something like this: Michael and I fell in love, had some kids, and became somewhat successful. We questioned the anxiety of that success, the perfection of love, our ability to hold it together. We bought a farm which came with a different set of worries. We filled that ground with flowers. I raise hundreds of iris varieties that my mother has passed down to me. The photographs you see here are also hers. Picture her standing beside each flower in the sunshine after the rain; she loves how the little round water droplets fall onto the petals and then catch the rays of light. In one hand, she holds a piece of black velvet cut from a Goodwill evening gown. That material scrap of castoff memories creates the lush background you see here. In the other hand, she holds a camera to take the pictures. My flowers are her. The images are her friends, my grandma, a neighbor. They hold the faces that cared for them, the people who absorbed their beauty. They hold my past and I hope, if I can handle the weeds, they will reach well beyond my future.