I like to look for the mystical places, whether outside myself or inside myself. These are those places seldom seen, unless the eye, outer or inner, falls on a curious peace of landscape, the twist of a tree trunk, or a misshapen shadow. The curious, the peculiar, the slight abnormality draws my attention and engages in a way that I might never again notice in exactly the same way, no matter how I look for it. The line in a tile, the shape of the holes in an underhung ceiling tile, or the way the light falls through the blood vessels in my eyelids when my eyes are closed and I’m sun watching. The patterns of light in water. I once spent an entire afternoon knee deep in the Tannersville Lake trying to photograph patterns of light surrounding small fish that were investigating my ankles when my son wanted me to watch him swimming.
Sometimes I wonder if my penchant for looking for the mystical and the weird have kept me from appreciating the small ordinary aspects of life. And maybe sometimes it has. But at other times I wonder if these small ordinary moments are missed by many other people and if they aren’t the mystical, the wonderful, the curious. What sparks the love in a mother’s eye? Or a father’s? What is it about the clouds flowing overhead that brings peace of mind? And what about those absolute moments when I am faced with something too hard, too overwhelming and I just surrender to the moment, and the thing flows more easily. What is it in me that creates the obstacle, the inner fight against outer circumstances, and then in the surrender, finds the way?
I confuse myself a little as I write this, but then I realize it is the in-between places I am seeking, where a thing is both neither and or. There is a place where words fail, yet awareness is everything. Presence counts. Being is absolute and paramount. In this space, in between, anything can happen, and surprisingly, usually does.
Urd's Well 