For a while, I’ve been taking my own advice to have a break from following straight lines towards hard goals. I’ve found time to sew, sing, dig, plant and rest up, and we just returned from a lovely week in France where on offer mostly was swimming in a natural pool and watching alpacas stroll past the bottom of the garden. This has been important and necessary, as I have learnt by now that when I can’t figure out what to do next, it’s time to step away and find some space and peace for fermenting ideas and seeking perspective too.
The poem ‘The Peace of Wild Things’ by Wendell Berry is always close to my heart. It’s been on my mind to make an animation based on his wise words so I created a few storyboard stills using some photograms I made in the darkroom. I’m exploring ways to animate them but the still image already seems to move such a lot just as it is, and I don’t want to overdo it. There is such a beautiful quality of light in these photograms, the way it falls through and around the glass beads and twigs I used – I could just look at them all day! Pushing too hard could ruin the essence of these lovely shapes captured on light-sensitive paper but I am eager to find ways to make them gently sway and grow. Perhaps it will only be at the pace of nature itself, but softly breathing all the same along with Berry’s timely and insightful commentary.
I find peace with swallows and streams and falcons and cattle and gusts of wind, and grass and trees and clouds full of rain. Breathing, underneath the ‘day blind stars’. I am grateful for some time out amongst the wild things recently, and It may take a little more work to feel my way into this one, but I hope it results in sharing something of the peace I find when retreating on my own into natural spaces.