You won’t usually find me photographing dying exotic flowers. But these ones are ethically traded and were left on the shelf of the local supermarket. Himself succumbed to their vibrant beauty.
They just got better and better as they shrivelled up and died. Yes, BETTER! You can see for yourself, although maybe you would have preferred them in full bloom? Beautiful either way, but from the perspective of a photographer not nearly as textured, characterful, or intense.
This leads me neatly to myself and the challenge of how to talk about ageing. My ageing. The word AGEING comes with a lot of baggage. You know I’m developing a new online space, which is taking forever, but it’s also very absorbing and is waking up brain cells I didn’t even know I had?
Well, I’m making theme headings for my blog archive of 5 years and one of them will have to be AGEING or something like that as I’ve just realised that I write quite a lot about it! (While denial seems to be my default, there is no arguing with what’s there in my own words.)
So when mulling over the last year and thinking forward into the next, I was meditating on the following beautiful Rilke quotation.
“There is no measuring in time, no year matters, and ten years are nothing. Being an artist means, not reckoning and counting, but RIPENING (my caps) like the tree which does not force its sap and stands confident in the storms of spring without fear that after them may come no summer.”
~ Rainer Maria Rilke
Thanks to Rilke my word for 2016 is going to be RIPENING, softening and easing my way forward, “confident in the storms of Spring without fear that after them may come no summer.” Allowing for the completion of projects and the exploration of new ones in a more organic and instinctive way, it’s all taking lots of time, and sure there’s no hurry on me……
Plus, Ripening sounds a lot kinder to my soul than Ageing!!!
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