Nature's Place

You’ve heard the saying ‘as within so without’?

I’ve been observing this flower spike grow for the last few months. It must be the slowest growing flower I have seen, and everything in its time. There were a few scale bugs sucking on its sap and a few ants farming the bugs for their ‘dew’. A little world of inter-dependence, or exploitation – ants feed off the bugs, mind interprets it. Meaning is mutable with perspective, fact is fact.

I don’t do flowers much but that might change, who knows, change emerges in time with experience. Flowers don’t run away and hide, I can pick one if there’s enough in the ground or container and bring it to my level for comfort, and take longer if necessary to get composition and background right, time to experiment, time to play. Some obvious considerations.

They are another class of life-form, different to the mobile, often camouflaged, action oriented insects I am predisposed towards, and perhaps under-appreciated by me so far. More passive, stationary, receptive and often loudly advertising their qualities in colour and form which makes them relatively easy to find, though not so easy to capture well.

And though it can’t be captured for re-presentation scent, the invisible but still sensible, is a characteristic not much acknowledged – being bred out in some cases. Some are very ordinary, to my nose, and some are exquisite, transporting even. The right flower at the right time gently smelled serves as a reminder of real beauty, the beauty inside.

Yes, I think I will give more attention to the flowers. It may be an inevitability whose time has come and no doubt the practise and art will evolve if I involve myself in it. We’ll see, it’s still just a possibility.

The quality of the received is in the giving, of attention in the first instance, without which nothing is.

It’s why it is said ‘what you acknowledge you get’.

© Mark Berkery ……. Click those pictures for a closer look
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