The Ancient One

Most of July and all of August have been weeks spent reflecting and being in a state of melancholy, with little sleep between the passing of one day and the arrival of another. As if storm clouds linger close by, ready to erupt at any moment into a torrent of challenges to blind my sense of direction. In the meantime September lies before me as an unknown terrain yet to be explored or its chapter written and while there are no guarantees; each day to which I rise, is a gift not to be spoiled and this is especially true, because the last six years have been a challenge.

After a two-month hospital stay in the spring of 2003, which required a subsequent four and a half year recovery, stage three cancer was discovered and appropriately dealt with. This was followed eighteen months later by a heart attack and thirty days afterwards was compounded by an unscheduled open-heart triple by-pass surgery in January 2006. Yet after all this, I remain standing, unsure if I would be able to face another major challenge.

Finding solace with the Ancient One

Grizzly Peak, Berkeley, California
Digital duo-tone photograph, December 7, 2007

No longer as resilient or defiant as before, I come to identify with the old tree I christened the ‘Ancient One’ when I first came upon it almost two years ago. At that time I felt an internal urge to return to an area with which I had identified during the period when I had my heart attack and the open-heart surgery. It was in those thirty days when a three-day period produced some of my most personal work. These images of fallen twigs, leaves and other fragments of nature gathering upon the ground under a soft rain, returning to earth in the cycle of ‘dust to dust’, were foreshadowing my own destiny. Had I not intervened two days prior of my scheduled death, much would have been left unfinished and unsaid. To this day I feel closest to these images then all my other photographs combined.

Since the day of my open-heart surgery when I cheated my demise unknowingly, it feels like Death is seeking revenge. Playing shenanigans with my mind and emotions in a game I know it will eventually win. But for now this tug of war continues indefinitely and like the ‘Ancient One’, I shall stand strong, despite feeling hollow at times. Though today I am a former self of the past, whose body now is scared and beginning to shows its age, I shall rise each day, contemplating upon creativity, and in doing so create art by which I shall be resurrecting my identity.

Postscript: When the time is right, I will share with you the images in which the heart and soul became one with the mind.