VEINS OF GOLD

I'm posting this on my birthday, which feels fitting, as it is always a day for reflection and gratitude.  I offer words and many images to share the richness of my life. Remember to click on each image in the picture galleries for the full view and caption.


I’m sitting on a gold mine—or a gold mine is sitting in me—or if I speak through a bigger understanding, I myself am a gold mine. I hold/it holds veins of gold-kissed creative energy, ready to be excavated, ready to emerge. The gift of potency, ever-ready potential, the gift of rich moments, rich insights, shared energy, powerful words, the gift of haunting images that hold a feeling--a vibration--that cannot be literally translated, but like light language can be felt and experienced.


Some of these golden gifts that are filling me, outside and inside: the changing, vibrant light, sunsets with blue, gold, orange and pink, sometimes deepening to pulsing red; the shadows, slits of morning sun coming through the blinds, projected on the blue-green wall. The radiant aqua of the wide pool, its winking sparkly surface reflecting the deeper aqua and coral colors of the nearby buildings.  Looking up from the water to the birds circling or passing high overhead: hawks, egrets, cranes.

The gift of swooping palm fronds moving gently in the breeze. The gifts of hibiscus flowers in their many forms in my yard: the tall sea hibiscus, an exuberant tree with yellow blooms turning to red in a single afternoon; the cranberry hibiscus, with its fuschia blooms receding into the tart dark purple leaves that so enliven salads; the hedge-like bushes, their coral flowers with long pistils reaching out so far, asking to be pollinated; the prolific but delicate tropical variety of hibiscus punctuated by startling carmine red blossoms.

These things surround me, and so much more: an abundance of new-to-me trees gifting me with their nurture, new tastes, like the hoja santa, its root-beer flavor leaves growing huge and its runners creeping underground, popping up unexpectedly far away; the easy-growing chaya, its leaves cooked with peanut butter and onions, protein abounding. Katuk, curry leaf, pepper leaf, moringa, papaya, pigeon pea—a legume tree, its lovely flowers promising pods of beans.  They all offer themselves, proliferate. “Just thank us,” they say, “only appreciate, and we will give and give. We are the vibration of giving, abundance, life feeding other life, and we are yours if you honor and tend us.” It is indeed life feeding life, just as the opossum carcass on the road is feeding the turkey vultures, as the palm nuts feed the tree rats, the insects feed the frogs.


My gold is the creative energy coming forth in so many ways, sprouting out in different directions, tumbling over itself and its varied forms. Taking the camera to zero in on the infinite variety of what I see: jaunty starfruit slices fitting together like dancing cartoon characters, silhouetted tree skeletons against the sky, the surprising color range of seaweed and fish scales, curtains of Spanish moss, a starfish temporarily captured in a net just a few feet out in Lemon Bay, the long beaks and feet of wood storks, mangrove shoots, an old couple walking together down the beach.

I feel this creative energy as I look back at photos taken in my autumn travels, sensing their moods and their layered stories: spools in a defunct textile mill; packing up after Day of the Dead celebrations in Oaxaca; chicken feet in the market; petroglyphs; ladders and shadows. And I feel it as I play with images taken in museums--as I zero in and infuse their parts with light.