Heading in a New Direction

23 Lizard in Bisbee Arizona

Threatened © 2011 Bo Mackison

Let go of the need for perfection – perfection bought at a high cost. Embrace imperfection, acknowledge mistakes, claim the lessons they provide. Embrace change.   ~ Bo Mackison

I’ve had an on and off affair with the label “mental illness” — a label that defined me for many years.

I hated it; I needed it.
I pushed it away; I pulled it close.

That label deprived me of the basic experiences of choosing life and living it fully; it also allowed me to abdicate taking full responsibility for my life and the choices I made.

Behaviors, lived over years, became habits. They settled deep within me:

  • as a child when I developed highly creative but pathological methods for body, mind, and soul survival
  • as an adult while I was in the throes of deep depressions and slow recoveries,
  • while I was fighting demons from my childhood,  searching musty rooms in my mind with a dimly flickering match light.

Defenses and behaviors I erected as walls of protection were no longer functional, viable, needed, wanted. Yet, it was what I understood.

I had to let go so I could grab onto a better way. Caught in the pause between the two trapeze bars, I was  dangling in a mighty discomfiting place.

Eventually I understood that letting go of the behaviors that mark even a functional mental illness would grace me with freedoms I wanted, but hadn’t fully experienced:

  • not as a child in a puzzling environment
  • not as an adolescent who carried demons in her hand luggage wherever she wandered
  • not as an adult trying to function in the challenging world of careers and marriage-with-children, while burying the past and eventually losing the ability to even acknowledge it
  • not as a woman in the prime-time of her life who suddenly crashed head-long into reality, suffered a total collapse, and a crushing breakdown.

I worked for years to repair my body and mind; I worked even harder to repair my spirit.

Living under the shadow of the statement “I had a mental breakdown” provides a certain cover. Even after the initial stages, after in depth therapy spanning two decades, and after reclaiming a life of wholeness, doubt lingers and unwelcome questions pop up.

There is the voice that harbors deep in my sub-conscience, occasionally breaking through to my awareness. It questions my actions, my motives, my plans, my challenges, my courage, my decisions, my art, my life. It questions my EVERYTHING.

I must then re-affirm my strength, stand on firm ground, and repeat:

  • I am responsible for my thoughts, my words, my actions.
  • There is no one else to blame for my failures, short-comings, errors in judgement.
  • I take full ownership of my mistakes and claim them,  but I also claim the lessons these mistakes teach.
  • This is  no excuse living.

It is hard, excruciatingly so as times. It is necessary. It is the only way.

Because as long as I blamed the past for mistakes I made in the present, as long as I didn’t acknowledge the mistakes and accept them for what they were, I did not learn the lessons. I had an excuse to push away change and healing.

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Why am I writing about this? Because during the years I focused on creating photography for public display, photographs for art shows and festivals, photographs for art centers and museum shows. I also created photography and other art as a process for healing.

Creative activities are healing. I use art and nature as components of my healing practice. I want to share my art and my story with you, my dear readers.

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Bo Mackison is a photographer and owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC.  This is the first photograph in a series of twelve.

Return to the Southwest

Sycamore II

Sycamore II © 2012 Bo Mackison

Forest and field, sun and wind and sky, earth and water, all speak the same silent language, reminding the monk that he is here to develop like the things that grow all around him. ~ Thomas Merton

I have returned. Returned to Pima County, a 9,000 square mile partition of the Sonoran Desert that spans two-thirds of the southern part of Arizona.

When I am in Wisconsin, and awaiting the day I return to the Southwest, I always say I miss the desert, that I am ready to return to the desert. But upon deeper reflection, it is not only the desert I miss. I miss the huge diversity that this small part of the country has to offer. The diversity of the southern Arizona habitats.

If I begin in the far western part of Pima County, perhaps I am visiting Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge and Organ Pipe National Monument, and I then travel east to Tucson and ascend Mount Lemmon, I have traveled an equivalent distance of more than 2,200 miles in habitat. It is comparable to me traveling from northern Mexico to  southern Canada. And I can travel that in less than a half day’s time.

The part of the Southwest I call my home is part of the Sonoran Desert. Yes. But it is more than sand and cactus and rattlesnakes. It is an example of one of the most diverse ecological spaces on our planet. Not only does the area have over forty sky islands – tall mountain-islands surrounded by desert – but it is borders two diverse communities — the Rocky Mountain community to the north and the Sierra Madres to the south. Diversity abounds.

I can travel a few hours and explore six different communities — desert-scrubland (what most people call the ‘desert’), desert grasslands, oak woodlands, pine-oak woodlands, and coniferous zones, plus the riparian woodlands (seen in the picture above).

What an amazing place to explore with a camera in hand!

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Bo Mackison is a photographer and owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC. She had landed back in the Southwest and is adapting to the transition between a Midwest winter and a Southwest winter.

Life is Like a Puzzle

Tree Silhouettes

Tree Silhouettes © 2013 Bo Mackison

“Spring passes and one remembers one’s innocence.
Summer passes and one remembers one’s exuberance.
Autumn passes and one remembers one’s reverence.
Winter passes and one remembers one’s perseverance.”
~ Yoko Ono

On my month-long break from the Southwest, I returned to Wisconsin’s winter, and discovered this year’s snow season felt more brutal than in the past. The nearly two feet of snow that fell during the earlier part of my visit has had no opportunity to melt. The snow is as deep as the day it fell, though it has been swept aside from walks and roads to make it more manageable for travel.

Even so, my outdoor explorations were limited to walks around the neighborhood and a few sojourns by car. There is no such thing — for me — as a wander in a forest or a tramp through a field or prairie if I have to plow through depths of snow with each step I take.

And so the photos have been few. They all fall into a single category – trees in snowy winter. I do love the trees in winter, the branches exposed, the skeletal trunks and limbs showing the soul of the tree. Even the conifers have a minimalist feel to them.

This morning’s sunrise  – I’m watching it as I write – will be my last in wintry Wisconsin for quite a while. It’s a pale sunrise this morning, as if the cold has frozen the rays into a cool white light.

The snow is a beautiful sight from my windows, but I miss being in the middle of nature, in the midst of the weather and the breezes, tramping on the land.

There is much I miss when I am away from Wisconsin and living in the Tucson area. There is much I miss when I am away from Arizona and living in Wisconsin.  Life is rather like a puzzle — you fit the tiny pieces in as you find them, not sure of the big picture. Each day is a new puzzle piece, and they all fit together to make one huge whopping, incredible, messy life.

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Bo Mackison is a photographer and owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC. Tomorrow is a transition day – travel, comings and goings, many opportunities ahead. Keeping my eyes open in anticipation.

The Road Goes On and On

Farm Along the Road

Wisconsin Road © 2013 Bo Mackison

“The Road goes ever on and on down from the door where it began. Now far ahead the Road has gone, and I must follow, if I can, pursuing it with eager feet, until it joins some larger way where many paths and errands meet. And whither then? I cannot say.”  ~ J.R.R Tolkien

There are new roads to follow, new pursuits, new people to meet, new things to see, new photography projects to begin.

Anticipating the beginning, once again, of a journey that leads me through the heart of the country, south and then west, until I reach the deserts and mountains.

Soon. Soon.

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Bo Mackison is a photographer and owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC. She divides her time between Madison Wisconsin, Tucson Arizona, and the routes that join these places.

The Whisper of Life

Heritage Tree

Heritage Oak Tree © 2013 Bo Mackison

The following quote is about writing, but it seems, with a few adaptations, to also apply to the art of photography as I practice it.

Writing provides a way to make sense of the puzzling wild beautiful moments our lives keep delivering to us. Here whispers Life. Figure this out. Offering us psychic space, privacy, and slowness in a rushed and noisy world, . . . gives us a chance to tell our secrets, voice our own perceptions.  ~ from “Getting Lost” in Island of Bones by Joy Castro

Making photographs also provides me with a way of making sense of my wild beautiful life. It slows me down in the rushed and noisy world, gives me permission to be myself. Whispers secrets of life to me.

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Bo Mackison is a photographer and owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC.  She is looking around, seeing what there is to see.