Beauty – A Desert Wisdom Card

March 26, 2013 by 6 Comments
Two Poppies

Mexican Poppies © 2013 Bo Mackison

 “Beauty nurtures the soul by serving the spirit.
Beauty takes you out of your cramped,
merely personal worries and sets you down in a field of eternity.”
~ Thomas Moore in Dark Nights of the Soul

In the desert, the appearance of the ephemeral wildflowers in a time of joyous observation.

These rugged flowers only bloom following a unique set of conditions — enough rain throughout early winter, warm enough temperatures to allow for germination and growth, no cold spells that might kill delicate seedlings. There are so many factors that lead to a brilliant display of desert wildflowers that a peak bloom happens only once or twice a decade.

Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it. ~ Confucius

Nonetheless, a few wildflowers can always be found – in a rocky, dry wash, in the cooler higher elevations, near bushes and trees which afford the flowers enough protection. While a mountain slope clothed in swaying poppies is spectacular, so are a half-dozen plucky blossoms that found growing space in a rocky crevice. And perhaps a ragged flower clinging to the side of a cliff, tenacious and reaching towards the sunlight, is the most beautiful flower of them all.

Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not.
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

BEAUTY offers questions/reflections for journal, art prompts, and calls to action:

  • Desert wildflowers require specific conditions in order to come into blossoms of beauty. What are some of the conditions that might be necessary for your inner beauty to burst into blossom?
  • Although it is not necessary to search for a special place to find beauty, there are spaces and sites designed by man or formed by nature, which evoke deep feelings of appreciation. Spend some time strolling through a sculpture garden, viewing a scenic overlook on a stretch of familiar highway, or enjoying a backyard flower bed.
  • Take a few minutes to notice your response to beauty. Does it offer you calm, encouragement, comfort, inspiration, rejuvenation, grounding? Can you replicate those emotions by observing beauty in your world?
  • Georgia O’Keeffe was a prolific painter and most people are aware of her larger than life floral and still life paintings. Many of her most popular painting were of flowers, but she created many other paintings – skulls, desert landscapes, missions. She painted abstracts, used bright colors, focused on a small part of the whole. Her paintings are infused with her spirit, they are not a duplicate of what she saw. She broke many rules of the art world she lived in, but had the fearlessness and independence to paint in her unique style. Examine a website or book of O’Keeffe’s paintings. Then apply her painting philosophy to any art medium you wish to explore. Dare. Be different. Make up your own rules. How does this freedom affect your attitude towards art in general, your process, your end product?
  • Make  space in your life for the appreciation of beauty. Does a cluttered environment obstruct a basket of flowers or the gleaming hardwood floors in your home? Does a cluttered schedule take precedence over an impromptu stop to listen to the early morning cacophony of birdsong or watch clouds float across the sky?

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Bo Mackison is a photographer and owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC.  Bo is creating a deck of Desert Wisdom Cards for self-exploration and discovery using her photography and the Sonoran Desert theme – its myths and stories, cultures and history, and the desert’s remarkable natural beauty and resources.

Filed Under: Art of Healing, Desert Wisdom, Photography Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Quest – A Desert Wisdom Card

March 20, 2013 by 10 Comments
Rocks - Desert Wisdom Card

A Path of Rocks ©2013 Bo Mackison

If we are spiritual beings on a human path rather than human beings who may be on a spiritual path . . . then life is not only a journey but a pilgrimage or quest as well. When we experience sacred moments it often is not so much a matter of outer geography but of finding soulful places within ourselves.  ~ Jean Shinoda Bolen in Crossing to Avalon

The QUEST photograph is of a rocky trail in the back canyons of Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument.

While walking this trail, I quickly lost sight of the gravel road and ramada near the trail head. It was as if I had entered a wilderness region, far away from civilization. There was evidence of footprints, but at no time did I meet or pass any other hikers. Then, without much warning, clouds gathered and skies darkened with threatening storm.

After I’d ascended one side of the mountain and then descended into the back canyon, I found a large boulder to rest upon. The rising mountains, the canyon arroyo, the cactus and other desert plants offered signs of life, but it was eerily silent in the early afternoon.

Each well-considered question can lead to a whole universe of wisdom, because one insight leads to another as the answers come.  ~ Evan T. Pritchard

It was a sacred space, a place to take in the surrounding natural world and consider my place in the grand scheme of things. In the deep silence, I listened deeply as I considered recent paths on my life journey.

A quest can include travel to a sacred place or it can be an inner experience.

It is a time to stop and listen, ask questions, discern answers.

The great thing in this world is not so much where we stand, as in what direction we are moving.
~ Oliver Wendell Holmes

QUEST offers these questions/options for journal prompts, creative activities, and calls to action:

  • What lessons might be learned when traveling on a rocky path? What questions might be asked while on a quest?
  • While looking at the photograph, visualize climbing the first rocky step and consider a challenge you are facing.  Then while climbing the rest of the steps, think of a positive action you can take as you climb ever higher.
  • Consider planning a pilgrimage to a sacred site, a place that has personal spiritual significance. This might be a historical church or other place of worship, a shrine, a labyrinth, a historical site, a quiet garden setting. Plan an activity for the visit – take photographs, make a pencil or watercolor sketch, create a scrapbook page, write a journal entry or pen a few lines of poetry.

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Bo Mackison is a photographer and owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC.  Bo is creating a deck of Desert Wisdom Cards to provide a focus and a framework for reflection, to encourage a connection with nature, using a Sonoran Desert theme – its myths and stories, cultures and heritage, and the desert’s remarkable natural beauty and resources.

Filed Under: Art of Healing, Desert Wisdom, Photography Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Play – A Desert Wisdom Card

March 17, 2013 by 8 Comments
Pottery Jackrabbits, Playing

Jackrabbit Wisdom – Play © 2013 Bo Mackison

If you stuff yourself full of poems, essays, plays, stories, novels, films, comic strips, magazines, music, you automatically explode every morning like Old Faithful. I have never had a dry spell in my life, mainly because I fill myself so well, to the point of bursting. I wake up early and hear my morning voices leaping around like jumping beans. I get out of bed to trap them before they escape.
~ Ray Bradbury

I love the set of music-making, playful pottery jackrabbits.

I imagine them jumping around, creating joyful notes, all improvisation, unpredictable and original. I even hear a  stream of hoppy, happy notes.

I also love the idea of Ray Bradbury joyfully filling himself with words and music, comedy and rhythm, until he is bursting. He is so full that he wakes early each morning, ready to capture the leaping thoughts and joyful words. What an image — the power of play, so inspiring that it fills the creative well.

This is the real secret of life — to be completely engaged with what you are doing in the here and now. And instead of calling it work, realize it is play. ~ Alan Wilson Watts

I love this set of music-making jackrabbits, pottery critters that I found at a folk art market in Southern Arizona. These funny little critters make me laugh. I imagine them jumping around, creating joyful notes, all improvisation, unpredictable and original. I imagine a stream of hoppy, happy notes filling the air.

I also love the idea of Ray Bradbury joyfully filling himself with words and music, comedy and rhythm, until he is ready to burst. He is so full that he wakes early each morning, ready to capture his leaping thoughts and joyful words. What an image — the power of play, so inspiring that it fills the creative well.

This is the real secret of life — to be completely engaged with what you are doing in the here and now. And instead of calling it work, realize it is play. ~ Alan Wilson Watts

PLAY offers questions/reflections for journal writing, art, and a call for action:

  • Consider these journal prompts: What wisdom do the jackrabbits offer? When is my work play? When is my play work?
  • How can I incorporate play in my life as a daily practice? Jot down a few ideas of play that requires no set-up, no special equipment, only a few minutes of time in between other activities.
  • While chalkboard chalk is becoming a thing of the past, sidewalk chalk is easy to find. What might you do with a box of colored chalk? The obvious — drawing pictures on sidewalks — is great fun, and since expectations are minimal, you can easily lose yourself in this expressive process. Add an uplifting message. Write a famous quote or a few lines from a favorite poem. Add an observation. The options are endless.

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Bo Mackison is a photographer and owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC. She plays while she creates her series of Desert Wisdom Cards and then she plays with the cards.

Filed Under: Art of Healing, Desert Wisdom, Photography Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Towards Nonexistence

March 13, 2013 by 10 Comments
Organ Pipe Cactus

A Tumble of Cactus © 2013 Bo Mackison

”Like homeopathic medicine, the essence of wabi-sabi is apportioned in small doses. As the dose decreases, the effect becomes more potent, more profound. The closer things get to nonexistence, the more exquisite and evocative they become. Consequently to experience wabi-sabi means you have to slow way down, be patient, and look very closely.”
~ Leonard Koren in Wabi-Sabi for Artists, Designers, Poets & Philosophers

I took dozens of photographs of organ pipe cacti last week. It was a major preoccupation while I was camping at Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument. I found a few specimens that were perfect to the discerning eye – not an easy feat when a cactus typically stands  8 to 10 feet high, the older ones reach heights twice that size. Each has eight to fifteen stems, though some of the ancient giants have twenty or more.

It was not the symmetrically formed, unscathed cacti that captured most of my attention. I loved the cacti that had character, the ones marked with scars and age . . . and great beauty. Desiccated arms tangled with vibrant greens and golden greens. New buds of growth twisted around aged skeletons.

Two Stems - Organ Pipe Cactus

Two Stems  ©2013 Bo Mackison

I loved the cactus that carried marks of its challenges with below freezing temperatures or prolonged cold spells. Indentations on the stems are the result of the freezing and death of vulnerable tissue on the stem ends.

When new growth appears, the plant is marked by circular strictures on the pipes. These cactus have gone through hardships, and survived, marked by the challenges of life in a harsh environment. The bumpier an organ pipe cactus, the more battles it has met with climate at the northern reaches of its habitat.

Stages of Life, Organ Pipe Cactus

Stages of Life © 2013 Bo Mackison

This photograph is a Southwest version of photo I took in Wisconsin exploring the same concept – the presence of both life and death in a plant.

A walk through this small part of the Sonoran Desert – mostly in Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument and its adjacent areas in south-central Arizona – offers the only opportunity to see these unique cactus giants in the United States. This small micro-habitat offers the only chance for survival of these warmth-loving plants. Many more grow in the warmer climes of Sonora Mexico.

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Bo Mackison is a photographer and owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC. I continue my exploration of whole and fragments, of extra-ordinary and ordinary.

Filed Under: Photography, Travel Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Layers of Wilderness

March 12, 2013 by 6 Comments
Southwest Layers

Canyon Layers © 2013 Bo Mackison

Listen to your life.
See it for the fathomless mystery that it is . . .
Touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart
Of it because in the last analysis all moments are key moments
and life itself is grace.
                                          ~ Frederich Buechner

Traveling.

Silence is so loud, all of my senses on alert. Bees buzzing in pockets of blooming brittlebush, yellow blossoms swollen with pollen laden landing strips. They buzz my head when I lean in for a closer look.

I take in the spectacle. Cactus with upturned octopus arms stretching towards the sky, mighty saguaro of cartoon fame. Rocks bleeding rusty reds and oranges. I greet these ancients on their sacred ground. I, the newcomer, stare and gawk and take snapshots to send home.

Town is twenty-five miles north – four concrete block houses, an RV park dwarfed by rows of fifty year old palm trees, Shady Palms it’s called. Two gas stations. A faded sign at Edith’s Rock Shop advertises cheap crystals and polished gems.

There’s a diner, Grandma’s Cafe. A border patrol truck, white with the familiar green stripe, is angle parked at the entrance. I eat what the locals eat – bean burritos for breakfast, hot tortillas just flipped on the griddle, strong coffee.

Formica tables and folding chairs fill the room. And a maple dining set, table with two leaves, eight matching chairs, a bouquet of plastic roses centered on a doily. It’s the only available table, yet no one sits there.

The newspaper is a six page shopper with a few local items – a music benefit for a kid with leukemia, a Saturday night BBQ at the church in Ajo, ads for health care and Mexican insurance.

Coke and bottled water pack the refrigerated case, two bucks a bottle if you want something cold to drink. This is the desert.

The cook is Marjie, she’s the waitress, cashier, the owner, too. The regulars ask about her newest grand-baby, Jesus, her fifth, the first boy. “Born at midnight” she says, “Five pounds, six ounces. Already he’s a screamer. Aye yi yi.”

She half-smiles when I offer my congratulation, then balances a tray of dirty dishes half on her hip, hums with the radio static as she disappears into the kitchen.

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Bo Mackison is a photographer and owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC. She explores the whole and the fragments, the extra-ordinary and the ordinary.

 

 

 

 

 

Filed Under: Photography, Travel Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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