Beespeaker is on Instagram, and a Personal Loss

I have finally figured out how to post images on Instagram without owning a cell phone or ipad. And then moments after I posted my first images, I got news that one of my dearest friends had died suddenly.

It's like the experts say, I was absolutely in denial. Even this morning, the reality of what her death means to me has not fully penetrated the surface of my heart. That would be too much pain at once. Instead we let the truth in by fits and starts. Grieving takes its own time and you break down at odd moments. When you're eating peach crisp at a diner and you just wish you were sharing it with her. When you're grieving, you're eating for two.

Her voice is very much alive in my head: eating, shopping walking alongside me

John O'Donahue said we must create a raft of words to help the dead pass over. I will create a raft of images.

Donna, we love you so very much.

"You belong among the wildflowers."

--Tom Petty

Of Macro and Miracles

 

Sometimes when you find a new friend, it's like a miracle. It's like a new piece of your life shifts, falls into place and somehow allows you to move more easily in the world. It's a mitzvah. There are many things that have brought new friends into my life: art, food, and bees and when all three of these favourite passions of mine come together it's a case of triple happiness. So it is with my new friend and colleague, J. G.

Through her generosity there are new colours in my life and a new way of seeing the world. OMG, it's MACRO!!!!!!

I gave her SLR with its macro lens a twirl today in the afternoon light. Of course, most of my pics were out of focus, but even the soft photos revealed new things about flowers I didn't see before. I am falling even more deeply in love with plants as a result of seeing them from this point of view. It's the velvety textures, the soft vulnerable sexuality of plants, the bold drama of nectar guides that I could barely see before. I can hardly contain my excitement and fear this may create in me a new form of paraphilia--macro erotica!

Can you see it? Can you feel the love?

I am losing some of the sharpness in my vision (partly from age, partly from what happened when I gave birth) so being able to suddenly bump up that capacity feels like a miracle. It makes me want to eke out every moment of the dying light of a November afternoon, my face buried deep in the nectaries of flowers and the crevices of kale.