Seeing 2009 (#104)

Two nights ago (December 5, 2009) I was honored to be one of three featured artists at a private home. Roughly forty people took time out of their holiday calendars to attend. One of the artists, Lisa Francesca, presented fantastic collages, sketches, paintings and mixed media; Michelle Padidar gave her very first public reading, a deeply moving autobiographical story of the cultural upheaval she experienced when leaving her native Iran for the United States in the midst of the 1979 revolution. I of course brought some of my images to exhibit.

It was a wonderful and fulfilling soirée. For me Michelle's story was far and away the most memorable and potent part of the evening: we all sat in rapt attention as her harrowing tale unfolded, and before she finished several listeners were in tears. Her story literally touched souls.

It's been like that of late: life passages not always easy to navigate. Last month I was summoned to Arizona in order to eventually ask that my mother be removed from life support; she passed 13 hours later. On my last day of work before embarking on that trip I discovered that one of my colleagues at work - a librarian - had just received news of her father's death that very day . . . this was November 2nd, and she had been planning to travel to her father's bedside on November 4th, as she knew he was gravely ill (and in his 90s). That he passed away before she could say her goodbyes was clearly a difficult blow.

Today, besides being Pearl Harbor Day, was also a day my family and I attended a memorial service for the uncle of a dear friend, a man who died far too young. The services were held in a Catholic church of the Portuguese vein, and so was classically, conservatively and majestically anointed and appointed with multitudes of angels, Saints, and multiple Christs. It was quite beautiful, despite the distressing occasion. The Rosary and Mass, combined with the rather formal offerings of condolences to the man's family members, profoundly evoked the potency of life and death's inseparable, cyclical duality.

Thus tonight's offering: a portrait of somber yet reverent yearning, an image from within the chapel at the St. Francis Retreat Center in the hills above San Juan Bautista. For me this image evokes the grace of acceptance, and depicts the notion that amidst loss and separation there also exists brightness and light in the very fact of living, and beauty drapes our souls even as we grieve.

Reverence (The Graceful Scarf), #4196

(c)2009 James W. Murray, all rights reserved.

(click image for larger version)

Details: August 9, 2009; Canon 20D; f/11 @ 1/20 sec; - 2/3 EV; ISO 400; 55mm.

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