September Reflections

September Reflections

 

There is an immense, painful longing for a broader, more flexible, fuller, more coherent, more comprehensive account of what we human beings are, who we are and what this life is for.
Saul Bellow 

 

Every year, when September arrives, I am always reminded how the month so aptly makes me reflect upon what has transpired in my life since the opening days of January. That was when winter served a cold mantle of frost and snow, turning only slightly warmer in the April, making me wait patiently for summer’s late arrival, only to be cut short by the arrival of September and the fall. Do I feel cheated that I didn’t have sufficient number of warm days? Yes, and yet, the unpredictable events that unfolded this year from January to September, have kept me engaged and alert to events unfolding around me.

I found this photograph, taken a few years ago, and it seemed to aptly display the unpredictable and unfolding rhythms of life:   The truncated fronds that escape out of the picture plane; the play of light upon some fronds held within the picture, some in focus and some not; parts of the plant escaping and cut off from view; lastly, the darkened negative spaces, found between the pointed fronds and curly strings offer a counterpoint against some of the hyper-lit surfaces of the plant. I believe that all these factors make a dynamic composition: The photograph is ambiguous, incomplete and yet, these aspects, like life, make the composition dynamic.

Suzanne

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