There is nothing like a pure moment in time.
When you are fully aware of the grass beneath you, and the wind that touches your skin, seems to move through you, and that exhale, and that ripple of the water as a bird cries, and all those dim outer noises on the horizons.
Pure moments are magic.
I sometimes wish to gather them up like butterflies in a net, and study them in this-here glass jar - this blank space which I can fill with my words and pictures and ideas.
Others, too, have felt that longing to capture a pure moment, and I empathise. In fact, I idolize. Above all, I pay homage to the paintings of Monet...
MONET
“To me the motif itself is an insignificant factor; what I want to reproduce is what lies between the motif and me… Other painters paint a bridge, a house, a boat.. I want to paint the air in which the bridge, the house and the boat are to be found - the beauty of the air around them, and that is nothing less than the impossible.”
NYMPHAEAS
The lotus and the water lily are symbolic of the true nature of things. Their seeds may sit in mud, till a rain forms that mud into a creek, and then they will emerge, rising from the murky waters to bloom in all their glorious transcendence.
In the Hindu and Buddhist lines of thought, these flowers represent the ascension of the self to enlightenment, and the cycles of life, and of the natural rebirthing of nature. A blooming lotus or lily is an awakening of energy.
IMPRESSIONS OF GIVERNY
Shade, cold and damp under willow leaves
between the water
on top of my skin
and in the darkest recesses of the lake
caught in weeds,
promising that night will fall.
Now dappled, among the flowers and over
a small bridge
the air lifting it, placing it down only for a second
on the tips of the clematis.
A million whisperings,
gravel rustlings.
Birds and a dog barking,
skimmed over the surface
like a glance of a window from
the far off distance.
And the sun on the water, making the clouds dance
between bright sparks
between red, dark, and
pale pinks:
the nodding heads
of the flowers.
“I’ve got it... the Saint Lazare. I’ll show it just as the trains are starting, with smoke from the engines so thick you can hardly see a thing. It’s a fascinating sight, a real dream. I’ll get them to delay the train for Rouen for half an hour. The light will be better then.”
“I have gone back to some things that can’t possibly be done: water, with weeds waving at the bottom. It is a wonderful sight, but it drives one to crazy to try to paint it. But that is the kind of thing I am always a tackling.”
“My only merit lies in having painted directly in front of nature, seeking to render my impressions of the most fleeting effects.”
