Fresh after the holiday, snow dusted down powdery white, an infrequent flyer where I live. It melts into grey slush mush mess within a day, salted rivulets drain unrestrained into sewers. Grab camera and go while it’s fresh, see what I can capture before it’s a mess. I’m off in chilly wind to my favourite haunting ground, this two hundred year old cemetery.
Living in the city really cuts off access to nature, so I take advantage of what I have available, like everyone else that lives here. Cemeteries in the city have a double unspoken function of being a park. This was unusual to me, since where I’m from, that just doesn’t happen, not ever.
HEART I
Walking through the gates, I cut a diagonal path through the snow to this one particular spot with an umbrella branched shrubby tree. Typically, when I shoot in the cemetery, I go in whatever direction my intuition pulls me in. This tree almost always has ornamentation of some kind on it. The headstone for the grave is directly under the branches on one side of the tree.
Arriving at the spot, I had such a shock. The entire tree was decorated in a way I’d never seen before over the years. I didn’t touch the camera. I walked around the entire tree studying the decorations, how they were made, how they were hung, and most of all, what did those gloves spell out? Forget shooting photos. I studied all of it for twenty minutes before I thought of engaging the lens focus, click button action.
L
O
V
E
HEART II
Love is something we all need, something very lacking in this world, especially these days. All too often, people are fast to get their hate train on for anyone, any reason, any time. Let’s go! Let’s fight because you’re not right. You’re not on the same page as me. How dare you be different from the herd in your thoughts, your choices, your way of seeing and being! You see, when you do that, you challenge me, you are a threat to me, my view of the world, and all that I cling to as being “me”.
Put that experience on repeat. I’ve lived it most of my life. I don’t fit the collective societal mind mold well at all and there are enough who get downright hateful and attack me for it. Anyone who does not fit that mold at whatever turns in the road, is targeted by a million or more slices of the knife to force one into the mold.
Yesterday, I was reading @aagabriel’s beautiful post, [I Know It's Over...yet I Think I'm Going Back Nostalgia to Fuel Future Fights, where I came face-to-face with these lyrics from a Morrissey song I’ve listened to hundreds of times:
“It’s so easy to laugh. It’s so easy to hate. It takes strength To be gentle and kind.”
Those four lines capture what’s in my mind. Hate is the easy path. It’s easy to let one’s emotions rule one, rather than one ruling one’s emotions. It’s much more difficult to choose a path of love. As Morrissey expressed, “It takes strength to be gentle and kind”. The strength to walk that way in the world is inside each of us, but only if we choose to look inside to find the path.
I
S
HEART III
Love is bought and sold. Lies are told. Faked affection with misdirection to “love” assumed, costumed in film finery. Manipulative games are played. Lies to self are told and believed. Shiny surfaces reflecting back your projections until the reel vision you hold is worn thin. Your projector fails on that prospect.
You move on and begin the cycle anew. The search for love, to be loved, searching everywhere outside, surely real love is with this person, place, or thing. It’s just a matter of finding the right one, the right place, the right thing. Right? Let me know when you find that person, place, or thing that lasts forever. Do let me know.
What does real love look like?
E
V
E
R
Y
T
H
I
N
G
HEART IV
MAPLE LEAF
“LOVE IS EVERYTHING”
Spelled out in gloves, with mitten heart pauses in a circle. After the last heart space pause, a fingerless glove rested directly over the headstone in such a way that it brushed back and forth across the top in the wind.
Several additional ornaments hung all over the tree, many were hand made. I reflected on the people who created this. The planning. The time. The work. All made for someone long departed from this world. I’ve often wondered who this person was and what they meant to those who remember and celebrate them on all holidays, every year. Such effort for someone who cannot reciprocate, cannot answer, and is no longer among the living.
No other gravesite in the cemetery is adorned in this elaborate manner. I marveled at the expanse of love expressed with these rituals. Love given freely, minus expectations, minus demands of any kind. A deceased human being isn’t going respond to that. If love can be given unconditionally to the dead, why can’t we do that with each other while we are alive? Real love does not come with strings attached demanding that one must be a certain way in order to receive that love, regardless of the type of relationship.
What stops us from loving others freely without conditions?
GOLDEN REFLECTION
All photos taken by Nine with a Pentax digital 35mm camera and 90mm Tamron macro lens.
@aagabriel’s beautiful post, [I Know It's Over...yet I Think I'm Going Back Nostalgia to Fuel Future Fights, where I came face-to-face with these lyrics from a Morrissey song I’ve listened to hundreds of times: