Walking there has been emotional on many days; sitting in a space not my own and untended has allowed a lot of shadow and even pain to emerge in me. This has resonance to some of what has been surfacing that I have not voiced on our calls and in receiving the invitations sometimes.
I want to share with the group some of that experience, and know I will benefit from like-minded 'gardeners' on this process; yet I thought first, instead of just hurling out my story, MY etc., I would like to hear your thoughts and reactions to viewing these images.
(My apologies for the over-exposure in the middle image; my Photoshop program has been corrupted somehow and I am awaiting a replacement version.)
What do you see?
What do you sense in this place?
Does it activate a desire?
How do you imagine you would feel standing there by the river in the brick frame, on the sandy Florida soil, between the loose weeds, in the sun?
abandoned garden along Ortega River, a large tributary off the St. Johns River, one of the few rivers that travels south-north
4 comments:
I see potential.
I sense a possible new beginning to cultivate life.
I have the desire to sit in the middle of it and imagine what I could do with it.
I could imagine feeling the power of creation, the freedom to plant and nurture, and the joy of enjoying the entire process.
Excellent post, Holly. It was a delightful break for me....
Dear Holly,
This is Gilles the Gardener responding. Thanks very much for posting in the first place.
An interesting image came to mind as I looked at your first picture - an image of the three of us (you, I and my friend Jan) walking the labyrinth in Clear Lake, TX, in September of 2005.
I have very sweet memories of this labyrinth, as it expanded my thinking into an horizon of new possibilities...there are four stones in this Clear Lake labyrinth, as you certainly remember -Stonehenge type of stones.
From the center of the labyrinth, before moving back into the Union stage, I could picture myself getting to one of these stones (the north-west stone) and breathing all the possibilities that exist in us human beings...and maybe I have been acting on those possibilities somehow, guided by an unconscious desire to garden; to garden for self and to garden for the earth.
The second thought that came to mind: why do you call this an 'abandoned' garden?
It looks pretty neat to me for a piece of land (a peace of land / a peaceful land) and it looks pretty beautiful as well, constrained that it is within its own borders.
And finally, I am getting curious about the shape of this brick-bordered garden. It seems somehow to resemble a cross, although I cannot clearly see its back end.
It invites me into more questioning, more curiosity for sure, as to what this shape meant to her or his founder (do gardens have gender?), and as to what it means to the rest of us.
A beautiful garden, indeed....
Gilles
Thanks for your comments Gilles and Terry,
I think I sensed how many of our group would see possibility in this image and want to imagine getting in there and make something live and soar....I do love that spirit, that offering....sitting in this space I kept trying to call that up, yet mostly what I felt was grief. A part of land that was built up once by an affluent class (several times on this little mini-pennisula) and now is again left....I think I also felt some relief that there is a visible testimony to what does not "work" and does fall away...I can feel/perceive such a pressure to be positive and hopeful and often that makes me feel as though the discomfort is less validated. I suspect I feel relief as well as that there is an openness, that no plantation owners are circling over this spot any longer, yet a longing too for something more whole and loving to come.
The last 2 years or so I have been wrestling with a lot of frustration, some sorrow...when I got to this garden, the contrast of light pouring down on me with what wasn't/was yet to grow felt very extreme. I have a profound sense that it's not mine, that I have not been invited to help make there, and that it has been left after a time of previous growth and happiness. I guess it's not too much of a stretch to say there's a good deal of personal projection going on, yet I think it's some cultural projection, too, from the stories I hear and carry from the working poor and otherwise "disenfranchised" folks I often work with.
I am personally working a lot everyday with this whole messy web of expectations and experiences that lead me to feel 'abandoned' myself. Much of it has to do with faith and trust. But a good bit of it has just been real and practical, too. I think something really resonates about the openness and fallow period here, and not knowing who will meet or how the re-cultivation will come.
And maybe a kind of soul-honesty that something in me is still blocked/not ready yet for the next growing? Maybe that is the deepest fear/sorrow?
This supposed brick garden, looks to me, as historic monument. Only who's history belongs to that of a humble poverty stuck family. working from what I assume either a plantation, as you've mentioned. Or that of a tiny brick shotgun house outside of the possible vibrant life of the late 19th century city, Jacksonville. Possibilities for this brick outline, encompassing that o scrawny grass and relentless weeds could be agreed as undesirable in any case. However, to me, I see an ominous setting. Hard work, hard life, and perhaps many hard deaths. It's purpose, better yet it's message to me is not of re-growth or the endless beauty that can come from this with change. Rather a message that reminds me of monuments or tombstones, even beware of signs. Its purpose, beauty, and infinite conundrums derive from what its dilapidated brick formed structure impose in your mind. That what happens happens. The evil, the poverty, the pain and sadness. It all happens sometimes with much force, sometimes unexpected. To me, I see humanities mistake, a skeleton for the unjust.
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