It's been Fairyland in the woods and fields behind our house over the last few weeks. . .but now the bluebells are beginning to fade, gently curling in on themselves. Soon they will disappear again as mysteriously as first they came. Here, then, are a last few bluebell pictures, a last few moments of lingering enchantment. . . .
I seem to be reflecting on "loss" these days. Why? I'm not entirely sure. Perhaps it's just the fading of the bluebells. Or the tiresome limits of convalescence, reminding me of mortality. It's Howard about to leave the country for a month (whatever will Tilly do without him?), and a dear relative losing his home, and the remaining threads that still tie me to my old desert life beginning to loosen. It's descent and ascent, death and rebirth, winter and spring, the cycles of sun and moon. It's loss and change clearing the ground for whatever new phase of art and life comes next. It's loss and change swaling the landscape of the soul. And so the seasons turn.
The thing is, I'm strangely content right now, though perhaps you wouldn't know it from these recent melancholic posts. Change is never easy, but I like the things change brings: new art, new stories. New beginnings.
To live in this world
you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it
against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.
-- Mary Oliver (from In Blackwater Woods)
