Sunflower No. 1 ~ Late Summer 2009
Once again I travel no further than my own front yard to capture this image of a sunflower shedding its pollen. Searching the world over for something that is already there creates a sense of hopelessness, like searching for the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, because it (whatever the search is for) is never there.
Someone once said, “No matter where you go, there you are!” In the end there is no escape from the self, there is just hiding behind ego. I have learned to look closely at what is local, what surrounds me in the moment. By focusing on that which is now I find that for which I am looking.
It seems so paradoxical that a search of this type may be limited to what is in one’s own neighborhood. When I look at a macro picture of everything the picture blurs the boundaries into the same. I am deprived of the unique, the distinctive, that which contributes to the whole yet is not the whole. Looking at what surrounds me brings me to a place of serenity, of tranquility that cannot be found if I am trying to balance everything or fit everything into a nice, neat package. Learning to appreciate the difference is, it seems, a way of suggesting a larger universe comprised of diverse elements surviving in a completely random predictable universe.
Opening up to the wildly diverse makeup of the world that surrounds me creates possibilities for reaching out in a response-able manner to the world around me, to become a positive force actively repelling the negative.
The Sunflower No. 1 ~ Late Summer 2009 by Roger Passman, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
