Love Eggs

   There is a dark room in my house that's filled with treasures and junk. It has become a store room for things that once occupied my attentions.  It's filled with things which are waiting for me to do something mysterious with them. At least that's what it feels like when I acknowledge the things that I am.

Love In, Los Angeles, 1968

Some items in my dark room are iconic; I need only glance at them to relive the essence of past experiences. These I call my Soul Treasures.

Making Up

Without thinking, I am inclined to understand that all my things are personal and life-sustaining. That's our culture. We love things. Most of the time it's most difficult to detach from things. That's life.  

Sleeping Alone

Finding this last image recently was a real (suh!) slap-in-the-head for me. I had lost it amongst my junk. I had forgotten that this was one of the first images made during a life long photo theme I called Searching for Anima. 

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Anima Eggs

   In continuing the search for eggs around the ovum that is my home, my eyes and my heart fall upon objects that have mapped a journey toward anima. Amongst the many image objects I find, some lie in storage drawers as prints, others rest in frames on the walls; still others fill my hardrives, while some travel as protons flying about in cyberspace.

Rabiana

I understand that Dante descended into the depths of hell. Having no life in this direction, anima must move from the head to the human heart to be fully acknowledged. It can be, like Dante's journey, a terrible distance to travel.

Amatao (I Love)

Love, too, can be a struggle. But is love a necessary path to discovering anima or animus? When did you first fall in love? With whom and how did it go?  Enraptured like Narcissus, many of us have found the road to completion strewn with boulders and carrion.

Gesture 13

Who does not identify with cave art? Its primitive beauty is as ageless as the Sirens of Desire.

Anima Rising

Now, I cannot confidently say that I have come into my stage of Jungian completion, but sometimes it feels like progress has been made. During times like this, it feels like anima is rising and all is well in the world.

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First Eggs

It's been two weeks since my cardio stress test and I have received a cardio blessing: no reason to cut my heart out for mending purposes.

This news provokes me to look around. I am considering my home as ovum. Thus, my estate is a good place to find evidence of the original egg that I am. (Play along with me and consider the possibilities that You are your own ovum and You are your Things.)

I didn't have to go far to find a 30 year old version of an egg that I can call my own amongst my things. This print was made early in my Searching for Anima series of photographs. The Jungian notion of coming into completion depends upon finding a balance between anima and animus. It is a notion that has sustained me through the years.

We can never be assured that such enlightenment or completion has arrived.  Once found, enlightenment seems to prove itself an illusion of the left brain and the ego. This, of course, is not enough to stop the seeker; in fact, finding and losing enlightenment only fuels the seeking. 

So, I look elsewhere amongst my things. Looking close at hand I recognize clues as to what kind of an egg I am becoming. But what I usually see is the mess that I must eventually clean up.

This picture is not me; it merely points toward me. Of course, this photo cannot present culminating evidence, only small measurements of activities that have supported my search for anima. Oh, yes, she keeps growing, changing, showing new colors and forms.

So here we find ourselves again this morning, starting another day in my home as ovum searching for anima. And all is well!

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In Pursuit of Anima

   All significant crusades must be given descriptive names or titles that can garner the original intentions that launched such endeavors. In Pursuit of Anima was  the phrase I hung around my neck like a banner to encourage my creative efforts in the computer "darkroom". Many times this Anima theme reminded me of my goal and both fruitful and fruitless efforts made in its behalf.

A few years back this print, Amatao, was exhibited in Sarasota at a half-swanky downtown gallery show entitled "I Narcissus".

Amatao is a phonetic Japanese word meaning "I love." For me it carries many nuances of the journey to find love both within and without. The image reminds me of all the misdirected paths I've taken in pursuit of love. It reminds me of the foolish expectations that caused more grief than relief, more emptiness than fulfillment. It reminds me of being human and imperfect.

Furthermore, this image reminds me that love cannot find a resting place until Narcissus is dealt with. I go along with the Jungians who believe finding your Anima/Animus provides the only relief for a love tortured soul.

Amatao

i narcissus

it's me. it's always been

about me. even when i see

you lying naked on the bed

it is me. always me.

yet, how can i not be you?

you who gives form to light?

you who swims between spheres?

you who bathes in the fundamental

floatingness of i?

gaz

Cave Art

Two caves have long occupied spaces in my head: Plato's Cave from The Republic and the cave paintings of Lascaux, France. I have a fascination for walls.

I gathered the walls below by electronically painting colors and forms, then subjecting them to filtration by mathematical algorithms. The bouncing and bending of light across a sensitive electronic cave wall was captured. I call it my cave. It is now present on your monitor.

The circus show girl is for Sarasota, the circus city where I live. Here she becomes transformed into Anima Muse, a character in my personal mythology. I reversed her colors to negate any smattering of personality imposed by a tonal photo portrait. The colors work well in the cave. Anima Muse vibrates with enthusiasm ... like a cheerleader.