Monthly Archives: September 2025

RETURNING TO ABSTRACTION, Part 2

I moved to New York City when I was an impressionable 18-year-old and the city was a lot rougher around the edges than it is today. Back then it was also the center for new movements in art. The radical changes that were fomenting aligned perfectly with my intense curiosity about art and philosophy. Conceptual art, performance art, feminist art, land art…each new movement created another sparkling edge of innovation. I had no interest in looking back then, I only wanted to absorb the atmosphere of experimentation in art and living going on around me. It was a heady time and a good time to be young in the city.

My roots were actually more in the prickly texture of green grass than the hard, monochrome surfaces of skyscrapers and pavement. I was lucky to grow up amidst simple pleasures like tulips in bloom and lightning bugs on summer evenings. As much as I reveled in the pleasures of a sophisticated, stimulating city, I never lost this fundamental identification with nature.

I am deeply, deeply in love with the substance of this world we live in, with the pattern of spores on a fern frond, the quickening of a fresh breeze on my face, the whoosh of whale breath floating across the water, and the sweet spring song of a pint-sized wren. It’s enough just to feel the sensations, to notice them. And often enough, I also like to record life’s visual fugues and cantatas with a camera.

Sometimes those art world influences from long ago show up in the images on my computer. A grassy meadow begets an abstraction that barely recalls what caught my eye in the first place. Rock faces, tree branches, plants crushed under a plastic tarp – all are grist for the mill that is my brain, a brain crammed with impressions from a fairly long life.

The earth is growing weary of what humans are doing these days – the climate is wobbling, people are fighting, species are going extinct. This suffering can be hard to face, but we may as well face it: times are very hard for a very large number of beings. This is what has come to pass. Perhaps there’s something you can do, some small act that would honor the pain, though we should probably admit that adding to the pain or ignoring it are often easier. It seems overwhelming, so overwhelming. But small steps may be all we can do now and that may be enough. I’m trying to drop a little beauty into the world, a little beauty that might cause someone to notice the world differently. Paying attention can be revolutionary.

***

1.

*

2.

*

3.

*

4.

*

5.

*

6.

*

7.

*

8.

*

9.

*

10.

*

11.

***

LOCAL WALKS: Winds of Change

Sure, my life has changed,

profoundly –

but life IS change

and reminders of that simple fact

are everywhere.

*

1. Driftwood laughs at me. If only I could be as sanguine about change as this old piece of wood is.

*

2. Kelp would not be kelp without changing tides. Watching the sea tugging on the kelp forest below me feels like what I need. These days, water’s ceaseless motion and hidden depths are especially nourishing. Bodies of water like the sea, a wide bay, or a lake have a mix of movement and constancy that reflects my current emotional state of quick eruptions underlain by a feeling of stability.

*

3. The water draws back like a curtain, revealing shallow tide pools studded with Aggregating anemones, their colors smoothed and intensified by the lens of moving water. I learned recently that these anemones exist in symbiosis with photosynthetic algae. Together, they have evolved a complex, mutually beneficial relationship involving carbon dioxide, oxygen, ultra-violet radiation, and antioxidants. These pretty invertebrates seem to exist peacefully on their rocky substrate, but in fact, Aggregating anemone colonies sometimes attack other colonies of the same species that have a different genetic makeup. Life is not always peaceful…so Lynn, remember: life is change. Don’t ever stop adapting!

*

4. Another day, another beach. Floating on the shoreline, this fragment of life looks to me like an egg-yolk jellyfish but it’s too broken to be sure. Life as a jellyfish, whatever species it was, is over now. I imagine these cells will keep breaking down, nourishing other beings and morphing into other life forms, as surely as the seasons change.

*

5. On a weathered branch that hangs over a bay, Lace lichen breathes with the breeze. Sometimes I find a crystalline bit of clarity in my thoughts, like this clearly defined patch of lichen surrounded by fuzzily out of focus fragments of the whole.

*

6. Last week I hiked a trail on Lottie Point and came to a spot with a view toward Lighthouse Point, where I usually walk. Three years ago Joe and I hiked Lottie Point and sat right here to eat lunch. I remember feeling glad to be sharing it all with him. Around us under the Madrones and Doug firs, little Flat-spurred Piperias (also called Royal Rein orchids) were flowering.

*

7. I found this Flat-spurred Piperia (Platanthera transversa) blooming in a small, compact clearing in the woods near Heart Lake in July. If the sun shines through the long spur behind the flower you might see tiny drops of nectar there, waiting to be sipped. I think enchantment is always available, as long as we release ourselves into its space.

*

Last week a box came to me special delivery. Joe was in it. His body had been transformed into soil over the last 6 weeks. There are many different kinds of soil. They’re all sacred, I suppose.

*

8. This is how I felt last week, buffeted by the winds of change.

*

9. I took a morning walk at Bowman Bay one day and saw this graceful sweep of eelgrass making music on the sand. My eyes were delighted, my camera helped me record the finding, and now…well now the moment is over. But the moment obviously exists now – just look. In fact, past and future only exist in this moment. As I remember the past, as I imagine the future, it’s all in the now. The everpresent, everchanging now. Remembering that is somehow reassuring.

*

10. Sometimes it helps to look at things differently.

*

11. Today Sharon and Richard helped me face the box that came special delivery last week. After opening it, the three of us quietly regarded ten containers of soil, neatly stacked and labeled on the bottom with Joe’s name. They are attractive, medium-sized cylinders covered in a soft green pattern of swirling lines. I carried one with me today as we hiked through the forest. Soon I’ll open it. Maybe.

***

“When I walk alone in nature, I fearlessly entertain the notion that the world is magical and that sensation is the original way to meet it. …When the mind is empty and senses are full, space is made for connection.”

Kevin Lay; My Walking Practice From Deep Times: Vol. 10, Issue 1, March 2025

***