Let's Play
considering play in times of loss and transition
This is the last May we’ll be in this house with these flowers looking at this scene.
Goodbye Stories surround us.
So I keep going to the garden, inhaling the wonder of it…
and feeling that ever-present tension between creation and entropy.
Was this really all grass eight years ago?
In my fatigue and sadness I forget that at another time I had the energy to create this space, motivated by a longing to do everything in my power to build homes for all those creatures seeking refuge.
In fact, it was I seeking refuge among the plants, thinking that maybe, just maybe, I/we could re-imagine what’s possible.
Lungwort appears in the strangest places. Some people think it’s a weed, the way it spreads. I’m in love with the spotted leaves and delicate flowers and am grateful for it.
How, I wonder, can I carry this spirited cacophony with me?
So a few days ago, I started to play…and considered what these flowers would look like on my wedding dress…a perfect blank ‘canvas’ for all that these plants and this place represent.
And I ‘danced’ with the flowers and this dress, which, like our house and our our life, no longer fits.
Then the wind blew…
and the flower petals dispersed on the lawn…
…and I went for a walk to my favorite tree on the top of Balch Hill…
…and photographed my walking boots on the grass…
…and noticed that marvelous mixing of green and yellow and purple and remembered this scene I’d witnessed just hours before, where creeping phlox, forget-me-nots and froths of Fothergilla (witch-alder) played together.
Play. It’s all about remembering to play, to, according to the Cambridge Dictionary, spend time doing an enjoyable or entertaining activity.
How else can we find softness in this edgy and tension-filled world?
Play has been a central theme in the Re-Imagining Loss & Grief Practice Group I’m facilitating through the Kinship Photography Collective Between Bodies project.
As we learn to live with our various losses, we’ve been considering what it feels and looks like to lean into our grief and ‘play’ with it…make it a companion as opposed to something that needs to be overcome.
Because we are all photographers, our cameras are the playmates who invite us to ‘grapple’ with our losses with a curiosity that often leads to joy.
What brings joy and entertains varies, person to person. For me, the best kind of play is that unplanned seduction of a thing, whether an idea, a place or an activity, when I lose myself and ‘doing’ becomes ‘being’ and I am in full communion with the moment…as I am now, sequencing these particular images and thinking about them as part of something larger than themselves…
So even as I consider these fleeting moments, each flower fading just as it blooms, I imagine the endless narratives yet to unfold based on the cultivation of this place, narratives that will contain the most love when they come from a place of play.
May you find some moments to play, losing yourself in whatever brings you joy. It’s a wondrous antidote to grief.
Who knows where these plants and these images will take us, but thank you, as always, for playing in this space with me.
With gratitude for you being you,
Lyn
