Dappled Shade

Photography is love and light made visible.

~Karen Hutton

I had no idea how much I loved dappled shade until I began to explore light much more consciously through my photography studies. And, in those studies, not until I began to come across teachers who are expansive enough, who see beyond the stifling dogma of traditional photography, rejecting rules of all shapes and sizes in order to arrive at what's truly important: what you love, what turns you on, what lights you up. 

So to speak; no pun intended.

There is a tiny space in my already tiny garden. It might be no more than twelve inches square. It sits between a birdbath and a wall under a weeping Japanese Maple that is planted in a half barrel. I noticed recently how often and for how long I stare at that little space of earth during certain times of day while sitting out there, something so arresting about it. Mostly shade but some speckles of light filtering in through the dense canopy of the beautiful little tree onto the foliage that lives beneath it. Then a few days ago I drove by a house with irises planted under a big evergreen and instantly hung a u-turn. There they were, tall bearded beauties of several colors regal in shade highlighted by snippets of the passing sun. And then yesterday, walking around where I live looking for things to photograph I spotted two pure white landscape rosebushes in a deserted corner, yes, beneath a tree. Bursting with pure alabaster petals mostly in shade except where the sun lit pieces of its petals. I took picture after picture and then went back again for more.

Suddenly I remember how I loved sitting out in my sister's dappled shade garden when we used to visit her years ago at a former house. I would sit in the swing, book open but forgotten on my lap, just watching, mesmerized by the way morsels of light would catch on the hostas and ferns, the soft pink astilbe, the yellow and white columbine. The way I could disappear into it, forgetting every care and worry. And when the trees swayed in a gentle breeze, the way the flecks of light danced as if in their own joyous wonder. 

It's not lost on me that I could describe my experience of life right now as living in dappled shade. Mostly shaded but with unexpected spots of surprisingly brilliant light.

And I don't mind. I relish it actually. Because when you've lived in the full-on shade of depression, when you've experienced a John of the Cross-type dark night of the soul that like Jonah and the whale swallows you whole, when you've known intimately so much trauma, when it seems that each time you've gotten yourself up and dusted yourself off, ready to have a real go at life again only to discover that life has other ideas, when you never know when grief will snatch you again or for how long, you welcome even those little pinpricks of light. You open your arms to them, really, you run to them like a lost lover, you gather them to you because you know what it's like to live years without them, you know the numbness, the pain, the heaviness, the broken heartedness. 

Also it's not as though dappled shade is the runner up, the place to sit and wait for the return of the full blast of afternoon sun. Not in the least. It is a destination of its own, the winner pure and simple if that is what draws you in, if it touches you, moves you, soothes, uplifts even. If the play of shadow and light gets you, if you find awe, if you love the epiphany of it, if your breath catches at the way the sun unexpectedly paints the center of a petal or the tip of a tender bud, the lacy edges reaching toward it, illuminating it as though from within, wow; if you can feel the magic, feel if not see all the little garden sprites, the fairies and the gnomes scurrying about, the indescribable essence, well, what an incredible gift. 

More than that is the fact of light itself. How, as Leonard Cohen wrote and sang, it's the cracks that allow it in. The same way the cracks in the heart allow the love in; and then out again. Dappled shade is nothing if not a canopy filled with cracks. Light and love; love and light. Darkness cradles light in its tender hands. Light needs darkness the same way that darkness needs light; one without the other, the yin without the yang, simply cannot exist. All that is born, is born of the primordial darkness. Nowhere does light shine more brilliantly than in the dark, nowhere; just think of the candle burning in a bright room and then think of that same candle's flame in the dark, how it fills the space with its holy essence, its pure radiance. 

Light and love, love and light.

Thank you, Karen Hutton

Thank you to all women who are the rule-breakers, 
candles in the dark~
for your hearts
your intuition,
your knowing, your courage,
your wisdom.

💗