Departed - to the Judgment -
A Mighty - Afternoon -
Great Clouds - like Ushers - leaning -
Creation - looking on -

The Flesh - Surrendered - Cancelled -
The Bodiless - begun -
Two Worlds - like Audiences - disperse -
And leave the Soul - alone -

- Emily Dickinson

An aspect of the creative process that has long intrigued me is the making use of what is at hand. In 2020, with Covid lockdown in place, not eager or able to engage with the world at large, I began an engagement with self by observing and photographing my body from the vantage of the elder I have become.

Suddenly seventy-nine, and in the spirit of nothing to lose and still much to learn, I embarked upon an adventure with my camera and computer. Knowing next to nothing about either technology, I would say that Beginner’s Mind mercifully prevailed. I feel blessed to have been able to experience and sustain the sense of being swept along, entranced long enough for this imagery to emerge and evolve.

While this work is distinctly personal, I trust it speaks to a universality of human experience; what it means to encounter “final verities”; how each of us ultimately grapples with what it is like to relinquish a former flesh and embody a current version of a new, older self. I trust, as well, this work speaks to beyond the body, to the utterly ineffable, where images, perhaps, serve us more meaningfully, more profoundly than words.

Time has been lavishly generous in bestowing change over seventy-nine years. When not confounded by the sheer magnitude and drama of transformation, I am in awe and continue to marvel at the mystery of the metamorphosis at play.