Wednesday, July 3, 2013

Fireflies

I’ve been wondering how to convey the beauty of the fireflies at Cloud in the night.
There were hundreds of them hovering over the fields and pond,
each one flickering every moment or so, forming a brief pinprick of light against the surrounding darkness
Their illumination too slight to capture the lightshow with my camera.

I thought I might search online for images of fireflies, or even a video clip, to capture their drifting, flickering light. But I haven’t tried.
What the camera catches in its eye is not what I perceive through mine.

How to convey the magic? Comprised in part of the mid-night landscape shrouded in fog, and by the gilded light of the moon. Add the croak of a frog, many times over, which to my ear is akin to the twang of the plucked, loose string of an old guitar.

Time is suspended, hung on the thread of a moment, moving – everything here is full of movement – but not progressing. What could be progress from here, from now?

I thought I might try a poem – contrasting the lights and landscape to that of the sprawling city I’ve come from, invoking the poverty of environment we city-bound don’t know that we suffer.

But again, words are inadequate. Only imagination – or experience – will do.

 

5 comments:

  1. Borrow some art supplies from your lady artist friend...Start with a sketchpad, blank paper & draw the fireflies with a pen or pencil...If that looks good you can then colour it in...Your choices are many...From there you can take that & turn it into a painting...You could get some oil pastels & use them to make the finished piece...Watercolours...You can also now draw online...There are many free programs to paint or draw...I use a free one called Paint it's for Mac...If you want to get fancier, you could do a 2d animation using free animation software called Pencil...Blender is 3d animation software which is more involved but also free-you could make an animated movie with it...Or a game...

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    1. Oh, Sari...if only there was more time. Beautiful ideas, though. An animation game?... That's really interesting.

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  2. Ok, I'm going to use that...I think I may do dragonflies though because I am more familiar...In the game!

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  3. "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent", wittgenstein, a zen master, though he was never labelled as such

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