Garden Grief: Transitions

When we write we are always on the lookout for smooth transitions from one space on the page to another. We look for these movements in the writing of others, we look for these spaces in films, and we hear them in music. Transitions are all around us everyday and transitions are a way of life whether we like it or not.

PNCA: Pacific Northwest College of Art. 

This process appears over and over again throughout our lives: when we design our gardens, when we move across the country for a new job, or as in my current case, when we design our hopes and dreams into achievable goals. 

I've been moving more and more into re-designing my life again and I am looking at how to better transit in the days ahead to where I need to go. 

Floral Still (2012), Teresa Christiansen.

For me, I find that the space I return to again and again when I am in this frame of mind is the world of art. In it, I am able to find the peace and the calm I need to look deeper into my own grief. I am a happy person and art give me hope.

Enchanted Modernist (from the Botanical series), 2011, Kavin Buck. 

Since losing my garden is something I'm still grappling with, I have found that looking at works of floral art, or anything connected to the natural world in an artificial art gallery way, is enough to calm me down and this has helped me with my most recent decisions.

Together Forever (2012), Rachael Allen.

As I walked around the galleries at the art school, this piece was my favorite that evening. The idea of the clay mud and sticks appealed to me and it made me dig down deeper into myself and recall a time when I was inspired by love. 

Umatilla National Forest (2010), Melanie Potter.

Though not the best photo of this image, the forest being there surprised me a bit but I welcomed it. My lives overlapping on the walls of an art show made me feel the silence and warm sunshine on the bare shoulders I imagined having in my mind. Next summer I would be there.

It was nice to see artists returning to nature, and I know that this is always something that's done since it's between the city and the land that we find ourselves.

I'll be transiting soon, past my walls, past my garden, and I will be content to find myself. This journey I've been on will be coming full-circle and and within I think that the message will finally be that I am whole now, that I know myself better than I'd imagined, and that from hand will spring that which I will harvest in the future.