So, as a lifelong maker, and borderline hoarder, I’ve always loved collage – I had bags and folders and boxes full of magazine clippings, shreds of wrapping paper, bits of ribbon, stickers, stamps. Anything shiny, sparkly, or pretty, like a crow crossed with a rat.
Since I moved to Colombia with nothing but a backpack, (and are magazines even a thing anymore?) I haven’t been able to play with collage.. until now. I recently discovered digital collage, and what I do have is a Photoshop subscription, and a ton of bookmarks to sites with images in the public domain that I can go nuts with. And zomg I am addicted now – I have visions of collages popping up in my mind’s eye nonstop, and access to virtually anything I need online or in my own photos to create it.
This is one of my first – the end screen of a short video I created for today that features part of a poem from the book Echoes of Memory by the late, great John O’Donohue for his mother:
‘Beannacht’
On the day when
the weight deadens
on your shoulders
and you stumble,
may the clay dance
to balance you.
And when your eyes
freeze behind
the grey window
and the ghost of loss
gets into you,
may a flock of colours,
indigo, red, green
and azure blue,
come to awaken in you
a meadow of delight.
When the canvas frays
in the currach of thought
and a stain of ocean
blackens beneath you,
may there come across the waters
a path of yellow moonlight
to bring you safely home.
May the nourishment of the earth be yours,
may the clarity of light be yours,
may the fluency of the ocean be yours,
may the protection of the ancestors be yours.
And so may a slow
wind work these words
of love around you,
an invisible cloak
to mind your life.
20 years ago I attended my first psychotherapy conference: the New York Center for Jungian Studies’ annual Jung in Ireland conference on the Connemara Coast. It was one of the most magical times I’ve ever had in my life. John O’Donohue was one of the presenters, and although I can’t remember what his presentation was about, I do remember being rapt, enthralled by this presence: the calm, gentle, strong, confident presence of someone who knows who they are and why they’re here. Someone committed to parting the veil to offer a glimpse of the radiant, pure, golden-white light of Love and Truth, the Beauty in both, and an invitation, because this ‘magic’ is available to every single one of us, all the time, for all time.
Happy St. Patrick’s Day!
