Black Beauty Modern Hanging Art Mobile from Mark Leary Designs

Mobiles: Black Beauty and The Classic

  

On (in)sight

“It’s true,” said bear, “some things must be seen to be believed.”

“But other things, my dear, must be believed if you ever hope to see them.”

Thoughts while making
“Your eyes will never adjust.” That’s what the guide said. So I waved my hands in front of my face. I squinted. I opened and closed them. But all was black.

Black like night, like pain, like endless space. Black like ash after fire, and fear. Black like ink, like curiosity, like possibility.

It took my breath, and held it; an uneasy feeling it is to so completely lose one’s orientation, to be unable to tell what is and is not, where one begins, and ends.

I found myself there quite by accident, pulling off the side of the road the night before, and camping next to an airfield. I woke at the base of the Guadalupe Mountains of southeast New Mexico, my bare feet digging into the already-warm sands of the Chihuahuan Desert.

I remember lying there in that early morning, watching two crows, Corvus brachyrhynchos, lifting and dipping just above me on unseen currents of air. They were circling one another endlessly, painting the sky ancient and happy on whispered feathers black and sun sparked.

The Carlsbad Caverns are a magnificent testament to time and persistence; the power of great tectonic upheavals as well as the might of small, yet consistent actions over the millennia – no matter what was happening on the surface.

When the guide turned off the lights, he told us that – since we were in belly of a cave where no light could penetrate – our eyes would never adjust. “With even the hint of light, you can eventually see; but here where there is total darkness never.”

Being in the dark can be disorienting. And sometimes we wonder if there will ever be light. Yet as I stood there uneasy, those two black birds flew gently into my thoughts. And I could see them as clearly as I saw the sun rise that morning. And I felt light and giddy as they lifted me on their wings, my body left behind, soaring on golden currents.

Light is a funny thing, isn’t it? Often found by quieting ourselves in the dark. Where will you allow even a hint of it to penetrate today?