Ripples, Bluegill, and Hendrick's Pond | Modern Hanging Art Mobiles by Mark Leary
“How many ripples will I make?” asked pebble.
“The only way to find out,” said water, “is to dive in.”
Thoughts while making
What comes to mind when you hear the word “ripple”?
For me, it’s a 7-year-old boy with straw hair, bare feet, dirty hands. It’s Hendrick’s Pond in the Scripps Ranch of my childhood. Eucalyptus with slender leaves and branches that creaked as the sun traveled a day.
What comes to mind is a makeshift fishing pole, tiny bread balls formed between small fingers, carefully smushed around a barbed hook. It’s the sound of green black ducks deep in the cattails; the feel of clay and rock and algae between my crooked toes. And that [[[plunk]]] when the line hit the water.
When I hear the word “ripple,” I see a thousand concentric (((circles ))) radiating out from where that hook splashed down; in all directions, one after the other and another; from water to shore, shore to land, land to sky, and back to me.
What comes to mind is the feeling I felt when I saw that flash of a bluegill’s scales, a million cosmic mirrors, an impossible rainbow; the surface of a murky, backwater pond pierced for just a moment by a flash of diamonds, before she returned to the depth: unfooled by my bread balls and hope.
These days, when I hear the word “ripple,” I think of metal. Did you know metal moves when you cut it? You can feel it shrink and swell with the shearers; energy, atoms, a silent vibration between your fingers.
These days when I hear that word, I think of connection, those 1000s of concentric circles, one by one, connecting my hands, my thoughts, to this, to that, and to you, and you to yours, and theirs to theirs, and on and on, and once again back to me.
When I hear the word “ripple,” I think about this field of which we are. And whether water or metal, breath or word, how instant the impact of our actions, our intent, are as they ripple outwardly, inwardly. And this thought fills me with such care, such love, such compassion.
What comes to mind when you hear the word “ripple”?