Jodhpur – Love in the Spaces

The Circle Game

Some might look at this photo and see a single glowing peacock. Pavo cristatus. I can’t speak for the muster of peahens who paused to watch him that August day in Jodhpur, but it’s the countless circles which mesmerized me.

The magician’s swoosh as he vogues, a whisper of downcast bright blue irises. The multi-eyed lifting wave he’s created with closely spaced smaller circles at his display’s bottom layer: a Cupid’s bow being drawn from the straight edge of shadow underneath, or a garden snake? I see the deep greens and blues in which I’ll always feel my missing piece still soaking in the sun.

Now the circles are beckoning me back.

The circle that recently closed for my siblings and me and our families has taken the wind out of me for longer than I would have imagined, deepening winter’s already enduring darkness.

Maybe I’m drawn to the circle’s immortality. Or that’s it’s unbroken. A wedding ring. Gold-dusted green eyes echoed in a child. The planetesque orb formerly known as Pluto.

Offerings in Udaipur. Stars within circles among the wares in Marrakesh. Concentric mosaic circles at St. Mary’s Church in Dublin, Ireland.

Slightly off-center rings around a tree’s perfectly-shaped young core; the algebraic drama of a bright lemon flower’s singular souls. The gentle hills and valleys in bullet glass.

Half of a perfect circle reflected against a hull at sunset. The bumpy segmented layers which peel away to an onion’s solid spherical center. Trees reflecting inside a cylindrical silver tube at high noon.

A sousaphone reflecting rings of past and present. A ship’s wheel’s perfect geometrical symmetry.

Harry Chapin’s All my Life’s a Circle and Joni Mitchell’s The Circle Game were among the first songs my guitar teacher taught me. She leaned far more towards folk than blues. So did I, back then. Before I found John Hiatt and Circle Back. When I had much less to circle back to, and before I fully understood that much circling back is neither smoothly accomplished nor voluntary. Before I realized how easily it can involve degrees of descent into nightmare. The algos of pain more than the nostos of yearning to come home again.

Practically speaking, I can’t turn back time. But lens artists have the power to tame the boundless circles which demarcate our days and nights: the impossibly bright orbs of fire and flares which we gaze directly upon at our peril. For now, we flatten them into gentle white-gold circles coaxing our skies in and out of peacock blue on this side of Paradise.

Tell me Why….

“Tell me why….”

The generic three words appear in countless songs. Today, I happen to hear them in a (no-longer) boy band’s lyric. Improbably, that particular earworm began burrowing before the turn of this Century.

The tone and cadence in asking for an explanation of “why,” as with most communication, is important. It can be calmly delivered, or beseeching–even a crie de couer.

It can be inquisitive, and take us back to the wonders of the world as they begin to catch our young children’s attention outside infancy’s cocoon.

“Why is the sky blue?“

“Why do manta rays leap above the ocean?”

It can express the joyful wonder and bottomless despair of other unanswerable questions and pleas for explanation.

“How could I have been so lucky to spend this life with you?”

“Why him?”

I’ve taken on the task of picking out a portfolio of ten photographs I most want to share, and the more formidable challenge of explaining my choices. I realized after selecting them that I took most of them while I was alone, at least among humans. The few exceptions were taken in countries and on continents far from my assorted homes.

Above, an Icelandic pony was perfectly framed among lenticular clouds as the sun started to drop in Aukerie. I treasure revisiting the peace and beauty and even the pure air of that day.

I was completely alone in Southwest Harbor for this astonishing sunset on Mount Desert Island. Acadia National Park was a very special place for my late husband and for our children as they grew. It took quite awhile for me to be able to travel by myself and be able to recapture more joy than melancholy there. I felt my husband’s presence as I took this picture, as I do every time I look at it.

An extraordinary ordinary palm frond towered above me, and calls me back to a cool night with regal birds milling all around. In the unseen background, the High Atlas Mountains formed ribbons of snow atop vivid blue peaks.

Each sunrise moment is an ephemeral work of art, there for us to keep and share and revisit in a photograph.

A return to deep greens and blues. . . . In New England’s coldest days, I can still feel the warmth and wonder of walking along a field filled with peacocks in Rajasthan, India.

From the same spot in Newcastle, New Hampshire, one can see two lighthouses in two states, and endless permutations of light. This is one of my favorite glimpses of dawn.

A juvenile Kingfisher was my companion for sunset at the Artichoke Reservoir, a hidden jewel in Essex County, Massachusetts. The photo brings me peace; I remember how the sight helped me to breathe and settle my soul at a time of frantic medical issues in my family.

I’ve taken countless of Whaleback Lighthouse from two state’s shores. This one stands alone: without touching the picture’s natural color, it looks to me like a silkscreen print of sunrise.

A snapshot in a butterfly garden in Western Massachusetts preserved a butterfly taking flight, and the rich colors of a tropical forest in a distant part of the world.

A single water lily… on a glorious day spent on another continent with one of my daughters. The simple shot carries me back to her, and to the sun and golden birds outside an ancient fort and museum in Jodhpur, the Blue City.

And I am sneaking in one more photo, the last I was able to take of the beloved and protective faithful companion of a sterling neighbor who contributed so much to every part of the world he occupied, and will be profoundly missed after leaving all too inexplicably soon. His handsome dog passed only weeks later, to join him in another view of such earthly wonders.

New Worlds

One of my children has coaxed me to parts of the world I never otherwise would have occupied. Even her father’s spirit of adventure and powers of persuasion had their limits, and I would happily have stayed home in New England if he had lived to be able to visit the countries to which her studies took her.

My new world , thanks to my daughter, has included desert adventures, peeking through stone windows from ancient forts on three continents, a pink city and a blue one, and paired pigeons atop a golden fort.

I spent a nearly sleepless sojourn with her in this planet’s oldest continuously inhabited city. There, I watched the sun rise into sopping August air over the Ganges, which had flooded the ghats–along with the first floor of the building we occupied. With her, I’ve circumnavigated an active volcano and an entire country, and bobbed in a blue lagoon under lime ribbons of northern light.

*Bal Samand Lake Palace, Jodhpur, Bhojpur-Pervanchal*

My early morning adventures have included a stint approximating a wedding photographer at the aptly named Peacock fountain in Jodhpur. At the Bal Samand Lake Palace, I snapped photos of a dazzling peacock and pea-hen. I have no doubt they would have answered to Romeo and Juliet, had I spoken their language.

I had never seen some of the glorious color combinations we found everywhere we looked. Silky brandied ruby water buffaloes against pure purple. Marigold and neon pink seeming to leap above neighboring baby blue. Vivid scarlet-beaked lemon-lime canaries glancing down from the world’s tallest minarets at Qutb Minar in Delhi.

I often have thought about parents’ roles in sheperding young children. But it is my children who have taught me, and taken me out into the greater world, time and time again.

Their father would be delighted.

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