There comes a times when we pass into a desert of the mind, where everything becomes bleak, bare, still. For a moment, we stop searching and life comes down to a single, simplified point, a dot, a spot, a fleck, a dab.
This can actually be a very good thing. It is a time for yielding to silence, for freeing ourselves from the ever-fraught frenzy of idea generation, of intellectualizing. We are so often crowded, saturated, overcome by projections, interpretations, anxiety, hype, drama, fear, desolation.
Do words and images and even music stand a chance of evoking, let alone corresponding to, the hidden essence of the world, to the labyrinth of being?
Is artistic creation merely a projection of what we wish were true?
Why bother with projections at all?
Perhaps the desert of the mind is a space for healing.
Now, in mid-February, the secret voice of Nature is slowly making herself heard. Life is stirring everywhere. The bump and hiss of ice flows on the river, the rustling of wind in the freeze-dried golden-brown blossoms of hydrangea bushes, the peeping chatter of birds among the cedar branches, the drip-drop of icicles, the sound of Sun-warmed snow thudding off the roof.
I took the photo at the top of this blog during a visit to the big dunes of the Sahara, near Zagora in Morocco. For me, this photo is a metaphor, capturing the the desert of the mind, just before the spark of renewal lights up our world again.
