"in the biodiverse Omo River Valley, in the Southwest of Ethiopia, a Kara man collects blooms of desert rose. " May 2020 edition of National Geographic
i sit with these photographs. I think of Acey, collecting Violets. What is this man collecting the blossoms FOR? i am sure. Something akin to Acey and the Violets. But we are here. He is there. and akin has a long stretch of meaning.
so when i post things, that refer to my frame of mind, my frame of mind is not so much at all derived from our concerns here in this country of Amerika. Restaurants, gyms, nail salons, grocery stores. but more about this Planet, where life is very different than here in Northern California. It's been this way…since i was a very young child…..those days in the attic with my grandfather's National Geos….those sunday school times when the missionaries would come and tell us about the heathen children that jesus suffered to come unto him….the flannel boards of that sunday school
how the Diaries Cloth is like my OWN flannel board of Truths
so, please. Don't take it all as some kind of weighty sadness that is new and in need of fixing. It's an OLD love of humanity that is lifelong. An OLD LOVE of how people live in lives so alien to the one i grew up in, live in now. Their Beauty and Dignity and Brilliance that i recognized and so much honor from a sense of something i was just born with.
i cannot look long enough at this photograph. The sense that this desert rose is an ancient Plant Being. That he traveled, on foot. What might he be saying to Her as he collects some blossoms? How is it, when he turns to walk Back. The Plant, again alone in this landscape. Blooming.


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