AFTER IMAGE

 AFTER IMAGE

I watched the village of Auchtermuchtie filling with snow. It is a lovely village. So quiet. We walked to the church for the Christmas service and met only one person on the way. It was the most bizarre service. The ‘minister’ rung the bells and the congregation of about 15 appeared. The service was choreographed by a very funny and peculiar ex Salvation Army husband and wife team. Good stand up comedy. All were included in the jokes. My wife said I laughed loudest. “Ho, Ho, Ho!”

A beautiful church inside and out. My intense vision was the changing afterimage of a stained glass window becoming the heavily bleeding head of Christ.

I forgot that image, though it had filled my vision and was as gorgeous and hypnogogic as ever a vision could be. It was a Miracle, my rich and colourful miracle. Everyday life is full of other, usually unnoticed, everyday miracles. 

Another Day is dawning.

What is left of the Christmas wrappings?

https://youtu.be/8XG1B_7r4y8

Here is a detail from the forest at the base of the tombstone. 

I feel I want to enter this forest and walk though into the mountains.

“1045–1105 In the jade hall I sit across from a painting by Guo Xi 

that  makes me feel I have come to the verge of the greenwood. Guo Xi was an official painter but [his spirit] was distant and remote.

In colors he concealed his ink and in ink concealed the water.”

https://asia.si.edu/publications/