Tuesday, May 20, 2008

"Sometines I wish that I could be the rain"

I am sure that if you garden you have had this feeling I am having at this moment. I worked hard yesterday and today feeding roses and apple trees. And I have planted shallots, onions, potatoes and kale. All of this was done in anticipation of the rain that is now falling.

So I am sitting here with a sense of oneness with the rain.

This tile is archetypal for me. It is about the oneness I feel with the earth when I engage it for sustenance. The human is grounded with his feet below ground. His mind ( the orange hat ) is the same color as the carrot below ground. Connecting to the earth grounds him in the truest sense.

When I bought this tile from Andrew Van Asche at his booth in the ACC Crafts Fair in Baltimore I asked him what it meant. Good artist that he was, he asked me what it meant to me. I said something not so coherent and ended by asking him, "But why the Number 1 in the upper left corner?" And he said, "Because I am a gardener, when it rains I feel at one with the rain."

So at this moment, I am at one with the rain. And I am humming that simple old Utah Phillips song that Rosalie Sorrels used to perform, "If I Could Be the Rain"

2 comments:

kathy said...

Beautiful tile! Nice to hear the story.

Anonymous said...

You describe your oneness with rain, and the Utah P song; did you realize the further Utah Philips dimension to your late May oneness? When you were feeling and singing his song, he was preparing to change phases. I learned on Democracy Now that he "died" end of May..congestive heart failure-raining in his lungs...while you were singing his song. And then there is the further Utah Philips overlap on your blog when you write of "hobo in garden". Lotta harmony in your dreams and bones
mbk