If You Sit Perfectly Still…
Muskoka Lake Ice on Still Water (photograph)© 2009 Michelle Basic Hendry
Have you ever sat perfectly still in a canoe, at dusk in the late Spring?
Mosquitos and blackflies will gather around your head, but, as they search for a place to land, a nearly silent hunter will stalk them.
If you remain perfectly still….
The only sound this hunter will make is mostly outside the range of your ears. All you will hear is the water drop from the paddle. If you look in the fading light, you can see them. They move quickly and erratically – they are Bats.
But there is one experience that is greater than the seeing – it is the feeling. If you sit perfectly still, you can feel the air move as they sweep past your head.
Close your eyes and the World changes…
For me this is what defines true presence. An excellent photographer or an artist; a writer or a musician, occupies a state of complete presence when they are working on their art. Great art is more than an experience – it is a feeling – it engages another sense apart from the one for which it seems designed to communicate.
I have been struggling with a difficult bout of sinusitis for a couple of weeks now. It seems to come and go and wreaks havoc on my ability to focus. It has put me behind in my work, my posting here and on the Small Paintings Blog. I escaped briefly in to the dusk on Thursday to capture a few photos of that magical time. The bugs are still weeks away, but the ice is receding. One mystery transforms into another.
You can feel it, from time to time, if you sit perfectly still……
A wider angle of the same place as above © 2009 Michelle Basic Hendry
Posted in Musings, Photography
April 18th, 2009 at 7:51 am
wonderful photos
nice capture of the colours in the sky and lake
I have only been in a canoe once and only once and I almost fell out :p I have sat on various docks completely still and had birds come right up to me, squirrels and chipmunks climb on my lap (that was really hard not to move for :p). Would have loved to have seen bats. I’ve only seen them in zoos and wildlife centres. they get such a bad rap its sad that people are afraid of them (same thing with snakes)
I really hope you get better. never nice dealing with an illness that you can’t seem to get rid of.
I agree. great art is about feeling. it doesn’t matter really what it makes you feel, good or bad, but the fact that the art made you feel anything at all proves that the artist did their job.
April 18th, 2009 at 8:14 am
Lovely words.
Hope you get your sinusitis under control. Ah, spring!
April 18th, 2009 at 9:23 am
Loved this description Michelle, it sounds so magical.
Nothing even close to that in my neck of the woods, as its a polluted bum hole
Yuck to the sinusitis, its ruddy awful.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/crpitt/2225134697/in/set-72157603838457329/
April 18th, 2009 at 9:56 am
Michelle,
That top photo is incredible in the same way that Mark Rothko’s paintings speak to me. I am trying to “sit still” more often. Good for the soul.
Love,
Linda
April 18th, 2009 at 10:34 am
Awesome, Michelle. Awesome.
April 18th, 2009 at 11:45 am
Thanks, Jennifer Rose – I hope you are feeling better soon too! Bats are wonderful creatures. We have them right here every summer. I want to build a bat house. We are close to a wetland, so I know we can attract many!
Thanks, Kinsey!
Claire – Your doodle made me laugh so hard, I nearly fell out of my chair! Thanks for that!
Linda – The persistence of this sinusitis, suggests I need a little more ’still time’…
Thank you so much, Jean!
April 18th, 2009 at 12:53 pm
Hehe glad you liked it, mine have been ruddy awful and I seem to be getting more allergic to things the older I get. Which does not make me a happy bunny at all.
So I have decided to come and live with you, hope you don’t mind? hah!
Hope it gets better soon! Have you tried the neti pot thing before?
April 18th, 2009 at 1:19 pm
Sure!
I am boiling water to sit for my Neti Pot as we speak…
April 18th, 2009 at 4:17 pm
What a beautiful post, Michelle. I do know what you mean about being still in order to feel the landscape. That magical mystery. Hope you’re feeling better soon.
April 18th, 2009 at 5:24 pm
Gorgeous photos! Perfect moments captured.
April 18th, 2009 at 5:31 pm
Thanks, Janelle and Debra…
April 18th, 2009 at 7:25 pm
Michelle,
If one day you come here in Provence, i suggest that you bring not only your paintings and brushes but also your camera.
Your 2 photographs are beautiful.
The top one reveals your artistic view of the scene but i’m an unconditional lover of wide angle landscapes and so my fav is the wonderfully exposed sunset.
April 19th, 2009 at 2:26 pm
Very good point here. Hope you’re feeling better. Nothing quite like sinus trouble to just make things miserable! *hug*
April 19th, 2009 at 3:18 pm
Thank you so much Patrick! I hope that someday I will visit Provence.
Thanks, Lana!
April 19th, 2009 at 7:46 pm
I agree exactly with what you wrote, Michelle.. I do my best work when I am totally alone and enveloped in the environment.. I don’t have a clue what is going on around me, but am just concentrating on how to capture that feeling of place and moment in order to communicate it through a photograph.
I agree that these are both great, but I am partial to the abstract and painterly quality of the first one.. I love for photos to work first and formost as graphic design; if it also records the scene on top of that, so much the better.
April 19th, 2009 at 8:10 pm
Mark – I am mostly a landscape artist, but that top photo might be the basis for my first experiments with abstract painting, because of exactly what you see.
April 21st, 2009 at 1:48 am
very nice photos Michelle..
I have bats here as well..
they move fast and can barely be seen at twilight…
duck!
April 21st, 2009 at 1:56 am
Thanks, eddie! Oh – but if you duck you miss the whole thing…
April 21st, 2009 at 11:23 am
Beautiful photo. I love looking for bats, but I don’t remember ever feeling one flit by. Does that mean I never sit still enough? Something to try although I’m not sure I can if the mosquitoes are biting…
Hope you feel better soon.
April 21st, 2009 at 11:30 am
I do already, Ingrid! Thanks for the compliments too. Out on the water, I think the insects focus more around your head, so you are more likely to feel the air from the bat’s wing. I have only felt it on the water – and it is very slight.
April 25th, 2009 at 10:52 am
As always, wonderful photos…I enjoyed your words…I’ve always “felt” as though I should be a painter…don’t know why because I’m not but I’ve often thought maybe I just haven’t found my medium yet!
I’ve had issues with sinusitis for years…I understand…hope you fell better soon!
Cheers
July 25th, 2009 at 1:41 am
incredible…
January 3rd, 2010 at 11:45 am
Dear Michelle ~ this is so apt for me – and co-incidental – thank you for visiting my new blog…especially as it is named “stillPoint”…also this wonderful post, which, coupled with your photography, seems to settle and also open me to the intrinsic spirituality that is in everything…also I was so pleased that Liara Covert found you…especially as I have just read on of her posts…
http://blog.dreambuilders.com.au/journal/2010/1/1/what-is-stillness.html
There comes a point when co-incidence becomes a teacher.
xhenry