Aria 2026
It is Monday, the first Monday in May. A time to consider the types and number of vegetable plants which I intend to place into the ground for the growing season. Tomatoes certainly and cucumbers. What vegetables is Finlea, our grand daughter sure to enjoy?
The thrust of my present, of my generation now at maturity, — our dedication on behalf of those who are to follow us… What is necessary, advantageous in the process of hand-off?
Death is the always present hard-frontier, a boundary, a frame that separates us from what-has-been. According to Roland Barthes’ Camera Lucida, Reflections On Photography, certain photographs evoke for us a durable sadness which is not relieved by any catharsis. The image attests to something or someone that once was, and is no more. A pose is etched by light upon a tangible medium, often a LCD screen, sometimes a print. Barthes writes that for us the photograph takes the place of the Monument – immortalizing Death. In past times Death speaks by means of a Monument, but for us by a photograph.
Earlier societies managed so that memory, the substitute for life, was eternal and that at least the thing which spoke Death should itself be immortal: this was the Monument. But by making the (mortal) Photograph into the general and somehow natural witness of “what has been”, modern society has renounced the Monument.
One more photograph of the European Columbine. The flower is coin-sized, boldly colorful, and exquisite in form, – for me suggesting an operatic aria! Powerful, delicate and short lived.
