Gestation

I haven't posted anything here since February. I was however, still visiting the lake, and taking photos and thinking about why some things attract my attention more than others. I'm posting my spring swan-nest photos from the woods by the lake even though the photos are from May and June. I'm going to go back there later today to see what the end of July has brought to that nest, but that will be another entry.

This nest intrigued me and I realized it was because there's so much going on, even though there's no movement. Spring is pretty naturally an inspiration for gestation. Literally, these swans are sitting on their eggs, but I related it to the creative process in my life and the world in general. I was also trying to work the concept of gestation or incubation into one of my recurring themes -- duality. I kept wondering over these months what the opposite of gestation was, what was its polar opposite? Was it birth? Hatching? And really it came to me that there isn't any. Some things aren't dualities, they don't have a polar opposite. Birth isn't really the opposite of gestation. Hatching isn't the opposite. Birth and hatching are the polar opposite of inception. Gestation comes in between.

And so while I was not posting for these months, I was just regrouping after a very busy winter. You can't really worry about whether you look still and unproductive to the world, that's what I took away from this. Sometimes you really just have to let yourself breathe and that's all.

My cousin recently had bypass surgery. Thankfully, he's doing very well. But right after the surgery, they let him sleep as long as he had to to recover. The doctors trusted him to wake himself when he was ready and he did. Gestation.

My lesson is that even under pressure to perform, keep your own pace. Stillness has its place in life.