Day 12 of Year 3
I've been organizing print images for my book. It's striking looking at them and noticing how many are depictions of personal annunciations, moments when the veil between worlds is pulled thin and creative energy pours through. If we are present, we can be a vessel that bears it into the world. My early depictions of the Annunciation were fearsome and terrible with Mary either writhing in pain or terror. As I have grown and come to peace (mostly ) with the creative process, my representations have become calm and accepting. It always fascinates me how art can be so deeply personal and so universal and impersonal at the same time. Two opposites existing in the same place and time is always a sign that something greater is at work.
Had I Not Been Awake
By Seamus Heaney
Had I not been awake I would have missed it,
A wind that rose and whirled until the roof
Pattered with quick leaves off the sycamore
And got me up, the whole of me a-patter,
Alive and ticking like an electric fence:
Had I not been awake I would have missed it,
It came and went so unexpectedly
And almost it seemed dangerously,
Returning like an animal to the house,
A courier blast that there and then
Lapsed ordinary. But not ever
After. And not now.
From Human Chain: Poems https://amzn.to/3f0hln4
Found on http://www.ayearofbeinghere.com/2014/04/seamus-heaney-had-i-not-been-awake.html