Eye of the Anemone

"The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes."

-- Marcel Proust

The eye of the anemone, this morning.

Photo taken 9/27/12.  Anemone from my self-serve bouquet

 from Battenfeld's in Red Hook, NY.

Unblinking Stare

Back to anemones, only closer. This flower's bold eye radiates energy. Its unblinking stare is a hypnotic explosion in red, black and white. It's March. Time to wake up.

Somehow the following words from Joseph Campbell, from the prologue of The Hero of a Thousand Faces [1949], fit this image:

Myth is the secret opening through which the inexhaustible energies of the cosmos pour into human cultural manifestation. Religions, philosophies, arts, the social forms of primitive and historic man, prime discoveries in science and technology, the very dreams that blister sleep, boil up from the basic, magic ring of myth.

-- Joseph Campbell

Yes. "The very dreams that blister sleep." Beautiful, that.

The photo is of a hybrid anemone I got at Battenfeld's Anemone Farm. Click on image to enlarge. Scroll down two posts to read more about anemones.

Anemone Eyes

Listening to the mix of sleet and rain and snow coming down, I turn away from the ping and drip to look in the eyes of these splashy anemones. On a recent wintry day, a friend and I visited the light-filled greenhouses of Battenfeld's Anemone Farm in Red Hook, New York. It's a great place to go with a camera, in search of color and light. (What were Goethe's legendary last words? Supposedly "More light!" Is that true? Even if not, they're perfect words.) While at Battenfeld's, you can pick up a small bouquet of hybrid anemones at an extremely reasonable price, leaving your money at their self-serve station.

Click on image to enlarge.