A couple of Sundays ago a small group of us got together to drum in the solstice. I
blogged about the weird effects seen in the last photo I took that day. Now, a couple of weeks later, I was having a look at the photos taken by my boyfriend's daughter when I noticed this small purple haze just above the place where we sat. These were taken about an hour before we started drumming, and that purple shape is the same colour as all the other purple blobs we've captured over this labyrinth.
The first time this happened was in 2005. It had been a year after my mare Melody had crossed, roughly the same period of time had elapsed since the Indonesian tsunami disaster. My mom had just built her Labyrinth of Animal Remembrance and she'd asked me to take some photos. I'd conducted a simple ritual at the centre of the labyrinth and painted a stone with Melody's name on it, placing it along the path. About a week later I downloaded the photos and discovered this:
A milky white haze on the left and the now familiar amethyst blob to the right (not sure how clear it is on this pic). There are three photos from this batch where you can see the haze and the purple blob in varying densities. They are all in more or less the same place, even though the photos were taken from different angles. The purple blob in the solstice photo is about 40˚ to the right of where it is in the above photo, but they were both taken from the same place.
There has been some heated debate regarding the phenomena in these photos. The purists insist that it's merely lens flare, or dust particles. I'd have been the first to agree with that, had I not taken these and seen this for myself. Since 2005 there is a lot more info available regarding orbs, or blobs of "light" which show up mysteriously in photographs.
The instant I saw this photo on my screen I knew that something special had taken place. The purple orb caught my eye first and then the grey haze. My skin prickled with goosebumps as I took it all in... the amethyst coloured orb appears above the spot where I placed Melody's stone. If you look carefully at the grey orb, soften your focus, you'll see a horse's head in there. I didn't notice this initially - it was pointed out to me by the editor of Renaissance Magazine. She saw "an animal" when she looked at it. I studied the photo on another screen and could clearly make out the horse's head.
It all seems so matter of fact to me now. At the time though, it was like there was a thundering explosion in my head. Melody had been my soul mate, my mirror and teacher - the horse who taught me more than any teacher had. I'd been devastated when I made the decision to let her go. I spent the year after her death in some kind of bubble, I could barley feel anything, the grief was so solid, it was lodged in my chest like a lump of cement. December 23rd 2005 was the anniversary of her passing. I'd felt nothing, experienced nothing, not even a glimmer that she might be around me in her spiritual form throughout the year.
During my good bye ritual I asked that she send me a sign that she was ok. I just needed to know that my beautiful mare was out there somewhere and that the connection we had shared had not evaporated into nothing... this photo was the result.
Today was one of those beautiful days - sunny, blue-skied and filled with music. It was also serendipitous in the most delightful way. What now feels like a long, long time ago, I blogged about Alwyn Hewson. I think about him and his family often. Even now, two years later, one of them will pop into my thoughts. I've continued to wonder how his wife and kids were doing... and today was the day I found out. We were picnicing at the Walter Sisulu Gardens when I noticed a red-headed boy running past me clutching a dirty, stuffed toy dog by the ear. Boyfriend Ben's son (also a red head) ran off with him. When none of them returned, I went looking for the boys. The teenage girl taking care of the red-head turned out to be Alwyn's daughter and Liam was the baby I'd last seen three years ago. Alwyn's wife, Daryl, was nearby and we had a goose-pimple, warm hugging reunion. That was when she told me that the post I'd written so long ago had been discovered by her brother who lived in the States and distributed through their family. She thanked me because it meant so much to them all. This left me trying to swallow the huge lump in my throat. Standing there in the warm spring sunshine I was filled with goose bumps. Boyfriend Ben poined out how something I'd written had touched people, some of which I don't even know.
