Holidays in the western world, we all know, are a blasphemous experience. Commercialism has obviously defeated the sacred, which has always been its underlying mission. A long, but successful journey, material value has conquered the invaluable with the majority of capable minds. The notion, which I retaliate against consciously with limited success, is precisely why I advocate walking. I’m fortunate to walk and live among a few square miles still dominated by decent vistas and farms that were born from its demands on the locals attuned to it.
Religious holidays don’t align much with my spiritual beliefs about existence. However, they do remind and necessitate me in times when I have wavered from spiritual outlook, to peer inside at my emotive stirrings. I sincerely believe that creativity came to me as a gift from a pair of slender, divine hands while awakening in the womb. Eternally thankful, gratefully, I’m able to resurrect that energy, which, like anyone, falls dormant sometimes in a brutally superficial world.
These images were made on Easter morning during a long pensive walk by my lonesome. A half mile into my walk that pensiveness disappeared into impulsive looking, as it always seems to do. The great American poet Robert Bly tells us that the outer world is there to pull us out. Of course, it’s not all dollar signs and Chinese goods before us. What I found in my immediate environment was a winter’s worth of invaluable soul food alive in earthen colors, shaking off the cold, leaning towards Spring . . . myself included – a pale, light-footed consumer of what’s real.
The images claim nothing in forms of achievement, but exist simply as homage to Nature and the charitable union it offers to a longing soul.
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All images © Michael Ast 2013
