How shall we live?

The pandemic has been both beast and blessing. There is barely one of us who doesn't have a family member, friend, or acquaintance who is no longer with us because of it. Perhaps as a result and not in spite of this - beast and blessing are not separate - it demands that we value life, all life, more, This has been a time of worry, but it has also been a time to get lost in what fascinates us so that we can see the connections; to overcome hesitations about spending time rather than saying "later."

In this sense, the island garden series I have created on Instagram is an ode to the pandemic. In the prose poems that accompany the images, there is fear and ease, the unknown and knowing, doubt and faith, fragmentation and wholeness, mortality and eternity. Imagination births a deep sense of connection to each complex being which, in turn, invigorates our imagination, until we recognize that this process is our very source and begs the question of what this means for how we live. The collection consists of fifty-five images and stories, gathered daily through two months of this summer on a small Swedish island where a garden once grew out of little more than rock and sand.

Enjoy!
https://www.instagram.com/julcatlin/