The Geometry of Irises

Your sensuous symmetry!

The outrageous miracle of one huge purple black iris amongst the grasses would be aweinspiring, would bring hikers from afar to gaze at you. But cloned, you pop up here! here! and there's one over there! Look! I see a clump of them, over further!

Each wild iris is a work of delicate and flouncy imagination, a designer's flight of fancy, a spilling of the palette, a living breathing Mandelbrot equation flowering into purple mystery. And to spot them here and there in the fields is a delight to the irises of my eye.

Irises from Afar

Click on this photo to glimpse up close the feel of spotting wild irises amongst the grasses and wildflowers. Each one is its own treasure.

2009_1001

Click on this and you'll see a whole bouquet of pictures. Also click on the iris closeup and examine its geometry up close. Israel this week is only wildflowers. The headlines should read:
Rubyred Anemones in the Galil! Wild Irises in Netanya! Come to Yad Mordecai, the poppies are blooming. Ask me. I'll write the real newspapers.

Central Coherence

A concept I learned at yesterday's Speech and Language conference resonates glorious clanging symbols with a delightful visit in the midst of the conference. Yes, my dear and deep friends Molly Ann and Henry (scroll through older posts and olderer posts here on the blog, and you'll see two stories and pictures of these treasurefriends of mine) came all the way to the luxurious hotel where the conference took place, just to sit cozily in the lovely hotel lobby's easy chairs, and visit ...........me! Their very presence lent continuity to my self-image. The Nomi they were visiting is the Nomi of Hamilton and of childhood and of wonder and of enthusiasm and of creative, trusting youth. I am a lucky "Oleh", newcomer to Israel. I am connected to wonderful family, even happened upon a grandnephew of my Zaidie on the train. (This often happens. This time it was Yoav, Zaidie's brother Shimon's grandson, Yossi Wolbromski's redheaded son). I am connected in ancient mythic ways with this land, and also in recent historic ways with cousins of Mommy, grandchildren of Daddy's father's halfbrothers (yes, two new Enkin babies were recently born in Israel). And still, there is a disconnect, as people meet me at almost-sixty, with a Canadian accent and too much please and thankyou, not enough directness, not enough hot pepper. They see me now, and have no child to connect me to, no continuity. Thank goodness for Molly Ann and Henry, who know who I can be, and who I will be, who believe in me and remind me, over and over again, that deep down and entirely, I believe in myself.

Holy

Loved receiving this comment:
Nomi, continue to concentrate on the whole in the rock that opens to a smile that opens to the waves.the holy wholly hole that lets you see the whole hole, whole.
And now, a little note I just found amongst my todo lists:
Here's to the sunrises we don't see,
Skies pink cottoncandy miracles,
A luminous peach arising,
And we sleep through the wonder,
or sing in the shower
that has no window.
If I hadn't been up at 6 today,
hadn't passed by the one small window
that peeks to sky's hopeful east
the pink would have miracled over to blue
(blue being, itself, an ordinary, profound, dazzling wonder)
Here's to the sunrises we don't see,
and here's to trusting deep
that miracles are popping
moment by ordinary moment.