After a brief rain overnight, I arrived on a lazy mid-morning Monday for my ramble down Piney Woods Church Road. I took quite a few photographs, as usual, including those of a vibrant green patch of resurrection ferns covering a branch of an old pecan tree (no doubt this photo will appear in the blog before too long). But I settled today on this dreamy, more abstract image of greenbriers. Cloudy Day Dreaming is intended in part as a nod to Australian Aboriginal spirituality; the Dreamings, or creatures of the Dreamtime, are ancestral beings that created the Australian landscape at a time that is simultaneously long ago and ongoing now. Aboriginal ritual dancing is a means of accessing the parallel world of the Dreamtime to enable Aborigines to participate in the ongoing Dreamtime story. In a similar way, I think of my photographs as possible doorways for encountering a world of wonder hidden just beneath the surfaces of our everyday natural places.
I have heard of the tradition of Dreamtime, an important part of the oldest religion on earth. As a novice scientist, I identify the myth with the combined need of mankind to interpret the world as both a physical and mystical land.
Abhiram,
I agree that the concept of the Dreamtime reflects an acknowledgement of mystery and wonder in the world. It also provides Aborigines with a deep and abiding sense of connection to the land — a connection not many Westerners have nowadays.
Clifford