Tuesday (Not) in Texas - Layers

My husband and I are enjoying a glorious vacation in Asheville, NC.  It has been a much needed time of rest, relaxation, and rejuvenation.  We have been careful to balance our time between doing and being.  It is funny to me that when you have the opportunity to slow down and make every move intentionally, a theme often emerges.  For me this week, it has been layers.

When we first arrived in Asheville, I immediately noticed the layers of the mountains, both the colors and the textures.  Nature is full concrete and tangible examples of layers, all something complete in themselves yet all necessary to create another whole.  Since while here my goal is to break completely free from my photo funk,  I started thinking about how all of these layers of the mountains appear in photographs; how, as photographers, we rely on light and shadows to create depth in photographs, which themselves are two dimensional objects.

While I was contemplating photographs, I realized that the whole premise of editing in Photoshop is based on layers, and that I really have no clue how to use this tool.  I have heard people talk about having many, many layers of editing on a single photo.  My first question is "how?"  And my second question is "why?"  That, however,  is a whole different discussion hearkening back to last Tuesday"s post.  I thought I was over my need to rant on editing, but I guess it runs through several layers of my being...how many is apparently yet to be determined.

Ah yes, the multiple psychological  emotional, and spiritual layers of human beings...probably infinite in number, thus resulting in job security for an almost equal number of psychologists and psychiatrists out there.  Dermatologists, those dealing with our physical layers,  have nothing on these guys...with only the three, or maybe eight depending on how you count, layers of skin we all have.  The visible and the invisible layers that make up each of us, how do we understand the "I" that they create.

This brings me to my own personal object lesson on layers from a few days ago.

My husband and I did one of those painting adventures where a room full of artistically challenged people show up and in a couple of hours produce an actual, loosely termed, work of art.  I am by no means an painter, but I do understand the process theoretically.  We began our masterpieces by laying down the background.  Next was the middle ground, which was to be some rather abstract trees, almost shadow-like representations of trees that were intended to add depth to the painting.  This is where my husband started to get frustrated.   He can't see depth in paintings or photographs; so, trying to create them seemed impossible to him.  He kept saying, "These don't look like trees."  To which I kept saying, "They are not supposed to look like trees; they are just a layer to add texture and depth to the image."  That did not compute for him.  The best I could do was to encourage him to keep doing what the instructor told him to do even if he "couldn't see it" at the time.  He did; and ultimately created a respectable first painting.

And so here I am left internally debating the  notion of whether the whole of something is greater than the sum of the parts. as I have been taught.  Did he need to see and understand each of those layers in his painting as complete and finite in their own right in order to appreciate the completed product? This debate is still raging within my mind..a mind .that is technically on vacation.

So since I have nothing conclusive to share here, I'll leave you with the poem, The Layers (1978), by Stanley Kunitz,  American poet and U.S. poet laureate in 2000.

The Layers 

I have walked through many lives,
some of them my own,
and I am not who I was,
though some principle of being
abides, from which I struggle
not to stray.
When I look behind,
as I am compelled to look
before I can gather strength
to proceed on my journey,
I see the milestones dwindling
toward the horizon
and the slow fires trailing
from the abandoned camp-sites,
over which scavenger angels
wheel on heavy wings.
Oh, I have made myself a tribe
out of my true affections,
and my tribe is scattered!
How shall the heart be reconciled
to its feast of losses?
In a rising wind
the manic dust of my friends,
those who fell along the way,
bitterly stings my face.
Yet I turn, I turn,
exulting somewhat,
with my will intact to go
wherever I need to go,
and every stone on the road
precious to me.
In my darkest night,
when the moon was covered
and I roamed through wreckage,
a nimbus-clouded voice
directed me:
“Live in the layers,
not on the litter.”
Though I lack the art
to decipher it,
no doubt the next chapter
in my book of transformations
is already written.
I am not done with my changes.

Enjoy pondering the layers of your life.