SIX STILL LIVES

Photo & Text by Douglas John Imbrogno

ONE DAY I MAY REVEAL the emotion, heartbreak, and dire challenges that are the impetus behind this posting of photographs of mine, freeze-framing the world in stillness, beauty or both. This is not that day. Yet the images speak to a reminder I need and that we all need, whatever our personal griefs and familial and political wounds. Beauty outlasts sorrow. Spirit is encoded in all things and outlives darkness, separation, and despair. And we are in this for the long haul together. Because the Great Confounding Mystery of the world glints with bright silver and gold even through the grimmest days and hardest nights of our soul.

I REALIZE THIS IMAGE may look so perfect that it screams AI. But I snapped it just after dawn on July 21, 2024, in a park outside Barboursville, West Virginia. (That white smudge is my car in the distant parking lot.) I strolled a walking path along a ridge to get to this small shelter, where I think ‘Beth’ or someone who loved her had visited before me, if I read the carvings right. The flute was owned and played by Bill Hart, one of the strangest, most oddly gifted human beings I have ever known. He moved on to his next incarnation in February 2024, and this flute was among the few things of his I took away with me. I treasure it and miss this soulmate constantly, since so few of those come along in our short lives. I like to take his flute, worn at the mouthpiece from his playing, head into deep woods, and make like a bird.

I AM NOT TRYING to look like Bono with his colored-sunglass global fame (owing to glaucoma, apparently ). I maybe wouldn’t mind being a global byword, except that the Fame Train left the station a long time ago and I missed it. I have orange glasses since I had bionic eyes installed recently or, rather, intraocular lenses from cataract surgery. The glasses disperse some of the light the lenses tend to collect in bright sun. I love my new augmented eyes. My surgeon alleges they’ll outlast the rest of my body and I’ll not have to wear glasses ever again. Hurrah! The bitch about having both reading and driving glasses, as I did until a month ago, was keeping the damned smudged lenses clean. (I have a dozen lens cloths and pint of lens cleaner for the first taker.) And, yes, I adore Blenko glass jugs and fresh grapes, too.

A SLIGHTLY STAGED STILL LIFE. I found that pale-green, custard-yellow, white-flowering blossom at my feet, while resting after a mile walk across a hilly local park. I nuzzled it open to reveal its inner beauty (story of our lives, huh?). Then, I gave it this star-turn atop the epic artistry of that open-face log, whose rings, cave-drawing cracks, and orange-chocolate cast are worthy of a cool New York gallery art show. Meanwhile, 50 yards away rose a lightning-struck, blackened tree whose cracked bark opened onto its pith. Needing a primal scream from the grief suggested above, I leaned into the crack: “AAAA-AAAARRRRRGGGHH!!!!” After three therapeutic cries, I resumed strolling, noting a cute guy and his cute dog pass nearby. Dog pees, so I catch up. I don’t mention the screaming. “Glad we humans don’t have to sniff and pee every 50 feet!” I say. He laughs. “Is the dog greetable?” A sweet-faced, five-year-old boxer. “Yes, but she gets excited …” I approach, hand palm up. She licks and leaps. Her name is Roxie. We laugh as I pass on. Meanwhile, Roxie stops again to sniff and pee.

I ASSUME THIS CHAIR is a throwaway, awaiting pick up on Thursday’s weekly garbageman run. (Where are all the garbagewomen, by the way?) After they haul it away, it will take, what, maybe 500 years for all its parts to decay in our metastasizing landfills, along with all the other torrents of flotsam, jetsam, and toss-off detritus an alien anthropological team from Ursa Major will sift some day. Trying to figure how the civilization of Earth knocked itself off, its tragic downward arc dating definitively from the reign of Emperor Donald the First and Last, in the early 21st century. (Hey, I mentioned ‘our familial and political wounds’ in my intro above.) I stopped and snapped this shot, at first, since it looked liked some absurdist painting by Salvador Dali. Either that, or someone was really waiting for a letter or a check.

MARSHLANDS, WOODLANDS & WILDLANDS are as key to my spiritual well-being as housecats, meditation, therapy, and Italian coffeebeans. Not necessarily in that order. When I walk Hoeft Marsh in Greenbottom, West Virginia, and gaze up, down, and all around, something soul-cleansing is never far away. I had not noticed this breed of wildflower before, with its filigreed white arms and bouffant mango heart. It is the delightfully named Philadelphia Fleabane or Daisy Fleabane (so named for the antiquated belief that the plants repelled fleas). It is a native pioneer species often found in disturbed areas like pastures, abandoned spaces, vacant lots, roadsides, and railways. May we all be pioneers species colonizing ‘disturbed areas,’ bringing white and yellow dashes of vibrant life to them. The flowers are also popular with carpenter bees, cuckoo bees and masked bees, wasps, flies, small butterflies and pollen-feeding beetles. So, they are the life of several parties. I also hereby vow that a future story of mine will contain a character named Daisy Fleabane.

“THE WAY OF VIRTUE is respecting the world—respecting our own bodies, respecting the rights of other beings, living in a way that is not cruel, not harmful, not divisive, not insensitive, not brutal.’ ~ AJAHN SUMEDHO

Support this billionaire-free, independent web journal by donating a $5 cup of coffee of support (or a few cups!) at my support page by pointing your camera phone at the QR code below or go to: coff.ee/douglasjohnimbrogno. Subscribe to receive new WestVirginiaVille posts in your e-mail box.