Quiet scenes lifted from the decomposing stream of time
On the never-ending cycle of life, death, and creation
Hello friends,
This week I discovered Martin Gerlach’s Festons und Decorative Gruppen aus Pflanzen und Thieren (Festoons and Decorative Groups of Plants and Animals), originally published in 1893. An early example of mixed media collage, Gerlach’s photographs combine natural elements with manmade geometry. The resulting images feel like a peek behind the curtain, giving us a taste of some other realm existing just below the surface. Gerlach uses nature to produce almost unnatural scenes. The resulting cognitive dissonance encourages subtle introspection.
The Public Domain Review (who sent the email introducing me to Gerlach’s work) has this to say about his festoons:
Part of the brilliancy, here, comes from the use of borders and frames, which look like Instagram layouts circa 1895. Orchids almost writhe in front of a cornsilk-colored panel. Crayfish crisscross cattails, arranged in rings with the circumference of a serving platter. And a cockatoo gets spotlit in the negative, cocking its head over leaves of Monstera deliciosa. Each image is positively baroque, but never overwhelming. These still lives are exactly that: still lives—quiet scenes lifted from the decomposing stream of time. There’s a winking suggestion throughout that the flora and fauna might awake from their collotype fixity and bloom into full saturation once again.
One line struck me immediately—quiet scenes lifted from the decomposing stream of time. That’s life, isn’t it? From the moment we’re born, we begin to die. Our cells exist in a constant cycle of disintegration and regeneration. We are each a phoenix, perishing in the flames of this world only to be reborn again. Every death we experience is fertilizer for new life.
Lately, I’ve been working on my first collection of poetry. I’m calling it The Resistance of Violets. Did you know that violets have two sets of flowers? Everyone knows the first kind, the small blueish purple petals nestled within broad, dark green leaves. The second floor is less familiar. They spend their entire lives underground, never developing color or opening to the sky. But they do produce seeds, hidden pearls of contingency should pollinators fail to reach the aboveground seeds. Violets approach death with practicality. They don’t fear death; they plan for it.
One of the poems I plan to include in The Resistance of Violets is called “Giants.” I wrote it years ago, but Gerlach’s photographs brought it to mind.
Leaves of the long-dead variety
drift over me on a sigh of wind,
a dry contrast to the moist bed of
earth beneath my limbs.Above me, I see the trees arching
toward one another, bowing
like the ribs of sleeping giants whose
flesh has withered to nothing.I hold my breath and will myself
still, as tickling ants navigate
the mountain ridge of my fingertips.The stillness intoxicates. Beckoning
branches sway with a slowness
that is unafraid. I long to enter
the current of time in which
they exist. Life and death
mingle in that river, turning over
one another in the flow.I inhale once more, matching my breaths
to the whispers of the wood. My cells resonate
with secret revelations. I could remain
here for eternity until my body is no more
than a mess of bones, where beetles and worms
make a palace of my skull.Giants within giants.
Martin Gerlach brought decaying fruits and flowers back to life. He combined static borders with the memory of nature’s vibrancy to create something new. I pluck the flowers from my brain and arrange them as words on a page, but ultimately Gerlach and I are the same. We’re both attempting to reveal truths beneath the surface, trying to unearth hidden violet flowers.
What are you creating right now? Let me know in the comments.
Until next time,
Yardena