Learn your shadow

“Most of the shadows of this life are caused by standing in our own sunshine.” – Henry Ward Beecher

When you and I meet, dear reader, as I am sure we will someday, it is more than likely that I will want to take a photograph with my beautiful little camera to mark the moment.

Others will no doubt swoop in to help: “Here, let me help. I’ll take it for you,” they’ll say. Or, “would you like me to snap it?” And I’ll wave them off, preferring to take the photograph myself, in my own way. I’ll imagine myself an Artiste as I do it.

I’ll position myself at your left shoulder, and hold the camera in my left hand, index finger on the shutter button on top, the wee strap around my wrist. I’ll straighten my left arm to its full length and raise it up, a foot or so above shoulder level. Our heads will move closer together—as if we’ve known each other for years—we’ll laugh or smile knowingly and I’ll shoot the photograph.

Sometimes, if we’re lucky, my arm even makes it into the photo, a transparency of form that I love, as in this photograph of me and Emma on our Excellent Adventure Aboard a Trolley Bound for Tijuana.  A foreshortened arm in the right margin of the photograph tells the story: we are two women alone, traveling and making our way in the world. We are self-contained, an island unto ourselves, just as you and I will be when we finally meet. I have hundreds of these photographs of meetings with others. It has become an art form, a practice, a meditation on relationship.

In some cases, our heads are cut off, my arm misjudged. Then there are the ones in which the sun is too bright and we’re squinty. Or blurred, our laughter causing me to shake my pointing arm. All of those are still photographs, records, remembrances, flawed beautifully just like life is.

And so on a recent business retreat to the Jemez in New Mexico, my camera joined me.  The sun there is very bright. And the sky is very large. And there is much light there.

"Where there is much light, the shadow is deep,” Goethe has written. And so it is, the shadows are very deep on red soil in New Mexico, a soil almost burgundy when the sun is richly angled, not directly overhead.

As we drove into the Jemez (called “The Jemez” just as you wouldn’t say “Alps” but “The Alps”) in our conspicuously bright rental car, there were large red rocks near the Pueblo, just before you get to Jemez Springs.  “We should come back and make photographs of these,” I said, “but the light is too bright now. It would have to be later in the day.” And so we did go back, a few days later, hitting the rocks at a deeper time, one that allowed for their redness to show. “This is perfect,” I said. “Let’s stop here.”

I wanted the red rocks in the background, to show Mr Brilliant. This is his earth, his kind of soil, his dirt, a place he needs to be. “Let’s stand here so the rocks are in the background,” I told David. He knows the drill. We adopted the pose, me on the left with my left arm straight and up, camera poised. We smiled; I hit the shutter.

As I pulled my arm down, I turned the camera over to check the shot. “Damn it!” I said, “There’s a large shadow on our faces.” I shook my head, squinting up into the sun to see what had blocked it.

“Let’s move to the left,” I suggested, trying to determine what had caused the shadow. Was it the light pole in front of us? The small picnic shed? It must be. What else was in the way? We shifted three feet to the left. I raised my arm and shot again, pulling the camera toward myself quickly afterward to check the shot. “Damn it!” I said more forcefully. “That’s crazy – how can that be? What on earth is causing that? Is it the picnic shed? Let’s move again!” We started moving left again. I craned my neck around, searching madly for the culprit—what on earth was in our way? David could tell I was irritated.

I looked again at the camera viewfinder, searching the ruined photo for clues.

And then I realized that the shadow was shaped like a rectangle.

It was, in fact, shaped just like a camera.

It was, to be sure, my camera.

I was causing my own shadow. It was caused by what I was holding. I was blocking my own sun.

I laughed a big and long laugh, one of those where you bend double at the waist, not so much at the shadow, but at my reaction to it—blaming the pole, the picnic shelter, the sun, anything—what on earth was causing this shadow?

It was me.

And after I laughed, I realized that it is a Big Metaphor. A Very Big One.

Isn’t it often like this? Our shadows are elongated on the ground; the things that we ourselves are holding are making shadows that cast us in darkness. I could write that book, but… I could finish my PhD, but…. Shadows all, cast by ourselves.

I wonder if I am casting my own shadows all the time and don’t realize it. Am I constantly shifting to the left to get out of a shadow that I, in fact, have cast? Am I holding up something that blocks my own sun?

“Alas! must it ever be so? Do we stand in our own light, wherever we go, And fight our own shadows forever?” wrote Lord Edward Robert Bulwer Lytton.  We are fighting our own shadows. Need it be forever?

“Thus shadow owes its birth to light,” wrote John Gay in The Persian, Sun, and Cloud. Enjoy the light and embrace your shadow. If you turn away from the light, you’ll never see the shadows. Don’t blame the shadow on others. Sometimes others overshadow us, but often we are standing in our own sun. Sometimes, we are holding things up in front of us that block the sun. Just sometimes.

~*~ 37 Days: Do it Now Challenge ~*~

There are some things we can do immediately, today, now, this instant, changes that will make the most of our days. And there are those things that must be practiced over time. The first of these is an Action (do it now), the second is a Movement (do it now and again and again), keeping in mind what Hemingway said: “Never confuse action with movement.”

I’m defining “movement” as the movement in a watch or clock—a mechanism that produces or transmits action—those tick-tocks that make up our 37days, a movement over time that creates time.

“Movements” are – in effect – “practices,” as Martha Graham defined them: "We learn by practice. Whether it means to learn to dance by practicing dancing or to learn to live by practicing living, the principles are the same. In each it is the performance of a dedicated precise set of acts, physical or intellectual, from which comes shape of achievement, a sense of one’s being, a satisfaction of spirit. To practice means to perform, in the face of all obstacles, some act of vision, of faith, of desire. Practice is a means of inviting the perfection desired."

And so, actions and movements related to shadows that invite the perfection desired, that very living we seek:

ACTION – do it today

Focused free write – When you walk into the sun, what shadows fall on you? Are they made by you, or by others? Write for eight minutes without stopping in reaction to those questions. Don’t correct your grammar or punctuation and don’t lift your pen from the page. Set a timer for eight minutes and write whatever comes to mind. If you run out of things to say, just write “I’ve run out of things to say” until your words come back to you. The movement of the pen will help. Just keep moving. This doesn’t need to make sense or be seen by anyone else. At the end of eight minutes, read what you have written. Then circle a “hot spot,” a word or phrase that stands out for you. Set the timer again and write about that “hot spot” for three more minutes. Sit with the insights that emerged. They tell you something about the shadows you feel, those that cool your face, those that hide you somehow, those that hold you back, obscure some important part of you. What is it they say?

MOVEMENT – do it for 37 days

My shadow – Go outside with your camera. Make photographs of your shadow on the ground. If you don’t have a camera, sketch them. Look at dark and light; as John Locke has written, “The picture of a shadow is a positive thing.” What is positive about your shadow? What light makes it possible? Make a photograph of your shadow once a day for 37 days. Over those 37 days, look for your shadow. First, focus on finding it. Where and when do you see it? Follow it. Take pictures of it as if you are seeing it for the first time. Meet your shadow. Exaggerate your shadow, elongate it, shorten it, make it move and speak on film. Wave at your shadow. Have it wave back to you. Embrace it.

[Many, many thanks to 37days reader and wonderful human David Cooper who made the fantastic shadow portraits I’ve used in this essay. I met David on a plane – all the more reason to talk to your seatmates. And let’s follow his lead & make art of our shadows.]

Last year this time: Just wave and Aim for horizons