233/365-2 Serene

"Life and Beyond"

My head has been in a hundred different places today and none of them was serene.   I spent the morning reconstructing the document that I lost yesterday because of a hard drive issue and I had a series of phone calls to make and take that consumed this afternoon.  Honestly, I was not the least bit inspired, but after my disappointment with yesterday's photo, I managed a slight attitude adjustment and began looking for serenity in the midst of what feels like chaos,  not only in a feeling, but in an image.

What caught my attention was a cactus.  It's the "baby" of one of my dad's cacti.  I brought home with me when we visited in June.  I'm sure TSA had a good laugh at the cactus in the pocket of my backpack.  It certainly did not contain more than three ounces of liquid.  It joined a couple other small cacti, ones that we already had, in a planter whose sand is accented with blue glass beads.  At the time I was taking the photos, I did not even pay attention to the stones.  It was view of the top of the cactus with what looks like spokes radiating out from its center.  

And, it too, is producing quite a number of offspring.

I think that the cactus is absolutely beautiful; however, its beauty does not elicit a feeling of serenity.  Still, I knew it had to be today's picture.  How do you look at all of the prickly needles on this and find any sense of peace or calm?

Earlier in the weak, a couple of friends posted instructions for creating an orb in Photoshop.  Just for fun, I decided to try it with my cactus picture.  Before creating the orb, I did crop the above picture square.  The results with the manipulations were quite fascinating, but still in no way seemed to me to satisfy the daily prompt.

Deep down, I had this nagging feeling that I had been led to this image.  It was not a desperate attempt to just get it done.  I was supposed to take this shot.  I stared at it for several minutes trying to make sense of it.  Is it the color?  No.  Green is associated with life and health.  Blue is the color most often related to peace and calm.  That is why I am so drawn to the color blue.  And then it hit me...

All of the green does indeed represent life with all of its prickly, painful places.  At the top, in what looks like a vortex pulling to the inside, is the small patch of blue, the peace and calm that come after we have endured all the difficulties of this life.  It represents the most serene of all places.

And then there is the circle...

I suspect that this image still has more to say to me.