This strikes me in many ways as a very ordinary photograph. But there’s some about it that really connects with me. It has a nearness and a hardness about it. A sort of barren patch surrounds it. Green mixed with orange and then bright orange and yellow flowers. Vertical and tilted. That’s a lot of things, but not exactly what connects me to it. It’s not the first thing that caught my eye or the most seemingly important, but there’s something about it. Actually, I think it’s the color. The orange and yellow..

When I was young the decorator made an orange seat cover or pad for a Danish chair in my bedroom — a chair by Hans Wegner, not that anyone knew who Hans Wegner was back then. I asked why he chose orange, and he said, “Because orange is your favorite color.” My mother told him that. It was news to me. My mother knew things that others didn’t, so I was careful not to say that it wasn’t. I don’t remember giving it any thought in truth. And while I’ve never done much with orange, I’ve always held it in a kind of reverence. Orange tapering into yellow. I’ve always wondered if she just made that up or if there was something to it. She didn’t say orange and yellow, but of course she knew that orange tapers into yellow, just like the flowers of this plant. It’s a vibrant combination, so unlike anything else. Purple tapering into lavender is nice, but not the same. It’s not orange. Not yellow.

If we pay attention we can learn things. I’ve learned something without quite understanding what I’ve learned about color and preferences and messages received second hand from the distant past. Life is not just more of this and more of that. Things fit together, the parts reach for each other in ways we endeavor to understand. Even in the corner of a churchyard. Even in a random photograph.