Tag Archives: upended life

Altered Horizons 73

Altered Horizons 73 Robin Botie of Ithaca, New York, photoshops fabricated landscapes in dealing with depression and coping with loss.

On Sunday mornings when I was a kid, my father would take my sister and me out flying in his small airplane. Gazing out the window, over the noise of the airplane engine I would sing Susie Little Susie, an old folksong about a poor girl and barefooted geese that couldn’t afford to buy new shoes. All the while I picked out tiny houses or teeny-tiny individuals down below us. “God bless the people who live there,” I’d say, from up above the world. I felt very privileged and close to God up there. And, though I hadn’t experienced the loss of anything greater than a goldfish or two back then, I knew that everyone needed someone praying for them, needed someone watching over them. Feeling fairly secure, I sent out love and blessings to strangers.

These days, I pick out bits and pieces of my photographed images to create small worlds in Photoshop. Maybe it’s the calm or maybe it’s elation—something about what goes on in my head when I’m photo-shopping reminds me of flying over the world in the back of my father’s plane. For this fabricated landscape, I pumped up the blue color of a slate slab so I could make it into a river or a bay. I paired it with a mossy patch of ground I found in a Maine woods this summer, to create a fake aerial landscape.

 

Altered Horizons 73

REPLY TO ROBIN

Altered Horizons 71

Altered Horizons 71 Robin Botie of Ithaca, New York, photoshops fabricated landscapes in dealing with depression and coping with change.

Every night, walking the dog in the driveway, I look to the sky and sing or pray or talk to my daughter who died. To me, the night sky is not a vast void. It is peppered with stars or lumbering clouds, falling snow, raindrops, and sometimes fireflies. It can carry fog or whipping winds. It can reverberate in frog song or roar with thunder. Though I look up and howl into the heavens, I know that is not where I will find my beloved ghosts.

One day in August, shortly after the rains stopped, I photographed a red slate walkway so that the mortar between the slabs of slate might be envisioned as the night sky.

 

Altered Horizons 71

REPLY TO ROBIN

Altered Horizons 69

Altered Horizons 69 Robin Botie of Ithaca, New York, photoshops fabricated landscapes in dealing with depression and coping with change.

“You’re gonna have a great new life, Meena-Mouse,” I told the quivering mouse in the Hav-a-Heart trap as we approached a nice shady spot in the grass by a stream. “You take care of yourself little-one. There’s a food store right over there and if you follow the stream you’ll come to houses nearby.” I held the cage up to examine Meena one last time.

In addition to the Trader Joe’s Organic peanut butter I’d used to lure the poor creature into the trap, I’d fed it oats, bits of chocolate, and blueberries cut in half. I’d stuffed pieces of tissue through the top of the trap so it could have a soft bed. And first thing in the morning I’d driven down off my hill with the mouse in the trap, carefully secured in the passenger seat, so it wouldn’t be caged up any longer than necessary.

The last few mice I’d let loose had frantically clung to the trap with their tiny feet. That had freaked me. I’d had to clunk the trap on the ground several times to get the mouse to drop out, to go free. This time I was prepared for that. But what I wasn’t prepared for was the mouse immediately springing out with a fast flying leap—right into the water.

For this week’s fabricated landscape, I flipped a photo of trees reflected at the edge of my pond. The frame was pieced together in Photoshop from a warm scarf.

Reply to Robin

Altered Horizons 68

Altered Horizons 68 Robin Botie of Ithaca, New York, photoshops fabricated landscapes to deal with depression and loss.

Altered Horizons. Due to loss ,everything in my life has been altered, changed to some different reality. Not by choice. After being crushed by grief for so long, it is comforting to create small worlds and set horizon lines that reflect my eye level and personal physical position in the scene. In creating these fabricated landscapes, I can choose and control. I can build stability and balance, if only on my computer screen.

This shot was taken standing on the shores of Kezar Lake at Quisisana Resort in Maine. In Photoshop I changed the colors, and then flipped the image upside down so the water became hills, and the sandy beach turned into a sky. Burning the color from a circular patch in the “sky,” I created a full moon.

Altered Horizons 68

Reply to Robin

Altered Horizons 67

Altered Horizons 67 Robin Botie of Ithaca, New York, photoshops fabricated landscapes in dealing with depression and learning to live with loss.

I don’t want to live on the moon; the light is too beautiful right here on earth.

In my fabricated landscape of the week, a tarred road and its shoulder become the sky and land. In the sky I pasted an image of a Queen Anne’s lace flower that many consider to be an invasive weed. I think it makes a magnificent moon.

REPLY TO ROBIN

Altered Horizons 65

Altered Horizons 65 Robin Botie of Ithaca, New York, photoshops fabricated landscapes to deal with depression and cope with loss.

Being fully present. Listening. Reflecting. That is my job now, as a grief facilitator. I recognize that the griever’s pain is theirs, is necessary, is beautiful, is now. It is not forever.

Giving the grieving ones the dignity of experiencing their own pain, I must be a respectful witness to that pain, not a participant. Not a sponge. Not a healer or fixer.

Just being there is everything.

The ragged bark of a tree I upended in Photoshop and the still pond reflecting the deep sky. Combining these two images, I was reminded of sitting with a person in the throes of heartbreaking loss.

 

Altered Horizons 65

Reply to Robin