I find that my life has cracks, like an old monument, fractures from tectonic shifts in life, work and relationships. I'm blessed that none of those cracks have become breaks, so far. Instead they become features; part of the architecture. What comes after may not have come at all, if not for the breaks and shifts. What comes after also heals and integrates. Some things just weave through those cracks until they bind them together into something special.
Once upon a time I stood in the dark and listened to my own breathing, which at the time whistled like a gale in a winter graveyard. A little while later I blogged about our pup.
Then there was a picture which captured a moment...
The memories evoked by that image became another post about ink spilled on white sand.
Those events in a sun-simmered week in an otherwise dire summer became a pivot in our lives. These were the days when the puppy became a dog. He reached his final weight on these beaches, as though annealed by the steel and sapphire water. His willfull self-absorbed lunacy started to give way. A deeper bond was forged between us.
So when it came to deciding on a special present for a special birthday, it seemed fitting to take that pivot in our lives and build something around it. I contacted Idreammosaic and commissioned a mosaic for a table using that image and among others, these.
After a great deal of thought and discussion, mosaic designer Cathy Cant synthesised my original idea into something special in its own right.
A mosaic is not a photograph. It has depth and lustre. It has mass. This one has metallic elements, lustrous stone and stained glass. The surface is both solid and flowing. At Cathy's suggestion, the grout is anthracite which defines the tiles and ignites the colours by a curious absence which black or white would not have. Again at Cathy's suggestion, the bedding for the mosaic is the whitest mortar that I could find. It sits behind the tiles and brings them alive in the sun with reflected, refracted light. The whole is edged in tiny black obsidian tumblestones - apache's tears.
When my partner saw it, her reaction was to find someone that she would trust to inherit it. That reaction is good enough for me.
Here it is
And there in the detail, is that image again.
The image on the left is grouted, the pup above is as Cathy delivered the mosaic, ready for installation.
The table legs are wrought iron and were made by Kevin Thrower of The Cottage Forge. I assembled the table myself, with an inch thick concrete table top holding it all together. I firmly believe that it will last a thousand years.
