The Impressionist artist, Alfred Sisley said, "Every picture shows a spot with which the artist has fallen in love." Perhaps nothing so demonstrates that love-in-the-moment as the Pissarro's fascination with light. This view of the blooming plum tree glitters with light. Look at the sky. Look at the ground which is kaleidoscope-like. Look at the plum tree itself. Even the bucket-carrying woman is half in light and half in shadow.
The novelist author and poet, Mae Sarton, wrote in her journal, Plant Dreaming Deep (1968) of her coming upon a Plum Tree in Japan and then again in her backyard - with a bright Oriole as an added surprise.
"Two years ago, the dwarf plum trees by at the kitchen door flowered for the first time. Is there a more haunting presence than plum? It is sweet, but not too sweet, a little spiced, sweetness with a shade of bitterness in it. I remember getting out of the train at Enka-Kuji, a Zen monastery not far from Tokyo, on a chill March day, and being taken by surprise. What was that incense? It was plum blossom.
Now it was here, right at my door. I could look out on two clouds of white, supported on black irregular twigs, and alive with bees. The next morning the oriole came to shine his orange flame among all those white petals. I could hardly believe it. I had heard the oriole more than once, but I had not actually seen one since that first day when I came to look at the house and he had appeared on the maple like an angel. Yet, it was true. The oriole had come back to celebrate the first flowering of the plum and perhaps also to celebrate much else that had seemed wild dream and has come true in the last six years."
Have you ever had a "wild dream" life-moment that you carry with you all your life like this? A "come true" moment or experience that wonderfully remains?
