Ghost Among Orchids

A photographer and friend, Duane Michals, should have been the inspiration for this photograph, but a nearly accidental image has, I guess, only inspiration from serendipity. The accidental photographer making accidental photographs. So the image is really a gift from the benevolent spirits of images.

The ghost - late at night, tired, recovering from some bizarre malady, old - appears in the glass on a spare but beautiful painting of a rare vandaceous orchid species. It in itself an accident of rescue from Havana. Brought out by a Cuban collector who defected to Miami in the 80's. When I did an exhibition of the magnificent works he has saved from decay in Cuba, I gave his wife blue vandas as a gift. She was truly thrilled because they reminded her of her grandmother's greenhouse in Matanzas. A year later on the day their son was born, her vandas bloomed again. I received the painting from them as a thank you for the reminder of their heritage and good fortune. It is by an obscure woman (all women artists are obscure?) artist who made a living by doing marvelous botanicals.

We make our own journey. Attract what good we can. Accident has many facets. Ghosts can bring back gifts.