Situated in the constellation of Cancer…
… the Beehive Cluster looks like a single object to the naked eye, but is actually a swarm of orbiting stars that the astronomer Ptolemy called a “nebulous mass in the breast of Cancer.” Known classically as Praesepe, it also goes by the name of M44 and is the realm of white dwarfs and red giants.
STAGE M44
There’s something of a connection between this cluster and Barbara Ruffini, given the discovery of a giant tumor behind one of her lungs and the swarm of lesions surrounding her liver. Her Stage 4 cancer diagnosis has been (apologies to the Greeks) a cluster fuck – but also, has opened our minds in the way a Wu Li Master would teach wonder for the falling petal before speaking of gravity, or how dancing creates an ethereal connection with the divine through our body’s energy centers. One becomes more sensitive to universal vibrations, and the transcendence of love, when confronting the vast unknown.
The best way of coping for me has been to photograph the cancer journey Barbara is on – either as an act of documenting this time for the Akashic record or as an exercise in preserving my own emotional health. I can’t say exactly which, only that I am grateful to her for allowing the camera’s incursion into such a deeply personal space. I know in my heart that it’s been Barbara’s gift to me, and a reminder that her capacity for love is far greater than some insidious mass.
This is our continuing story – one of pain and fear and doctor appointments, for sure – but also of love and hope and the salute with a middle finger to death whenever I press the shutter release.