It occurs to me…

From Howard Thurman, today, this reminder to maintain awareness, to keep the nous open.

I will lift up mine eyes. I will lift up mine eyes in life, that I may read the guideposts along my way and not miss the important turning in the road. I will lift up mine eyes to love, that I may not close the door of my heart to the knocking hand, the tender cry, the anxious reach. I will lift up mine eyes to God, that I may meet His spirit not only in the high place, the great moment, the penetrating call, but also in the byways, the little duties the stinging irritations and the sad and bottomless renunciations. And for me this is enough.

Dredging the archives yields this timeless image and words from 2007. Photo was, as I recall, taken in Scottsdale, Arizona. Can’t recall where the text came from. I run into it from time to time.

No body beats aging

Nobody beats aging,

at least not in the “making time stand still” sense.

No one can even accomplish a draw.

No one ever wins that war.

No one ever will.

Still, there are battles to be won late in the war,

Battles against cynicism,

or the ever-present fight against the inclination to “remember when,”

or recognizing something new IS better.

But the toughest battle is not with these,

nor with wrinkles, sagging skin,, failing hearing or eyesight,

multiple aches and pains, or even failing body parts requiring replacement.

No, the most ominous warrior to be faced along the path is regret, which would have me turn back and struggle with the past, all the while diverting my attention from now.

Recycling old Photo and text work while I take a bit of a break. This one from the vault in my sepia phase – August 2005.

To help me get incentivized to organize my work, and to take a bit of a summer break I decided to rummage around the closet (well, an old hard drive or two) and publish some oldies that go back a bit — as in 15+ years ago when this photos/words practice first started. You’ll note that the photos are not quite up to current standards (a 2 megapixel camera was hot stuff back them) and you may or may not notice a difference in writing style (if one can call it that). In any event, you are going to get oldies for a while.

This one dates back to 2005, a summer trip to the Boston area as I can best recall.

This caught my eye today from Summer Storm by Dana Gioia:

Why does this evening’s memory

Return with this night’s storm –

A party twenty years ago,

Its disappointments warm?

There are so many might have beens,

What ifs that won’t stay buried,

Other cities, other jobs.

Strangers we might have married.

And memory insists on pining

For places it never went,

As if life would be happier

Just by being different.

Indeed, memory does seem to pine “for places it never went.”  It feels natural to believe that “different” must be better, that “Door #1” I didn’t pick must have been better than “Door #2” that I did pick.  But of course we don’t know, never will.  Not really. Still….

There are times when Howard Thurman’s writings feel bottomless:

“It is urgent to remember that death is not the worst thing in the world.  Again, death is an event in life.  It is something that occurs in life rather than something that occurs to life.  The distinction is important and urgently significant.  If death is an event in life, then it must take place alongside an endless series of events, none of which exhausts life or determines it….  [T]he glorious thing about man’s encounter with death is the fact that what a man discovers about the meaning of life as he lives it need not undergo any change as he meets death.”

Photo taken of one of the Portland, Oregon bridges a few years back.

Photo taken a couple of years back inside (obviously) Mel’s Pub, a dive bar in Detroit (They made me go!) That I immediately recognized the neon as five syllables for a haiku calling for twelve more syllables speaks volumes, though I am not sure exactly what is being said. But this has been sitting my my “ready to go” folder for some time and today seemed like a good day to release it into the world. That, and nothing else came to mind today.

Today from Howard Thurman:

“[T]here are many things that move unchanged, paying no attention to a device like the calendar…that are not noted by the calendar, even though they may be noted on the calendar….  There are desires of the heart or moods of the spirit that may flow continuously for me whatever year the calendar indicates.  The lonely heart, the joyful spirit, the churning anxiety may remain unrelieved, though the days come and go without end.”

It becomes easy in life to focus on, to get tied up in the calendar, and to lose site of the fact that there are many things not on the calendar that deserve attention.