Wherever…

In response to The Daily Post’s writing prompt: “I Want to Know What Love Is.”

Love is never having to say – anything; although well-crafted words create moments that glamorize silence. For those who are old enough to remember ‘Love Story,’ well, I take a different path.

Love is the accumulation of wisdom and understanding. It is a journey and a destination. Over time, the travels that move us by jagged edges, uneven terrain, and serene stretches allow us to complete our life’s mural. In it, we recognize the value of the entire landscape. It takes time to appreciate the nuances and relevance of it all. When we do and recognize the elements that move us with emotion, we have found love.

In his clever piece ‘The Diary of Adam and Eve,’ Mark Twain reveals in Adam’s entries a growth in appreciation for his partner, Eve. It took a lifetime of observation to reach a moment whereupon Eve’s passing, Adam wrote “Whersoever she was, there was paradise.”

Advertisement

Weekly Photo Challenge: Beginnings

A flowering tree and an architectural icon. Nature renews its assets as mankind permits amidst its own creations.

Weekly Photo Challenge: Patterns

From Thailand – patterns from the people and one from artisan sand crabs

Weekly Photo Challenge: Color

Christmas Merry

Amidst the weight and volume of Christmas and holiday ornaments, a few tend to distinguish themselves for personal reasons. In them we discover something about others; in some we see ourselves.

Seventeen Decembers passed before we recognized the error.  In that seventeenth year on the night when we decorated the holiday tree, my son reached into a box for a Christmas ornament. He chose a round ball with hand-painted letters.  He held it up, rotated the ball in his fingers and  laughed as he read the holiday message. “Look,” he said, “I wrote ‘Christmas Merry’.” He stretched his arm across the box to show me the words he printed for his grade school project. “I made this back in Banyon School,” he said. “I didn’t know I did that.” He laughed again. I looked at the print, nodded to acknowledge his discovery, and dismissed the error as a worthy effort by a young painter. “You were in first grade when you made that,” I said. I reached in the box for another Christmas figure. He turned toward the tree and hung the ornament among more perfect decorations.

During seventeen tree-trimming parties, the “Christmas Merry” ball made the short trip from corrugated box to pine branch without comments about grammar or word sequence. Each year when the ball re-appeared, we reminisced about Banyon school, his teachers and his classmates. No one noticed that the words of the traditional Christmas greeting  appeared in reverse order.

In December, millions of hands lift lids off containers that safeguard Christmas ornaments. They reach our homes by way of skilled artisans, manufacturing sites, and from the best efforts of school age children. Freed from their protective tissue paper, lifted from layers of cardboard matrices that shelter them for eleven months, the Santas, snowflakes, stars and snowmen return for their seasonal visit.  Revelers dangle them on trees, attach them to rooftops, and accessorize fireplace mantles. Around the globe, pine cones, icicles and sparkling lights dress up homes for the Christmas holidays.

Lying in wait, most decorations look the same. They are holiday staples. We expect to see the smiling Santas, the Bethlehem nativity scenes, and pine wreaths that dress up doors. Before they take their place on trees and lawns and entrances, they are ordinary items produced in numbers to satisfy market demand. For the most part, they are familiar shapes, sizes and colors. But with the touch of celebrants, the plain faces of decorations assume character and expression; personalities emerge. For a brief time in the dark of winter’s night, we enjoy the light, and the spirit that made it shine.

Within most homes, there is a moment when a pair of hands picks up an ornament from the  inventory of festive trinkets and it recalls a memory. That uncommon ornament links back to a place, a time in one’s life, a friend, a stranger, or a family. It is a connection that matters to the persons who remember. The object creates energy. It re-kindles the memory and preserves it for another year. In that moment there is a chance to share a speck of life for which there is meaning beyond the material and the moment.

Even in the first grade, presentation depends on the designer’s skills and a compromise between creativity and convenience. The young artist painted words on a Christmas ball. The letters rocked and tilted as they tracked across the center of the sphere. The spaces between the letters shrank and swelled as the young hand brushed each one across the surface of the decoration.

At any age, interpretation emerges from experience and understanding. Patience rewards the observer with options , meaning and understanding.  This eighteenth year in the life of the ornament, I picked out the first grade project – the gift to Mom and Dad many years ago. I held the ball in my hand.  I stared at the word “Merry” for a few seconds and then I turned the ornament, a slow twirl from right to left. There was a gap, a double space, before the word “Christmas” appeared. I turned the ornament a little more. Then “Merry” re-appeared, nudged up close to the end of “Christmas.” And, in that year, I laughed. The  ball read, “Merry       Christmas.” In fact, it always did.

I am among those who enjoy the ritual of unpacking decorations one at a time. Unhurried, we can take the time to  re-tell the highlights of those ornaments that have  a story. We can add the character and color of the ones with most impact, humor, or memories. When there is no curfew or rush to finish, decorating the tree is one of the holiday events I most look forward to each year.

The pleasure of unpacking memories to enjoy them every year explains why I put the “Christmas Merry” decoration back in storage after the Christmas holiday. Once, in late December, I thought I might leave the ornament out all year to remind myself to judge with care, and to measure the magnitude of failings twice to be certain of their size and importance. For some events, it takes a while to view all sides, and understand what it is we see. As time passes, we discover more about ourselves when we look at where we’ve been and where we plan to go. Mistakes made at any age become less important, even disappear, when we let them go and accept that they no longer matter. And maybe, in some cases, we discover that they never happened. Then achievement and growth, however slight the journey, become the reward worth remembering.

Weekly Photo Challenge: Renewal

I like the word ‘renewal.’ I love the word ‘renewal.’ Its mood is positive, upbeat and uplifting. With its parts, the word constructs the meaning of fresh start, a rebirth that returns belief in recovery, restoration, and perhaps immortality.

It is more certain in its meaning than other words. We ‘resume’ war; we ‘renegotiate’ because of conflicts; we ‘repeat’ mistakes and ‘return’ to places and habits both good and deficient.

We renew friendships and relationships and give them new life. We marvel at the renewal in each of nature’s seasons. We renew good intentions. And for those who glimpse and recognize in each other our penchant for peace, prosperity and cooperation we renew a faith in hope and order and spirituality that gives us strength to rise above our challenges.

Weekly Photo Challenge: Geometry

Patterns, sharp edge angles, smooth transitions and even chaos demonstrate that variety provokes thought and conversation. That is good – even when we prefer the twists and turns of other styles.

 

Weekly Photo Challenge: Foreign

I was born in a city and for the most part lived and worked in urban environments. Once in a while, my closest encounter with nature was to spot a scraggly sprout of grass trespassing in one of the pavement cracks.

On vacations, the states in New England exchanged sights of spiking tall buildings with miles of continuous mountains. Tours of the savannahs in the eastern coastal states swapped wide fields of grass for the sample size lawns of suburban life back home. I loved the variety each offered.

I was not prepared nor even knew what to expect of the rice paddies in Asia. Other places may share the hypnotic green color of the young and maturing rice, but I have not been to those places to see it.

I took a six hour bus ride from Bangkok to Surin. Fields of rice grew within miles of the Surin business center. My destination was an area about an hour away.

The only rice I saw before my visit was already steamed or fried. I learned a great deal on my first walk through the land. The length of the grass first caught my attention. I focused on the narrow view to absorb the transformation this plant takes en route from seed to market.

But the hypnotic effect, at least for me, was when I raised my eyes to take in the wide-angle view of the glowing green fields. There is stillness and a beauty as magnificent as some of the paintings I have paused before in New York museums. Each blade of grass was a brushstroke that merged on this Thailand canvas. I even thought I saw a trace of Van Gogh in some of the paddies’ galleries.

I am drawn to the fields as much as I am to the city where I live.

Weekly Photo Challenge: Silhouette

A silhouette is mysterious. It is an incomplete profile of a person or object. The image gives a partial view by definition.

Often the contrast between dark and light exaggerates the intrigue. Other persons, other elements may be subplots in the frame, but it is the silhouette that draws us in.

A young girl sat on her knees. With legs folded underneath her and at rest above the motion of the water and the bathers, her silhouette suggested an air of confidence.  She sat alone under the cover of trees at a place where many seek exposure to the sun. She turned her view to the length of beach, ninety degrees difference from those who stared toward the sea or walked back to their seats and blankets.

To the right of the silhouette just beyond the range of the viewfinder, the little girl’s parents sat angled toward the sea and their daughter. The scene now seemed complete. I took another photo as she posed without effort. I resumed my walk but looked back once more to enjoy the view.

Weekly Photo Challenge: Mine

As much as I enjoy the company of friends and family, some time to be alone is what I ask for myself. It is the time I have to realize what the blessings are and the time I have to measure curses with my own calculating tools. It is a chance to think back a moment on the day’s pleasures and on yesterday’s as well. It is an opportunity to enjoy the present, the feeling of the moment and the sights and smells and sounds around me. And sometimes it is a slice of time when I am able to focus on a single topic or nothing at all. Perhaps, I seek these minutes and seconds when I think I should change gears and re-route or after reading the compass, to feel comfort in the discovery that I am traveling the right course.