Focus. Concentrate. What is important? Who decides? And what about the other stuff? Again, photography acts as a metaphor for life. How do you get the experience of your own powers of creation? Make decisions, make art, and you know that you are making a universe. Then, unmake it, and you’ll know what you can control and change.
Is the glass half empty? Half full? Is the glass solid or as liquid as its contents but moving at a different speed? Am I half done with my life or beginning a new day? Are the things that exist only in my memory real or not? If they exist in my memory, have I lost them?Â
I had a birthday on Wednesday, and a good cry on Thursday. The quiet, summer afternoon transported me to another time and place. My husband was alive, snoring in the Lazy Boy in my living room. I had a living room – a full house with 4 bedrooms. My oldest daughter was in her room, reading children’s books. My son was in the yard playing with a next door neighbor. My two youngest daughters were entwined on a bed, thumbs in their mouths, damp curls encircling their sleepy heads. It seemed so palpable…and so untouchable. Never again; though, yes, it was. Once. LOSS loomed in my brain. A word I envisioned; I’d conjured it like the scene of that composite day. When I focused on it, I was awash in gut pain. It was powerful. Over moments, the focus softened. Its power faded. It became a muted background of warmth, of subtle longing, a wistful smile. There are other things in my life. Some embryonic, some ripening. That previous life is like the green light of a summer day. It is there, all around. It is not in focus, though. It is enough.
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scillagrace 
Every day is newly born and at the end of each day that day is gone forever.. There is only now.. how I wish it were so simple to live that “only now” as it is to say it.
Amen, sister!
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🙂
Belated Happy Birthday!
Now is past. It’s the existence of the past that gives us a future….. and our reality is between our ears.
Never heard it put quite that way before….”our reality is between our ears”…but it’s true!
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This is such a beautiful reflection. It brings to mind the comment you left on my blog about the circle of life and trees. It’s so true that there is birth that comes from destruction. The same in life, I believe. Happy Birthday. And that cry sounds good. I think I’m overdue.
Thank you, Victoria. And if you are waiting for permission on that cry, I’ll grant it for you! Have a bawl! (try keening; my mother swears by it!)
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Birthdays do call for a cry when one is over 30. Happy Belated:)
Is that the wisdom of age? We finally know that “life is suffering”, as the Buddha said.
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Dear Scilla,
This post captured feelings I have couldn’t possibly have articulated so well. I think we need to take a moment now and then to remember intensely those times that were so precious, like little booster shots, to keep them strong, to savor the goodness we have lived in tiny doses, like a sip of sherry. Happy birthday!
Just so happens sherry is my homey, comfort drink of preference. It is sweet to savor the goodness of love we helped create! Thanks for the birthday wishes!
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Here I am, in ‘the now’ and as usual I’m late…… But tardiness aside, I am tilting a half full glass of fino in your direction and wishing you a very happy birthday….
😀
Thank you, Stuart! I appreciate our connection in any matrix of time or space. Exchanging creative ideas and wishing each other the best is a pleasure for me. Cheers!
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Cheers Scillabuddy !
Sorry about the question marks. It makes me sound equivocal, but I’m not!
Your little Q-Mark punctuaters are one of the many things I like about you………….