Tag: Past

Lightly Child, Lightly.

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Can you not sometimes feel how all pasts
grow light, when you’ve lived a while,
how they gently prepare you for amazement,
companion each feeling with images,—

— Rainer Maria Rilke, from “The Singer Sings Before a Child of Princes,” The Book of Images, Trans. Edward Snow.

Notes:

  • Photo: DK @ Daybreak, 6:08 a.m., 35° F. March 26, 2021. Cove Island Park, Stamford, CT.
  • Poem Source: Thank you The Vale of Soul-Making
  • Post Title & Inspiration: Aldous Huxley: “It’s dark because you are trying too hard. Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly. Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply. Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them.”

Light child, lightly.

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Can you not sometimes feel how all pasts
grow light, when you’ve lived a while,
how they gently prepare you for amazement,
companion each feeling with images,—

—  Rainer Maria Rilke, from “The Singer Sings Before a Child of Princes”, in The Book of Images

Notes:

  • Quote via memoryslandscape. Photo: Untitled, 2009 – by Marta Navarro, Spanish (via newthom.com)
  • Post Title & Inspiration: Aldous Huxley: “It’s dark because you are trying too hard. Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly. Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply. Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them.”

Monday Morning Wake-Up Call

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Sometimes now I envy those people who are at the beginning of the long road of the lives they’ll make, who still have so many decisions ahead as the road forks and forks again. Imagining their trajectories, I picture a real road, branching and branching, and I can feel it, shadowy, forested, full of the anxiety and the excitement of choosing, of starting off without quite knowing where you will end up…

I have no regrets about the roads I took, but a little nostalgia for that period when most of the route is ahead, for that stage in which you might become many things that is so much the promise of youth, now that I have chosen and chosen again and again and am far down one road and far past many others. Possibility means that you might be many things that you are not yet, and it is intoxicating when it’s not terrifying.

— Rebecca Solnit, Recollections of My Nonexistence: A Memoir (Viking, March 10, 2020)

Running. With Perforated Edges.

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6:39:47 a.m. April 10th. The time stamp on photo.

I recall the moment. The end of my run, I’m rounding the last corner before home, breathing heavily.

Morning sun. A light warm hue painting the tips of trees and bushes. Beautiful.

I slip off my glove, the tip of my index finger is moist, trembling, and sticking to the screen. I wipe it dry and slide the menu bar from Pano, Portrait, Video, Slo-Mo, Portrait, and stop on Photo. Pleased, I pause for a moment longer, admiring the view, so glad I was able to catch the moment. 

I walk the rest of the way home, catching my breath.

I’m sitting in the backyard, 30° F, sweat drying, goosebumps form on skin. I shiver. Legs sore, but that good sore after finishing a run.

I open the camera app to check out the photo.

I tap the image, and it pops up. It stutters for a moment, then a series of frames, and it stops. Irritated.

I tap the image again. And there on the top of the image, a “Live” tag.  WTF is that?

I tap the image again. It stutters, pans through a series of frames, and then stutters to silence. Jesus. You can’t even get this right.

I grab the phone and slide my index finger along the menu options, and don’t see a “Live” option. Damn it!

Index finger. Dotted line. Bad outcome. Mind draws up the Moment.

35 years later, like yesterday. My hands trembling. The course of Life would change based on the GMAT test results in that ever so thin envelope. Before I tear it open, the tip of my index finger slides along the perforated edge, my skin tingling as it passes each tiny raised dot.  I don’t recall who was with me at the time: “How’d you do?” I walked away, needing to be alone, needing to be quiet, needing to be still.

I’ve been dragging that anvil around for 35 years.

I turn back to the photo. Love photos. But it’s clear, cameras, are not my thing.

The photo syncs on iCloud to my laptop. (Magic!)

I convert the Live Photo to a still image.  Upload it to the blog post.  And pause.  Didn’t notice my shadow in the photo until now.

I run my finger around the silhouette. There you are DK. 

You caught yourself in the shot.

Your legs look a bit long, but you turned out to be ok.

Yep. This Tune.

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Someone once told me the reason songs get stuck in our head is because the mind wants to hear them to completion. Remembering only a refrain it’ll repeat.

The best way, then, to get a song out of your head is to listen to the whole thing.

~ Fiona Alison Duncan, Exquisite Mariposa: A Novel (Soft Skull Press, Oct 1, 2019)

Quote Source: Thanks Beth @ Alive on All Channels