24 February 2012

[ this moment ]





[ this moment ] - A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember. (Homage to Soule Mama)

20 February 2012

Skywriting

Clasping my mother’s hand, I
walk toward kindergarten’s
first day. The promise of my
education extending
in all directions, no paths
yet chosen except for this
sidewalk connecting home and

school. It is warm, late summer
in the desert, and there are
gaps in this early memory:
where are my siblings? perhaps
my older brothers are already
at school. My younger sister,
though? Where is she? Does she walk

alongside us? Is my mother
pushing a stroller? It is
my memory, I suppose,
and maybe that’s why these ever-
present siblings aren’t present
here. In my mind, in my story,
it is a quiet morning,

my mother and me, a rare
flash of alone-together.
I look up into that blue
sky, its immensity as huge
as my potential. An air-
plane, silent and distant, writes
a message in the sky. And

this I recall distinctly:
So sure of what I would learn
that first day at school, I didn’t
ask my mother to read me
the skywriting. Perhaps this
was the beginning of
conscious growing up and

growing away, the separ-
ation of self from parent?
In my double naiveté,
I was certain of two things:
I would be able to read
at the end of the school day
(as if that were a skill to

master in a single afternoon),
and that the message would
remain, waiting for my
ability to catch up.
Airplanes don’t write in the sky
anymore and while the educated
adult I am today knows
that the message was likely

an advertisement, still
I marvel at the power
of words, especially those
dangling before us, yet
hidden in plain sight, as
incongruous as letters
made of vapor, ethereal as clouds.

17 February 2012

[ this moment ]

[ this moment ] - A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember. (Homage to Soule Mama)

10 February 2012

[ this moment ]




[ this moment ] - A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember. (Homage to Soule Mama)

09 February 2012

The Wabi-Sabi End

The other morning, I happened to walk into my daughter’s bedroom just moments after she’d finished reading S.E. Hinton’s The Outsiders. That was a favorite book of mine during adolescence, and I have to admit that I was very excited that she was reading it. (Yes, I know. That’s pretty weird.)

But it was that exact moment when I walked into the room: she was sitting on the bed, in the very act of closing the book… and the look on her face – oh, to have had a camera at the ready! It was a look of satisfaction and of wistfulness, of happiness and sadness all at once. That sorrowful feeling when it’s time to say goodbye to characters that seem like real people (except sometimes you like them more than real people) and that immense sense of gratitude that you got to spend time with them, and see them through the obstacles they faced, all the way to the wabi-sabi end.

Wabi-sabi? Wabi-what?

Amy Krouse Rosenthal defines the Japanese concept of wabi-sabi in her wonderful book, Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life:

Sabi: a mood – often expressed through literature – of attentive melancholy.

Wabi: a cozier, more object-centered aesthetic of less as more.

Wabi-Sabi: As a single idea, wabi-sabi fuses two moods seamlessly: a sigh of bittersweet contentment, awareness of the transience of earthly things, and a resigned pleasure in simple things that bear the marks of that transience.

And that’s it, isn’t it? The delight in the wonder of words and that touch of melancholy that it’s over. I don’t know about you, but I’ve got a book or two I want to finish reading.

03 February 2012

[ this moment ]





[ this moment ] - A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember. (Homage to Soule Mama)