Marcoclicks - images, words

Tree of life

The woods near the Pond are about as close as we come to an urban wilderness, surrounded as they are by car horns and runners and laughing children. They all unwittingly partake of the dance of this day. The sun and chill air bring our awareness back to the shifting of seasons, that forever transition that fluctuates in and out of focus. Yet in this moment, it is hard not to imagine the dance continuing just exactly this way forever.

And of course it won't. On this particular day, in this moment of sunlight and shadow, we glimpse a vigorous beech tree, hidden near a roadway close by paths and ponds. We imagine it inhabiting this place, quiet and leggy in those dense woods, muscular even as leaves drop and sap prepares for the inevitable stiffening cold.

We share this world with such wise beings, ones that never speak and rarely move. When we are attentive, we find common ground and comfort in this companionship, and celebrate what our lives share.

Marc

Hidden place

It requires some effort to notice deeply the places that do not call out for superlatives, places that are common and quiet and used to being ignored, walked past. I'm learning that the blessing comes from staying open to what is always around us, looking at what is familiar with sufficiently new eyes to see something deeper.

When I can clear out the baggage of my rigid definition of beauty or composition, I wonder about trees and rocks that have stood unnoticed and virtually undisturbed for longer than I can imagine. Sometimes I imagine this spot is exactly the center of the universe, disguised as some common assemblage of undergrowth. Or I imagine there is an ancient congregation of woodland beasts that comes together exactly right here once every twelve years to sit in the quiet, keeping the earth in its orbit.

These musings make me smile. Yes I know, far more likely, that this is simply a place, one among untold numbers, a place that can hold all awareness or none. It presents an opportunity for us to enter into focused attention, greater presence.

Marc

Tethered

I returned to a familiar place that has gone unvisited for enough time to expect that things have changed. Some things have; others remain the same. This is no surprise although it always does surprise me - that life, growth, decay all move along, continue, in my absence. It ought not to be so hard to grasp, except perhaps as metaphor.

I remember this rusted fence, the one that overlooks the spillway that feeds this muddy river. And I recall this gently weathered rope, captured last time as it held nothing to nothing. I could see the hands that tied the rope and imagined the sequence of events that led to it being left there. It told such a story, at once coarse and nuanced.

But this time there was another element - synthetic and fraying and yet containing what felt like similar histories of imaginings as the jute. There they were, tied together and combining to tether these new moments to my memory of the old and to enrich both through their unintended, graceful presence. It will be a while before the stories become clear. Patience, that is another blessing.

Marco