Sunlight and time study

In a millisecond I notice the eye. In another millisecond, I notice the light and the shadows. Then I see that it’s a hand over a face. And long before the first thousand milliseconds have passed, I notice that I am looking at a photo of me.

Who am I?

Time is another of my other constant questions. A photo like this one gives me the illusion that time has paused, but within my mind, I am aware that the world is passing by milliseconds at a time. But my mind cannot possibly consciously attend to all of the information my senses are taking in. And by the time I’ve finished writing a thousand words – over and over and over again – I will only have begun to answer the question of who I am.

I could divide my walk to the river into milliseconds – theoretically. In reality, I notice parts of some moments and most of the others just fade away. I sometimes take a photo to capture a living moment, but all I end up with is a still, framed image. Maybe, with my imagination and my memories – or yours – there is an illusion of something more when I look at the image.

As with technology in general, I think that photos are both a gift and a curse. I can see things my ancestors could never see by capturing these images - images that are real and distorting - or perhaps disillusioning - at the same time.

Who am I? Why am I here?

Why, when looking at the sunlight reflecting off of the river for perhaps the trillionth millisecond, do I care?

Why, when someone else looks into my eye for a millisecond, do I care?

Questions are a gift and a curse.

Sometimes I stop in at Aimee’s café and coffee shop. I usually order a black currant iced tea. A barista looks into my eye for a millisecond. I sit up at the counter and stare out of the front windows at the sunlight and the shadows. All at a thousand milliseconds a second. I cannot attend to everything I can see. And there’s a whole world out there that I cannot see.

The glass is smooth and cold in my hand. I bring it to my lips. Ice cold river water with a hint of tea and black currant always satisfies my physical thirst. Sometimes, if I am paying attention, that first sip of iced tea satisfies something else in me. I could write a thousand more words and still not capture the all of the sensations.

That satisfied feeling is an illusion, I know, but sometimes a moment can feel like forever.

Change of pace - a personal note

Old habits die hard. It is Thursday and I am posting to this blog again. This is a little more personal. For one thing, reader, you will not have found this note through FB.

I began the ‘Walk to the river’ blog as the first steps of a journey almost five years ago. It was important for me to at least imagine readers. For one thing, a reader helps to hold me accountable for my words. I want to discipline myself to be careful to speak my part as well as I can. But I have also been continually convinced that a sort of magic happens somewhere in between a writer and a reader. When the reader is also being careful to hear, the meaning of life, the universe, and everything may be sometimes revealed in the interaction.

Or I could say it like this: Sometimes I spit over the railing into the Kaw River and I imagine that part of me will end up in the ocean.

I am ridiculous and serious at the same time. We humans are bits of ubiquitous star stuff and glorious beings. The universe has apparently never seen our like before as we travel through  this present blink of an eye. And I accept the audacity of my existence.

Time is one of the great paradoxes. There is so much of it and not nearly enough, it seems. And open your mind to this. If time is not infinite, then what – or when – came before the beginning? But who can comprehend infinity? I do not know how to hold these and other mysteries completely in my mind, but I mostly try to live within these present moments.

And so I have reached a stage on my journey. I am a writer. I write. I am beginning to get the sense of what I want to try to say. I am joining a chorus of voices who use words to express their sense of … something.

This blog space and this weekly pace doesn’t suit me as well as it did during previous years. In part, I am old fashioned, but am also simply convinced that it is better if readers read my words as they are collected in a paper book rather than on the screen. More physical thingness and less electronic blipness. And still this screen has allowed me to get some of those pieces of writing in front of readers and ready for collecting.

Did you hear the one about the chicken and the egg?

I write for myself. But when I get the words right – and I sometimes do – I want a reader to reader them.

**

I have several writing projects in the works – things that do not fit this blog form. I want to give more attention to them. And I want to present my writing in a way that feels right to me. I won’t abandon the internet as an outlet – but it is certainly not the only game in town – at least not in my book : )

I do occasionally toy with the idea of traditional publishing, but I also still have more writing I want to do either way. One story, well started, is about an older man and a young woman – two strangers traveling on a ‘Time Bubble RV.’ To say the very least, my mind wanders when I am ‘walking to the river.’ Those words are as metaphorical as they are representing physical steps. That’s one of the mysteries.

Again, I extend my thanks to you who have taken the time to listen to what I have sometimes stumbled to say – and what I think that I have sometimes said well enough.

**

And the penultimate word goes to Ecclesiastes: And further, by these, my son, be admonished: of making many books there is no end; and much study is a weariness of the flesh.

Taste that first sip of currant iced tea after walking.   - bert

Time for a change

I’ll still be walking to the river and I’ll still be writing, but this marks the end of my weekly blog posts. 

I may still publish occasionally on the ‘Walk to the river’ blog and I intend to use the FB 'Walk to the river' group site to post occasional walking and river notes, as well as some photos – but I will not be posting regularly.

The digital record still exists and collections of my writing are available directly through Amazon Books and can possibly be ordered through your local bookstore.

I thank you for reading and commenting. 

And here’s one little bit of silliness:

To my wife, walking out the door 

This poem is short

this poem is short

it is not very long

I am leaving

I am leaving

I am almost gone

I shall return

I shall return

I shall come back

I hope you don’t mind

I hope you don’t mind

that I shall come home to you