The sun, the moon, and I were then aligned.
Tags: DiamondRing SolarEclipse TotalSolarEclipse Eclipse2024 Corona Chromosphere Eclipse Ramen Saha SingleExposure
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Dear friend, here we are, in the oneiric Vatia. Vatia is at the far end of the little Samoan island in the mighty middle of the Pacific. The road ends here. The world also ends here. The portal to depart this world must be here somewhere. Listen to the waves gurgling over the rocks. I wonder if those are yearnings of souls departing the world. I wonder how it must be, that departing. How it must be to sail past the Pola island in the distance into the elysian unknown.
You are wondering, a bit worried perhaps, why am I brooding about darker things. I recently lost my pisi (aunt), who was the dearest angel of my childhood. The other day, I held her frail hands when she did not have many more days to turn. I kept her hands warm but couldn’t keep the cold from crushing my core. We have all lost one or many. Sometimes too many. Our loved ones… they leave, the love doesn’t. I don’t know what hurts more… the inevitable or the swirling void left by the inevitable.
The wind is picking up and those waves are now crashing and curling all the more. Allow me, let me recite a few lines from Scott Momaday. I will read slowly. I will read carefully so that the wind furls and flutters with Momaday’s ancient words:
“I have observed the whorls of geology on a canyon wall, a splinter of the sun at my window, the far end of time on the desert, a butterfly alighting on a leaf, an old man praying, sunrise on the Great Plains, ravens playing with a young fox, wind whipping the sea, the look of wonder on a child's face, a snowfield in moonlight, and a small blue stone. Why should I fear death?”
Look around… this tiny beach with artsy rocks, those coconut trees pretending to be unafraid of those ominous clouds, that wave crashing in the distance, the almost invisible arch behind that crashing wave, the invisible passage of our loved ones through that arch leaving behind waves that are breaking on these artsy rocks and our souls... The departed and we are here together. Here, now, we are the becoming.
Why should I fear death?
Tags: NationalParkOfAmericanSamoa AmericanSamoa Vatia Tutuila PolautaRidge PolaIsland Ocean Vai'avaStraitNationalNaturalLandmark Vai'avaStrait VatiaBay PolaIslandTrail AmericanSamoaHighway006 Manually blended HDR Ramen Saha
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"When I pronounce the word Future,
the first syllable already belongs to the past.
When I pronounce the word Silence,
I destroy it.
When I pronounce the word Nothing,
I make something no non-being can hold."
~ Wisława Anna Szymborska (‘The Three Oddest Words’)
'Nothing', according to the poet and literature Nobel laureate, Wisława Szymborska, is something no non-being can hold. If the double negative in that last sentence gave you a pause, no blame nah be yours. It’s something, that ‘Nothing’! If you allow me, I have gathered three ways to interpret the whims of that last line.
One… the word ‘Nothing’ has a meaning and therefore is not really nothing.
Two… canceling out the double negative, the line reads: ‘Nothing’ can be held by a ‘being’. A being who breathes, feels, suffers, and cries. A being can hold ‘Nothing’ in his existence, heartbeat, or emotion. Occasionally, ‘Nothing’ is everything one can hold. It’s not easy to not hold something while holding the entirety of its mighty weight. ‘Nothing’ is then the being. The being is then ‘Nothing’.
Three… with the temerity of a snail that wants to travel the world… I interpreted that last line as the photograph above. In layers, ‘Nothing’ is everything, which no non-being can hold.
Tags: IsleRoyale IsleRoyaleNationalPark LakeSuperior KeweenawCounty Keweenaw Michigan Island Rocks RockHarbor Polarizer Ramen Saha Manually blended HDR Sunset Underwater
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It was one of those evenings when my soul held manyfold more than what my heart could. In front of me was a youthful river. The river carried melting time from a nearby glacier and curved around the present moment with a soft murmur. Her waters treaded through time and space, drinking shimmering reflections of the day's end. Somewhere nearby, the sun forged divinity. The divine floral light edged saggy trees and my wounds; some old, some lurid. These wounds are like the mountains and riverside rocks; they simultaneously convey permanence and cold voids. The voids birthed and then deflected misty clouds away from me like painful songs, which subsequently congregated in the sun’s cathedral. About then, in the mist, I met her. She was not a ruse of my vision for I felt her in my soul. She was the mythical keeper of the moment. She was the pure.
She was the eternal and I was the fleeting moment.
Tags: KenaiFjords KenaiFjordsNationalPark ResurrectionRiver ExitGlacierRiver Seward Alaska Ramen Saha Sunset Manually blended HDR HermanLeirerRoad River Rocks Clouds Mountains Long exposure
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Down the river
where reeds
sway west,
the salmon school
waits...
Waits to return
to its womb
up the river,
where the bear
waits...
The bear waits
at the very edge
where the river falls
with a life's fury,
and death
waits...
Tags: Katmai KatmaiNationalPark Brooks BrooksRiver NationalPark Ramen Saha Alaska Handheld BrownBear AlaskanBrownBear UrsusArctos BrooksFalls BrooksCamp KatmaiNationalParkAndPreserve
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