While on my lunch hour…

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Très triste

Chacune de ces photos peut provenir de n’importe quelle ville du monde. Et c’est triste.

Solitude Found

However I feel and wherever I am, I try to find solitude. It’s a quiet that renews me because I can be myself.  Solitude encourages me not only to reflect, but to jettison the ill-feelings of comparisons and expectations.  The Rolling Stones, rock classic, Satisfaction, is so very telling:

“…When I’m watchin’ my TV and a man comes on and tells me
How white my shirts can be
But, he can’t be a man ’cause he doesn’t smoke
The same cigarettes as me…”

I’m not equating isolation with solitude, as the former suggests being devoid of sensory inputs.  No, this is about a mindfulness that keeps at bay the disquiet of our modern life.  Turn off the radio, the TV, the podcast, et al. Though it may be easier–if all too obvious–to find solitude when completely alone, that is unnecessary.  Solitude can manifest itself anywhere. Don’t you find solitude at a social event [even at work] when you can momentarily remove yourself to a space that doesn’t invade your thinking and feeling?  Step away, even for a moment, to find some quiet, some calm, some level of respite.

We’ve yielded to wanting impressions that don’t add genuine value to our sense of self: number of likes, tweets, comments, “friends”, postings and so forth.  Allow yourself to be your own best company.

Splashes of Light

Those who live close to the 66th circle of latitude have it tough. This is  the area of earth known as the Arctic Circle. Brutally low temperatures notwithstanding, the brevity of available daylight 6-7 months of the year would be the metaphorical stake-in-the-chest for me.

While light is essential to vision, perception, photosynthesis and so forth, on any given day light can also trigger a variety of feelings.

You can argue that what one sees in a photograph is more variants of shade and hue than actual light. Like 2 sides of a coin, you can defend one POV over another, but there’s no denying the fascination some of us have for how light can enlighten…