Thursday, September 13

imprinted impermanently

last weekend we drove out into a small slice of nowhere (not really--no place can ever really count as nowhere, can it?) to set up a tent and sleep in the sand. the night was suffocatingly blustery, but we did survive somehow. the next day came to life under lovely mottled clouds, traced all around by not-so-gentle sparkling breezes. the sand was smooth as sand almost always is, and unusually wet for West Texas. I practiced my German a bit, writing out a few easy phrases like "hallo, wie geht's?" and "ich liebe dich" in the surface. friend Melanie and I also built some sand castles.
(thanks to Melanie for the pictures.)

this was one of the most relaxing things I've done all year, I think. should I admit I'm almost tempted to acquire a sandbox for my backyard, just so I can go out and play in it when reading Plato and van Eemeren becomes insufferable?

even while we mounded all this soft, sandy construction material into walls and towers and keeps, and even while we dug moats and trenches and arches around and between and among them all, the wind was already caressing our creations away. if it had been a beach, we'd be surrendering our land to the ocean. these things are not meant to last.

in that spirit, I'll end by telling you that the other day this conglomerate tumblr blog of quotes and such quoted this excerpt/article/musing by this guy named Alan Lightman, and here I am, requoting it.
"I don’t know why we long so for permanence, why the fleeting nature of things so disturbs. With futility, we cling to the old wallet long after it has fallen apart. We visit and revisit the old neighborhood where we grew up, searching for the remembered grove of trees and the little fence. We clutch our old photographs. In our churches and synagogues and mosques, we pray to the everlasting and eternal. Yet, in every nook and cranny, nature screams at the top of her lungs that nothing lasts, that it is all passing away. All that we see around us, including our own bodies, is shifting and evaporating and one day will be gone."
maybe try harder to embrace the temporality? maybe...?

3 comments:

Janeheiress said...

This is why I obsessively take pictures. I wish I could capture every moment in time.

Janeheiress said...

Pal and I were just talking about how much we miss the good times of 2-3 years ago. At least we have pictures of them!...and I get that painful nostalgia every time I drive by the house I lived in until I was 10, and see how different it is now.

Amelia Chesley said...

yeah. it's always way tempting to look back and romanticize the past. or daydream about the marvelous future ahead....
living in the moment is hard. but it is worth it, I think.