If an author tells you that you “should live in the moment,” you know he’s either a fool or a hypocrite. Authors don’t write about “the moment”; they write about the past, or, at best, some imaginary future. It’s impossible to do otherwise.
It is equally impossible to blog about the moment, but I’ll fake it and take a brief break from my Santa Rosa trip to blog about my Monday visit to Pt. Defiance Rose Garden because if you live in Tacoma you need to visit the Rose Garden now, during our current spell of sunshine.
It’s obvious the roses love the heat; they look like they’ve been reborn, showing none of the scars from the late Spring rains we experienced here.
Even the peripheral gardens look as beautiful as they have all summer.
Most of all, the Dahlia garden is in full bloom; even the bees know enough to visit now.
There are several varieties I don’t remember having seen in the past, like this orange and white variety.
There were much larger varieties then this red-tinged beauty, but none struck me as quite as beautiful.
If I really believed in living for the moment, I’d be outside enjoying today’s sunshine instead of sitting inside polishing images and describing a beauty that’s already days old, nearly forgotten already in the beauty of yesterday’s trip to Mt. Rainier.
Any joy I feel in revisiting these beauties pales in comparison to the joy I felt in observing them first-hand. I can only imagine what it must feel like to experience them only through a computer screen thousands of miles away.
But don’t forget we are living these lovely images “in the moment” too, Loren, just as you yourself were processing and editing them “in the moment” — even if that moment seemed more diluted than the original moment when you directly perceived the flowers.
However, point taken — writing literally about the present moment is impossible. Though, on reflection, perhaps it may be possible through metaphor, koan, poem etc?
Hopefully, in some miraculous way all these images and words we look at help us to live more in the moment more of the time, but when you would rather be outside experiencing the sunshine, it certainly seems ironic to be sitting inside looking at a computer screen, not at actual flowers.
These images were all caught ‘in a moment’, as were the bees settled on the dahlia, Loren. As for the writer capturing the moment – of course it is more or less impossible, except that some moments in one’s life are such that it is impossible to forget them, and although one speaks of them in retrospect – the image is still strong.
Exquisite photos….especially the white and orange dahlia.
Living in the “now” is like dying, dying to self that is and observing, observing the very flow of things without the encumbrance of our ego. Letting go and letting be and seeing how unessential we are to it all, but yet we are. This is the gift that God has given us, our lives, our chance to participate, to possible make a difference, somewhere or to someone.
Ego is not one of the things I find lacking in most authors, I’m afraid.
In fact, ego may be the only thing that keeps me from dropping this site and just reading and photographing for myself.
I would like to believe that I do it because it is my “chance to participate, to possibly make a difference, somewhere or to someone.”
Your images have inspired me to try photography as a hobby.
You may see some of my attempts on my facebook page.
Click through to my albums and then click on “Artworks.”
Thank you.
Inspiration is always a good thing.
The more you take.the better they begin to look. Practice is all.