Through the Lens of Time

Letters written months, years ago, are still there on my computer. I see them now through the lens of time. Many I wrote, others are by friends or acquaintances. Mine are sort of like a diary, capturing my thoughts on a particular day. Curiously I find my thoughts then and now haven’t changed all that much. The meaning intended by those who wrote them may though have changed completely. And I can imbue them with whatever meaning I find appropriate.

What one said or thought thirty or more years ago reflects the same person, perhaps more attuned now to the changing world.  We ourselves are now seen through the lens of time. Hopefully we have become wiser, hopefully we can appreciate that world around us more in depth, or perhaps just from a different angle.

Was the world better then? Or were we more open to its beauties, to its possibilities? Or perhaps more aware of the inherent dangers. The world as I knew it no longer exists. No, that’s not true.

But I must say what world? It is up to me to see it. What I see depends on what I am looking for. An artist will choose what to capture on canvas. Once this meant his delight in capturing the reflections on a silver casket and the variations in color of a basket of fruit or a sunset. Gradually it might change and mean his search for an inner meaning in a portrait. Colors, shapes, light.

Still how fortunate I am to have lived (and continue to live) in an era where the written word still leaves its mark.

I read that in London Virginia Woolf’s exchange of correspondence might include letters or notes delivered up to twelve times a day. Now of course it is iPhones that take the place of those more personal exchanges which are often lost unless we hasten to save them.

We leave – we are gone. We leave this, or that, we leave a comment or a drawing. We leave our words (an extension of our voice) to fend for themselves for as long as the material on which they are written survives – and we are not gone.

The flowers in the field outside my house have all left their image in my mind. There are those we remember most. Some may be wild, growing of their own accord, weeds you might call them. There are the blossoms that surprise us when least expected. Out of nowhere a bud appears and gradually opens up. It may be a flaming poppy, or a sky blue chickory  flower that lasts but a day. Or a deep purple iris that gradually unfolds and even as it shrinks back, intensifies its color.

All have left their mark, their impression. So in my so-called diaries do I live in the past? When I read, what I wrote many years ago brings that past into the present.

A friend I often stayed with in New York had an apartment in a park of trees. There was also a wall full of books.  I found a phrase in one that stayed with me. “The past is memory and the future is a dream. All we truly possess is the moment. That should be our passion, our obsession, and our treasure.” And I add a thought of my own: “But that moment lasts but a heartbeat before becoming the past.”

There is really no difference between past and present.  And it is our memories that we treasure most.