Someone once said that “Life is what happens when we’re on our way to somewhere else,” which I guess is an admonition that we should pay attention to this moment, this very moment. I don’t know about you, but I sometimes catch myself thinking that what I’m doing right now -- typing a few words on a computer keyboard, for example -- isn’t that important, but that thing I have planned for this afternoon (shooting a job for a paying client)...well, that will be important.
Fortunately I have a camera to remind me to pay attention. I can be walking through a room and glance out a window and notice -- even if ever so vaguely at first -- that there are shapes and colors to be seen. A lamp and its warm light inside the room are reflected in the glass, and they kind of magically complement wind chimes and a withered plant outside the window.
Another time I pass a mirror in our front hall and notice that, where the mirror glass is beveled, one nearby Buddha statue becomes three, and a single candle becomes many (my cerebral Tibetan monk friends would get a huge kick out of this things-aren’t-always-what-they-seem kind of realization.)
So I stop. I use my camera to take notes, and I divide my days into slices of 1/60th or 1/125th of seconds.
Then I post the bits of my day here, to share with others.
That camera really is a magic box that often sees far more clearly than I.
