Coming and going, and keeping with the theme, as it were, of photography. 



We've had such good sunsets lately. 

There's a point in the film on Wagstaff and Mapplethorpe, when Patti Smith is talking about Sam's interest in Robert's photography, and how he was talking to her once about one of Robert's photographs, about the black, the shade of black, and how it was a different kind of black, a deeper black, and he kept obsessing over it.  It made me think about Whistler and his use of black, and then I thought about a wonderful book T. recommended years ago, "In Praise of Shadows," by Jun'ichiro Tanizaki, which is very much about light and shadows and therefore blackness/darkness.  Tanizaki  leads me to think about Lafcadio Hearn, but that's too big a leap for tonight.  Maybe tomorrow.

I started making a few edits and revisions here (and there), which wiped out some comment threads.  Really I was trying to sharpen the focus of my intent, improve the flow, and also eliminate a few of my more foolish observations.  But then I thought maybe I was violating some Rule of Blog, which says once a post is published it cannot be mended, or something, so I stopped.  Now I can't decide whether to leave things alone, or not.  

My sister B. stopped by the blog the other day, and Cousin R too, which was very nice.  They are gathering with my sister K in Holland next weekend.  B also likes research, (she was looking up 1907 -- so close! -- because it is the founding year of her church) and therefore she was very encouraging.  She wrote about going through the microfilm at her local library.   People still do research that way.    

This morning I had a thought which I scribbled down, the way I do sometimes right when I get up and before I go make coffee and deal with the world.  "1904 + 108," I wrote. Then, "Do the math."

Now, 108 is the number of Names of the Divine Mother (one of a Series of Divine Names to be chanted daily), also a standard number of repetitions for a mala (prayer beads) when saying a mantra.  108 cycles, repetititions, 108 years.  If 1904 was the year when we had only a clearly specified amount of time to get everything right, to accomplish something or complete a larger cycle, say a cosmic karmic cycle, and if that period of time we had remaining to us was 108 years, then we'd be pretty close to being done right about now, wouldn't we. 

I think this way sometimes.  Later on I was reading a description of someone entering a farmhouse somewhere in the Middle East, some deserted shelter in the desert that had been used as a safe house or hideout.  The writer describes the debris, the terrible filth, the "pong of jihadis."  Funny how words can conjure up an image so forcefully, it pushes the present world into some far away corner, and you think, how little time we even deserve to have left.  Then you think how the truck has started making an expensive rattling sound, which means you'll have to take it into the shop tomorrow.   And then you realize that in the meantime, the sunset is faded, done; "darkness," as they say in certain kinds of scripts and novels, "falls." 

Not quite what I'd intended for this evening's post, but there you are.  If I understood what this all meant, I wouldn't be bothering.  And I suspect that perhaps, as regards many things in this life, neither would you.