A MOMENT IN TIME

These are a few of my favorite things: postcards from friends and family (some places that I have never been as yet), a few pictures of friends and family, and some poetry and silly things that I just have to pin up on my board when I want to look at them daily.

This board sits above my sewing table and I can look at it daily, if I am working on a sewing project. I have lots of projects stacked up to do but seem to be putting them on the back burner lately. I don't know why; it just feels right at this moment in time.

Isn't it great how a photo can take you back to "that" moment? A wedding photo of friends who married on the beach; a photo of my twins in their letter jackets when they were in high school basketball; a postcard from a friend of Georgia O'Keefe from her trip to Arizona; a photo of a friend who was killed in an auto accident way before her time. along with a child-hood picture of her looking just as beautiful; wonderful postcards from my professor announcing his gallery shows (I collect all his postcards).

Each of these cards and objects hold a special memory for me, even though they are just that: cards and objects. But, they represent something to me; they are beautiful to me. Do other people find them just as appealing as I do? Probably not. But that is what I find so interesting. Would the same cards on someone Else's board hold the same intrigue for me? Perhaps. Is it the visual appeal of the colors placed "just so" that I like? Is it the haphazard placement of each object that makes it look like a collage that I like? Or, is it just that they each hold a memory for me (and ONLY me) that makes me ooh and aah? I think that it just might be a bit of both.

I once went for a long walk in our local Pioneer Cemetery. I found beauty in the marble headstones, the words used to describe each loved one left behind, the specks of moss and algae growing on the headstones and carvings, and even the colors of nature interspersed throughout the actual landscaping. I am in the process of painting a very small section of the moss that I photographed once on one of these headstones. It is just a section approximately 6 inches square but I have blown it up to canvas size and am constantly re-working the piece, trying to capture the nuances of each section. The board is like that for me.

A snapshot of a moment in time. Isn't great what we can capture now with our digital cameras? We can snap a moment in our lives just as we see it or are experiencing it and can look at it, decide to keep it, or delete it instantaneously. What a great opportunity we have to create something out of nothing. That moment in time is captured for us and just might be something that others might find interesting also. Or not. Not everyone has the same affection for the same moment. We could each be standing at the same place at the same time and each one of us see something entirely different. We each bring to our work our own experience and time. Like a clock that is broken and permanently tells us it is 9:30. Is that AM or PM? Which year? Which longitude and latitude?

At this moment in time I am stuck at 9:00 PM PST. Waiting.