Holding The Past

A bit of a meta-post tonight, in the absence of anything else that's not springing readily to mind presently. I sit down every day, as I have done since the first Covid lockdown in March 2020, to scribble a little blog post just like this one. This of course is a self-imposed task - a kind of mental auto-flagellation, if you would have it - that very often leaves me at a complete loss as to what to write. And write I must, as I made myself a vow not to miss a day's meanderings until the time comes when I'm physically, mentally or both, unable to do so. So now you know - when this monologue ceases, so will have I. But not just now: I'm in no mood to hang up the proverbial boots just yet, thank you. This is kind of my inverse take on the Zen master sending out his postcards to all he knew announcing that the moment of his ceasing would be on the receipt by all of the cards themselves: I announce my continued presence until my absence is reflected in the absence of these utterances [unless of course the internet blows up and disappears before I do].

Some days - especially in weeks like these - introspection is something that absorbs me more than any engagement with the world beyond my gate. Looking through boxes of old photographs in uncollated, random order flashes one's life in a random slideshow of infinitesimal slices of one's time on this earth, captured and frozen in fractions of a second at a time. I've written many times before of the power and mystery of the photograph: these days a much devalued and throwaway, evanescent digital artefact that is destined only to be as fleeting and fragile as the technology that creates and stores it. The boxes of paper we currently hold can be passed on for future generations, some of whose existence may also have been fleetingly captured in silver on paper; surviving long after the digital stuff has dissolved into nothingness itself as the technology moves on and the support systems for its retrieval are abandoned. Just as with art and literature, the physical object will always transcend and outlive its digital representation.