Remembering Moments

Over in Japan Iain in a posting titled Foot prints in the Snow, remembers an event in early childhood. He says, an intuitive sense of ‘the transient’ really touched me.

There is just something about foot prints isn’t there.

I must have been, Oh about 16, out walking high on the South Downs in Sussex. Photography was just starting to be a hobby, black and white film in those days. On the chalky white path I came upon a pair of discarded cheap black patent leather women’s shoes. They so struck me that I took a number of pictures, one with the shoes arranged as if ‘walking’ up the path. This was one of the first times I attempted to capture something I felt on film, and never felt satisfied I’d caught it. I still can’t say what it was however I’ll always remember coming upon those shoes. Perhaps that too was about transience, after all ‘Where was the person’?

House Keeping Note: You may notice a change in the way I am linking to other blogs and web sites. This comes through reading about the original ‘weblogs’ which were link rich. Their aim being to encourage people to follow links through the means of informative ‘link text’, that’s the underlined and highlighted text. Early web sites worked hard to keep people on their site, weblogs worked hard to get people to leave!

It is great that people, on average about 50 a day, visit here and I hope you will leave your mark through the comments and then leave again, and again and again.

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4 thoughts on “Remembering Moments”

  1. I’m one of the fifty who visit here regularly. I come here to breathe peace in the Buddhist tradition, if I say that correctly. Thank you for sharing your reflections.

  2. Footsteps…this time last year my sister and I walked the Coast to Coast, a 192 mile walk across the UK from St Bees in Cumbria to Robin Hoods Bay in Yorkshire. Many footsteps, many moments, and many changing lights and scenes. We met some wonderful people, from all over the world, walking that path. For some it was the challenge, for others a sort of personal pilgrimage.

    A year later, a fellow traveller is unable to walk as he is dying from a brain tumour. I feel so lucky that I was able to share his last long walk with him and his partner. It is so important that the footprints we leave behind are joyous ones. We can only ever make them once.

  3. Dear Pat, How wonderful that you left a message. You have some really great photographs on your blog. And I wish you well with your health, please come back again and again and again! And thankyou for sharing your reflections.

    Robert, if it is appropriate do send me the name of your friend by email for our Transfer of Merit board. When the Pennine Way opened in the 60’s I harboured a longing to walk it. A long way from near Manchester to the Scotish boarder and I never did do it. And I believe it was the first long distance path in Britain. Could be wrong. I did walk parts of the Pacific Crest Trail in California, a real highway in the sky that one, from Mexico to the Canadian boarder.

    Michael, In terms of spiritual practice, the leaving again and again is, of course, the practice of leaving the comfort of the known to enter into unknowing.

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