#lookingatthepast

[missv-artandlife]

Temple of zeus. I don't think he was too happy with it. If i see what is left of it. #valleyoftemples #zeus #ancienttemple, #lookingatthepast

[dancinj11]

Everett hitting us with surprises...when's the last time you used a working pay phone?! #vtdreamgirls #lookingatthepast #chocolateboys #everett (at Everett Performing Arts Center)

[twistedredladybug]

I like gazing at the sky, watching the summer sky, seeing them up there in all their "former glory" but I never thought about them being dead... I knew that but somehow it always passed my mind... You know what I usually think of when I look up at the sky? How small I am, how much like a grain of sand I am, versus the entire universe created by God. How small I am yet how grateful I am to be alive and how grateful I am for my past (with all its troubles and worries but also loving memories), present (especially grateful for the small LadyBug Baby that we are waiting) and future (that is a bit scary... yet I am sure God will grant us wisdom!). What do YOU think when you are looking up at the sky? What do you think when you see the stars? Do you dwell on the past or do you think about the future? 

Read my thoughts here: http://twistedredladybug.blogspot.com/2016/06/unconsciously-looking-at-past.html

[alfonsinabetancourt]

The poetry of the stars

Memories still emerge of the long hours I spent buried among my parents’ book. They had a great book and record collection, the one lots of people will often borrow from and very seldom return to. But they rejoiced on the moment when someone mentioned a story and they would say: “I have that book, I can lend it to you.”  The intoxicating smell of some of those old pages, a combination of dust and humidity, was probably the sweet aroma of my childhood.  That and my mother’s homemade sauce, of course.

  While driving home yesterday, I heard my daughters and niece talking about the sky. They were mentioning black holes, comets, stars and many of the things I used to read in that first astronomy book. With the memories emerging, I tuned up my ears to understand what was the topic of discussion.  My daughter was making a whole dissertation about how the stars we are seeing now have been dead for a long time. Then my niece announced: “it is because looking at the stars it is like looking at the past.” That sounded so poetic to me, so real, and so important. My mind quickly moved from the pages of my first astronomy book to my stubborn incapacity to deal with certain events in my own recent past.

  Always being a believer that the past should be left where it is so that we can really enjoy the present, I was truly shaken when a tragic period of my life that I could not discuss openly and as consequence process and fully digest kept clinging to me like an orphan and hungry dog.  I did not recognize that side of myself; the part that months later still had bleeding wounds after what my analytical mind considered more than an adequate time for healing. The past was a big black, cloudy sky that I could not stop looking at. I did search for stars, but the darkness was heavier and more powerful than a black hole. I could not stop looking for some twinkle of hope, a subtle explanation of what happened, but everything was very elusive.

  “Looking at the stars it is like looking at the past”, last night it suddenly seemed so real.  I realized how I have fought so freaking hard to leave the past behind, and suddenly that phrase made so clear to me how much I have walked forward, far away from that anchor. How I can rejoice on the elusive twinkle, on the statistically improbability of catching a shooting star, while actually being face to face with the sky, with my past. I still believe we have to leave the past behind in order to enjoy the present. But we can still watch it from afar; there is a whole galaxy between us. And even if I look at it for hours everyday, most likely I am going to spend more hours watching it on the daylight, everything made so small and irrelevant under the power of the sun. The darkness might still be there, behind that curtain, disguising it corpses of stars, but no matter how much I look, I know I am looking at something that seems like it is there, but is not, like every single star that died years ago. And so like a book borrowed from my parents’ library, I take from the past what is useful, my strength included, and only return the old pages that contain the story that do not serve any purpose anymore. And like looking at the sky every night, I know the events in the past will always be there twinkling and organizing themselves in bigger of smaller constellations, but by the time they already reached me, they would have already passed. There is actually nothing wrong about contemplating what happened, as long as we remember that empty space between the yesterday and today as well. So today I reclaimed my desire to keep looking at the past with the same magical enthusiasm I contemplated the sky in my childhood. If I do not like what I see, I can always stick my head out in the morning, or ultimately bury my head in a very entertaining book.

[likerocksinmypockets]

It's a bit weird.

Sometimes I go back and read things I wrote a while ago.  I can pinpoint where exactly in my timeline that I wrote them - what I was going through, how I was feeling.  And it's weird, reading things from then, because it's like watching a movie that was made in the 60s.  It's such a different time now from back then, even if it was only a few months ago.  But to look at the hurt and the ache in the heart of my past, it brings me to tears.  To look back on myself and see just how much I was hurting. It's like looking at the pain of another.  And it's so distant because I'm not going through the same thing now as back then, but it's here and now because I can remember it like it was yesterday.  And it's just sad, sometimes. But it's also happy. Because I know now that I can always make it through.  That the sun is always shining, even if the sky is covered with clouds.  To know that the clouds will always lift away, revealing a sun that loves to shine, gives me hope.