For You, 60!

‘For You, 60!’

An old friend of mine turned sixty today.

With an underlying message of “onwards and upwards”, I sent this image to her.

It shows the rear of the rather splendid Sacre-Coeur Basilica in Paris, where I had visited recently and my friend had also gone a few years ago.

I love the way the tower catches the light and emerges from the shadowed mass of the lower parts of the structure, pointing to the heavens. Clouds drift by the building’s static lines; time moves on.

I used a standard Apple filter to make this phone pic “pop” a little, but, hey, it is a birthday celebration after all!

Onwards and upwards!

Daybreak Intent

 

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Early this morning; another Monday with it all ahead, but with a head that is somewhat emotionally clouded.

The short walk to the train tosses up a cloudscape of its own.

One radiant with a warm energy.

An ornamental pole stabs at the fiery sky with a directness and intent that was lacking in me.

There is a simple message for me there: upwards and onwards, mate – the day will follow your intent.

And just pausing to admire the scene and take a picture is a simple way to take you out of your own head…

 

 

Transitory

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You can’t make this stuff up really.

Perfect cumulus cloud puffs arrayed in the sky, as they were late yesterday afternoon at home.

So perfect they don’t look real.

But it’s not the form of the clouds that really exercises my mind . It’s their fleeting, transitory nature.

Always appearing from out of nowhere, adorning the moment and then moving on, never to be replicated exactly.

You cannot capture clouds, save in photos.

And all that does is freeze their vapoury uncertainty to fit a frame that cannot ever contain their truth.

Rather than pillowy comfort, I associate clouds with uneasy change.

Change, and being fully present in the moment, are challenges for me – clouds are thus my ultimate mindfulness tools, for their unique presence cannot last…

……………………………………………….

(for more clouded thoughts, see: Cloud’s Illusions ).