From a distance...

Bizarre. I am working on my friend Dave's (unfamiliar to me) laptop, and I have just erased the first paragraph of this post -- which was all about a discussion he and I had in which both of us were observing how we knew before the Iraq war that the war would not be a good idea, even though neither of us is particularly political or remotely involved in the government.

I know. Way more political than I tend to get, or intend this blog to get. But it's important because it is the context for the choice of this photograph. The important question is, how can we who are so removed from this situation, see it so clearly, when those who are in it and SHOULD be more in touch with it can be so deluded? It was with that as the last open question in the conversation that Dave left to take his shower and left me here in his beautiful kitchen in New England, surrounded by red barns, slowly turning trees, and a Maxfield Parrish sky, to look for a photograph that would speak to me today.

So I went poking around on my website (there's no obvious way I can load in the photos I took this morning) to see what spoke to me and this image emerged. And I think it struck me because I photographed a photographer. Like Powell and Cheney and Bush and Rove and all those poor misguided congressmen and senators, he is IN THE PICTURE. And because, like them, he has his own agenda, a particular photograph HE is trying to get (and I can imagine, from my perspective, that it might be a photograph in which his own reflection is possibly emerging from the mouth of that giant face behind him), he does not see that I can see the whole picture; I can see that he is photographing. I can't actually KNOW what he is photographing, but I can see THAT he is photographing. We can't actually know WHAT all those pro-war agendas were, but we can see that they had agendas.

So it seems that to see clearly the issues and challenges in our lives, we need to get a little distance -- a truism, of course, but easy to forget as we become immersed in our day-to-day struggles, battles, challenges etc. I think, for me, that this is the gift meditation provides: an opportunity to step outside my box, however briefly; an opportunity to feel more connection and compassion for all the players in life's drama; an opportunity to listen for the blessings and messages, the sub-texts and the dreams that are being played out on the tiny piece of stage that I can see.

But even then, once removed, as my camera is from this picture, like the photographer in the picture I still only see what _I_ can see, or, in this case, what my camera can see. There is no sign of the woman sleeping on the bench off to the right, or the baby splashing contentedly behind me, carefully watched by its mother, or of the taxi down the street that turned the corner too quickly and crashed into the limosine, killing its occupants, or of the young boy holding a rifle thousands of miles away, preparing to kill -- what? an animal? an enemy?

Dave is out of his shower now, and holding a phone meeting in the next room; the occasional faint hum of his voice blends with the hum of the refrigerator, the tick of his clock, the bird song in the garden, and the gentle wheeze of his old dog Dolma as she grumbles in her sleep. These are the only sounds I hear right now, except for the click of these computer keys as I type. I am in this moment, as this photographer is in his moment, as you are in your moment, and yet we are all connected. It takes a bit of distance to see that, and those of us in the picture must choose to make that leap, to step out of our own agendas and see the impact and the connections from whatever distance we can achieve.

So what strikes me is this: how is it that living in the moment can be both so infinite and so clarifying, and at the same time so narrow and stultifying? How is it that the absolute mystery of life can be so beautifully revealed by living fully in the moment -- who knows what incredible and inspired image came from this photographer's concentrated look at the reflections below his feet? And yet, at the same time, how can it be that by being so focused on what is happening in our own particular moments we can completely miss the significance of everything going on around us?

Another mystery to explore, I guess. Perhaps Dave and I will discuss this when he gets off the phone, and then another blog will emerge!