Tears of Things

We all start somewhere, but where do we go? Surely the path is more fascinating than the final destination, because that it will end one day, we all know.

A phrase that fits the emotion I feel behind that thought quite nicely, is Lacrimae rerum. The Latin phrase for "tears of things". Or my favourite, the Japanese saying Mono no aware. Literally, "the pathos of things". For feelings so sharp they cut right through your soul, those languages picked the perfect words for them. (If you want another good example of a saying that really fits its meaning; Rigor mortis; it just sounds deadly already when you pronounce it).

Back to tears and empathy towards things.

(2006)

Waterdrops on a spiderweb. There's something incredibly beautiful about this tiny moment in time (no wonder people take pictures of it constantly, guilty as charged). I secretly call them fairy hills in my mind; the drops of water on the web. For a few hours they sparkle in a beautiful pattern, only lasting until the sun starts to shine.

"The world is a world of tears, and the burdens of mortality touch the heart." (Sunt lacrimae rerum translated by Robert Fagles).

(2006)

It's strange to experience mortality sometimes. The idea that all things fade away, and are not meant to last.

(2006)

What you see today you will never see again. Not in the same way, at least. Everything around us changes constantly. Tomorrow I will be a little older, and you will be too. A little closer to the moments our atoms fall apart. To think change doesn't affect you if you feel like life is standing still, you are only fooling yourself really.

Change can be wonderful though. Without it, we wouldn't be alive.

(2005)

Because when the spider feeds on the bug, so continues the cycle of life. Ever changing, never lasting, always recycling the world around us.

And when the bird eats the spider, and then the human eats the bird, so we become all part of this chain, connected to everything and everyone.

And I know we grow
and that rivers flow
and that people sometimes
have to go

(Summer to Autumn, 2009)

With each dawn I wonder who I am today and with each sunset I realise that I am ever changing and never constant.

So what happens to her? Does she fly away, or was she taken by aliens? Maybe she just peeked out of the window, and left her shoes behind to change into a different outfit because she had a hot date later. Or, she just fell to her death, if you want your sunshine pics with a pinch of grim. I like the one where she was waiting for someone however, and they came. Obviously the first thing you do is run as fast as you can towards that person, if you've been waiting from Summer to Autumn for them. I would leave my shoes behind if that was me, definitely.

It's your choice.

Whatever happened, it was a moment that will never happen again. The only season after autumn is winter. But remember what happens after winter?

Spring comes again.