Feeling the Heartbeat of our Lives

"The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt with the heart." Helen Keller

There is a rhythm that exists in each of us, beating like a drum, ringing like a bell, circulating and moving together with every living thing. What is felt with one heart can convey the human experience. The idea of the human experience may be cliche, but the experiences are real and felt in powerful ways. It was recently on a walk with a friend that I saw again how the actions of others ripple past the immediate interaction that took place in any given moment. The walk itself embodied this, and the understanding of human pain and joy that together in paradoxical ways form our lives. It is hard to understand how sorrow is part of the darkness that fuses angst, disbelief, and sadness to the moments that we wish we could hurry and leave behind. These adversities can be pivotal in helping us feel the warmth when cherished and held with a tapestry of connection.

In the heartbeat of life, we can think about the place we are living in. It isn't always happy or sad, angry or fearful. It usually is a mosaic of the feelings we have about our lives. Minutes become days and moments become memories. Life is a combination of such things. Walking freely with the wind with those who have chosen to encountered life's beauty with me alongside. I've found that in walking, conversation becomes more fluid as it incorporates the passage and change of time and life everywhere.

Laughter from the heart comes from the places we realize and know. As we understand our shared, collective experience as people, we live. Gathered together we can hold hands, for none of us has experienced what another has, but each of us may be listened to and cared for and in turn be a light of hope that beats together if we take the risk to step beyond our grudges and listen. Barefoot we feel what is shaping us, changing us. Barefoot we arise and walk over to the beginning of the next moment. May it be the wonder that makes us cry with hope that together we can build something for the future of our lives and those we love. So it may be these feelings that hold us to the moment to create, shape, learn, live.

The Creativity of Humanity

"Somewhere in a burst of glory, sound becomes a song" That's Where I Belong - song by Paul Simon

This lyric always strikes me when I listen closely to this song by Paul Simon. It creates the realization many of us notice when we see how things come together to create art. It is the joining of inspiration and media or the music notes that form a melody and shape a harmony that leads to something unique.

Creativity shows us how other people view the world we see and how they want to shape the future of it. It isn't a moment that stops us, but it influences us. I continue to be amazed by how people form works of art from the depths of themselves that reach my own depths and resonate with my own experiences. And sometimes it doesn't even have to be from art, but from the creation of a moment that is intended to be unintentional or a design that is merely functional. 

Pieces of life come together in color and expressive touches from line to shape and many more features. In walking down streets and taking in the work of people around me, I often wonder about the origins or stand looking, hearing, smelling, tasting, or touching something curiously striking. The arrangement of flowers in a garden, the mosaics of tile spelling out letters of a destination on a wall, the drone of bagpipes, the spicy radish in a summer salad, and the feel of marble in a national memorial often created from what we see, what we know, and what makes us most alive. It is what stops us in our tracks and makes us notice that something beautiful has been shared with us or that something beautiful has come from our lives and ways of seeing.

If someone says they aren't creative, I doubt their statement. I believe everyone has their own way of expressing their creativity that is emotive or personal that is unlike someone else's. They may wish that they were creative like someone else, but that only minimizes their efforts to create what means something to their lives. I am often inspired by colors, lights, water, textures, flavors, and arrangements of objects in displays. If the glory of life is found when sound becomes a song, it can also be noticed when the inspiration becomes tangible and emotive as we share life and notice our connection to ourselves, to others, and to the moment that can be shared as a piece of one's life that is left to experience. 

Creativity throughout New York State in the subjects of the photographs, not the photographs themselves.

Reflection of neon light -  Rochester, New York

Stone wall in Central Park - New York, New York

Twin spires of a church in Buffalo, New York

Memorial in Clinton Square  - Syracuse, New York

Colorful mural in New York, New York  

Supports of  a railroad bridge - Schenectady, New York