Why do we, and by we I mean me, think eternity is later? Or for later?
I think eternity is now. Right now. And later. But now builds the later.
I have a friend of 42 years. She’s a writer and a teacher and was in her third year of tenure-track when she was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Fourth stage. That was about ten years ago. Three years ago, it came back. As she described it, “cancer of my ass#%&!.” We were at dinner when she told me that her cancer had returned and then asked, “Can you believe I got ass#%&! cancer?”
Now… she is one crusty gal who vacillates between agnosticism and atheism and my pause before answering prompted her to quip, “F#%k you.” Like a sister would. Or a close friend. When a close friend tells you to f#%k off I guess that is okay as far as okay can ever be.
Today she is being moved from a hospital’s oncology ward to home hospice care. The next few days will be interesting…
Is it her impending death that has brought eternity to mind? No? It’s a combination of things. Things real and things imagined.
When I go to The River,* I live life in nanoseconds when I am in the act of committing art with a camera. I see the finished print in my mind before it becomes a physical photograph (visualization). Those nanosecond experiences will be with me through all of eternity. The eternity of now. And later.
If eternity is now and later, how should I be now for later? As I ponder this at 3:20 a.m., and way before sunrise, I will think of nanoseconds that build the day of days that establishes our eternities.
I have no idea where this rumination will lead me, but I know it is huge. And it is the start of my stirrings to understand an infinite God in a finite world.
And… that’s all I have.
* I have attached my latest from The River. I have been working a five-mile stretch of The North Fork of the South Platte at Buffalo Creek, Colorado for the last few years. And before The River, I had been working with my 4×5 camera (size of the negative) doing “fine art”, since 1980. I am in the process of laying out a book of these images.
So, I leave you with my latest from The River, “Ice Study 2.” Some of you have seen it before so forgive me my indulgence.
TekTok (my takeoff on TikTok):
Zone VI 4×5 Field Camera, 305mm Schneider lens, HP5 at 400 asa, 16-seconds at ƒ/90, Photographers’ Formulary TD-16 with 30cc Crone C Additive, converting it to C-16 for 6:15 at 68º, running water as stop, Photographers’ Formulary Archival Fixer, running water as rinse, HypoClear, 10-minute wash in my Zone VI 11×14 Archival Print Washer, hang dry overnight, scanned the following day on my Epson V850 at 600 dpi and 48-bit color for the separations for the book, printed with my 1968 Durst 138s 5×7 enlarger through a Heiland Splitgrade Timer onto Ilford Multigrade Fiber paper.
