“Light thinks it travels faster than anything but it is wrong. No matter how fast light travels, it finds the darkness has always got there first, and is waiting for it.” ~ Terry Pratchett, from Reaper Man

“Black Bowl” (1907)
by George Seeley

                   

Two for Tuesday: From Light to Dark and Dark to Light

Within light there is darkness,
But do not try to understand that darkness.
Within darkness there is light,
But do not look for that light.
Light and darkness are a pair,
Like the foot before and the foot behind in walking.

~ Shih’tuo, a verse from the Sandokai

                   

Indistinguishable from the Darkness

The dark under the trees is filled with lightning bugs
and because I am in one of those strange moods
I start to think I have found one of the hollows
where the life of the world is created.  There is light
but in the dark circle of shadow under the oaks transformations
take place; small, accurate, invested points of light shiver
and rise wavering above the thin grass. I am in one of those moods
when I need this, this regenerative, tangibly formed
coinage, this dream or perception of the mixing vats
of the earth making out of nothing small light
that might continue to grow and change, become substantial.

The world of this field, sloping to a small black pond under trees,
is empty just now; on the side of the low mountain before me
the constructed lights of houses come on and shine like gold jackets
thrown up into the trees. It is spring and the breeze carries its mix
of summer and spring and the hint of dew that is not so much carried
as woven into the slippage of air; purplish clouds, thinned
nearly to haze, pile against the western rim. I have known
this mood before, and it comes sought but unbidden.
do not translate themselves into negotiable forms—a human
hand, the voice of a loved one. To become known
we must become unknown; the way out, I have learned,
is through. But I do not know
the names of the trees that are just now carefully laying
their long shadows across the body of the pond. The shadows
will lie on the surface of the water all night,
indistinguishable from darkness. It is not a matter
of being saved. I know this.

~ Charlie Smith

                   

“Four Cut Sunflowers” (1887, oil on canvas)
by Vincent van Gogh

Tom O’ Bedlam among the Sunflowers

To have gold in your back yard and not know it. . .

I woke this morning before your dream had shredded

And found a curious thing: flowers made of gold,

Six-sided—more than that—broken on flagstones,

Petals the color of a wedding band.

You are sleeping. The morning comes up gold.

Perhaps I made those flowers in my head,

For I have counted snowflakes in July

Blowing across my eyes like bits of calcium,

And I have stepped into your dream at night,

A stranger there, my body steeped in moonlight.

I watched you tremble, washed in all that silver.

Love, the stars have fallen into the garden

And turned to frost. They have opened like a hand.

It is the color that breaks out of the bedsheets.

This morning the garden is littered with dry petals

As yellow as the page of an old book.

I step among them. They are brittle as bone china.

~ Thomas James

“This generation is never going to accomplish the things I know it to be capable of unless we stop thinking of each other in terms of ‘us’ and ‘them’…Like it or not, we’re all in this together.” ~ Ted Chalfen, from his graduation speech

Ted Chalfen, Gay Colorado Teen, Thanks Graduating Class For Support In Speech

Most of the time, graduation speeches are pretty predictable. Generation of generation of young dreamers attempting to sound erudite, use their time at the microphone to plead for a cause or to chastise a neglectful element or to reflect on life. The latter always makes me smile because I can still remember how I thought I knew so much of life when I graduated from high school lo so many years ago. The speeches usually include some kind of inside joke that the parents won’t quite understand, or some sort of grand charge for the varied members of the graduating class. Sometimes the speaker reveals a genuine sense of comedic timing, but rarely.

I don’t know if there is some unwritten rule that graduation speeches should stay within the confines of being generic, but that usually seems to be the case. I remember who gave the speeches at my graduation, but I don’t remember a single word of what they said (high school, college or graduate school).  That being said, this particular speaker and his speech are worth listening to, if only because they reflect so well on his classmates, the school, the teachers, the administrators, and the parents.

Related articles

• Pass the Time at Graduation with Graduation Bingo (hackcollege.com)
• The Commencement Speech (memoirsofaneuroticgenius.wordpress.com)

Photos of Children From Around the World With Their Most Prized Possessions

Chiwa – Mchinji, Malawi

I came across the following article by Amanda Gorence on my Tumblr dash, and I thought that it was an incredible commentary on the world. How our children play is directly tied to our society, and the portrait is sometimes more than a little sad.

Shot over a period of 18 months, Italian photographer Gabriele Galimberti’s project Toy Stories compiles photos of children from around the world with their prized possesions—their toys. Galimberti explores the universality of being a kid amidst the diversity of the countless corners of the world; saying, “at their age, they are pretty all much the same; they just want to play.”

But it’s how they play that seemed to differ from country to country. Galimberti found that children in richer countries were more possessive with their toys and that it took time before they allowed him to play with them (which is what he would do pre-shoot before arranging the toys), whereas in poorer countries he found it much easier to quickly interact, even if there were just two or three toys between them.

There were similarites too, especially in the functional and protective powers the toys represented for their proud owners. Across borders, the toys were reflective of the world each child was born into—economic status and daily life affecting the types of toys children found interest in. Toy Stories doesn’t just appeal in its cheerful demeanor, but it really becomes quite the anthropological study.

Stella – Montecchio, Italy

Pavel – Kiev, Ukraine

Arafa & Aisha – Bububu, Zanzibar

Cun Zi Yi – Chongqing, China

Bethsaida – Port au Prince, Haiti

Orly-Brownsville,Texas

Botlhe – Maun, Botswana

Watcharapom – Bangkok, Thailand

Alessia – Castiglion Fiorentino, Italy

Norden – Massa, Morocco

Julia – Tirana, Albania

Keynor – Cahuita, Costa Rica

Shaira – Mumbai, India

Tangawizi – Keekorok, Kenya