Category: Transcendental Bob

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Once in a while you can still see the light …

I generally hate it when the StoryCorps segment comes on NPR in the morning. I’m on the elliptical, so I’m a captive audience. Can’t change channels. Just have to suffer through another boring slice-of-life segment.

I was feeling the same way this morning as some 96-year-old woman prattled on about her life. But I was completely floored when she rippled through this truly transcendental close:

“We never know what diseases are going to catch up with us. It’s amazing the things that people can live through when they have to. So you get through it, and you get through almost anything. And you live to be 96, and sometimes you wonder why. But then when you look up at the blue sky, you think, it’s gonna be alright.”

Wow. The parallelism is almost biblical or Whitmanesque. I stopped churning away on the elliptical and just stood there, astounded by how profound it was.

… in the strangest of places, if you look at it right.

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Transcendental Bob

Aspen solitude




aspens.jpg

Originally uploaded by Suffering the Benz

Business travel normally sucks, but last week we held a retreat in Utah, not far from Park City. It was a great trip and gave me a chance to tromp around in the mountains a bit. I’d forgotten how completely, utterly sublime a stand of swaying aspens can be. I tried to capture them with my camera but had only limited success. I uploaded photos of the aspens and our pontoon excursion at Jordanelle State Park here on my Flickr account..

We could smell forest fires that are raging in central Utah while we were there. The smoke and ash added drama to the sky at sunset, but we didn’t see any flames firsthand.

As a perfect close to the trip, I managed to snag first-class upgrades on my flights home. Both flew on time. Sometimes the travel gods smile upon me …

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Transcendental Bob

The Ruined Cottage




hardin_house5.jpg

Originally uploaded by Suffering the Benz

I’ve been driving past this burned down house for a few weeks now, and it dawned on me that this would make a nice HDR photo set. So I took my camera there around sunset and snapped a series of photos. The house was donated to the fire department, which burned it down for practice. On this lot and the surrounding acreage, a grocery store and drug store soon will sprout, continuing the suburban sprawl that’s been choking Hardin Valley for the past several years.

As I shot the photo, a riot of swallows soared overhead, snagging bugs in fits of aerial acrobatics. An occasional car thumped past, the subsonics from its speakers drumming a call to Saturday night parties. And then a hush fell over the fields around me. I started thinking of Wordsworth’s poem “The Ruined Cottage” and the moment consumed me …

“He ceased. Ere long the sun declining shot
A slant and mellow radiance, which began
To fall upon us, while, beneath the trees,
We sate on that low bench: and now we felt,
Admonished thus, the sweet hour coming on.
A linnet warbled from those lofty elms,
A thrush sang loud, and other melodies,
At distance heard, peopled the milder air.
The old Man rose, and, with a sprightly mien
Of hopeful preparation, grasped his staff;
Together casting then a farewell look
Upon those silent walls, we left the shade;
And, ere the stars were visible, had reached
A village-inn, – our evening resting-place. ”