New York – Carlo Centeno

Transitions

With September upon us, there’s that sense summer is nearing its end. You wouldn’t think that on such a day as this: it’s warm, bright, a slight breeze and plenty of green just about everywhere you look.

Yet the season’s already changing. My morning start is just a little darker than what it was a month ago. Some of the maple trees are starting to turn color. Shorter days means Autumn is at its threshold.

When I need to have some distance from this maddening world, the outdoors provide a good dose of calm and reassurance. It can be more challenging in urban areas, but parks are a viable alternative. Get outside and realize the natural world accepts you as you are.

This pandemic has modified if not altogether changed, the way we mark the change in seasons. Traditionally we associate baseball as the “start” of summer, football the beginning of autumn, basketball and hockey mark winter’s arrival. But many of these traditional markers have started later than usual. As a consequence, our seasonal clocks are skewed. This has been compounded further by schools having different protocols for their first day. Is that day for virtual online learning or in person at the actual building?

Time to get outside.

Wounds.

The power of water is astounding. Trickles that turn into streams then morph to raging rivers—at times in a matter of a few minutes if not less—cannot be taken lightly. Trying to accurately track an object caught in fast-moving current is almost impossible. My August 5th post about The Falls clearly demonstrates the meaning of “fast-moving.”

Wind can be just as harrowing. Various parts of the country were seriously hit first by the rain storm Isaias then by a rare, but powerful wind storm called a “derecho.” The middle of our country bore the brunt of its force leaving what resembles a war zone.

Closer to home, there was considerable damage from this most recent windstorm. Though the harm and damage here pales to communities in Iowa and beyond, I’ve noticed pine and oaks uprooted and toppled over. The swath of this recent storm event caught me somewhat off guard.

Looking at the damaged trees produced that anthropomorphic feeling within me. The morphology of plants, and trees in particular, created a connection hard to ignore. My trunk or torso is akin to that of a tree. My arms and legs are limbs just as a tree has limbs. My core, like that of a tree, is the foundation that helps me stay upright.

It was apparent that these trees could no longer return to what they were only days before. I’m not an arborist, but I surmised that nothing could be done to “save” any of the trees I looked at and photographed. Not a one.

When severe storms strike, all life is impacted in one way or another. However, plants and trees are particularly vulnerable because they are literally anchored to earth. They can neither hide nor escape their circumstance and their wounds are so obvious.

Dark, grey afternoons…

For all the misery and inconveniences really bad weather creates, storms have a unique appeal to me. They are fascinating creations. In the most dire of circumstances the devastation they leave behind is nothing short of incomprehensible, humbling and frightening.

On the other hand, bad weather has a way of fine tuning me to a mode that captures and enables the ephemeral: in one moment, a gentle falling rain suddenly becomes heavy, rampant, even vindictive in the force and quantity of water that dowses everything.

No sooner than the rain pummels the landscape, the water is then swept away, transitioned to a drizzle that moves ahead of a foggy veil suspended just behind the now gentle shower. I think of the various weather possibilities as moods, from the bright sunny days [hope, optimism, gratitude, e.g.] to the dull grey of a threatening sky ready to let loose its worse [depression, angst, regret, e.g.]. Weather figuratively produces such an array of moods.

Dark, grey afternoons carry a weight [wind, water, ice, snow, heat et al] that can lay to waste your surroundings as well as your inner landscape. Yet when I pick up my camera or take pen and journal to hand, I remind myself that things change. Storms have their beginnings and an end. And what happens in between can—and will—wreak havoc on the most carefully laid plans and intentions.

Events, like storms, are markers in time. And having a marker delineates a “before” and “after.” What were you doing just before the storm hit? Where were you? We often have a stronger temporal sense of change whenever nature throws us the worse. Similarly, we celebrate when the change is for the better; some days are referred to as “picture-perfect…like a perfect postcard if you will.

The prologue to dark, grey afternoons can be a harbinger of bad stuff yet to arrive. Still, I look at these harbingers for what they are: a dramatic dance of fleeting light, of varied grey swatches which masks greens, yellows and blue, of movements brought on by high wind speeds and even a gentle breeze.

Weather, in all its forms, is a fulcrum on our impressions of just how good or bad our day is doing.

Reliant on Memory

There are days that seem to fly by, while others feel like time has come almost to a standstill. I mention this because it doesn’t seem like 7-weeks have gone by since the new coronavirus forced us into a different way of working and living.

Yet being removed almost two months from what was normal, there’s this juxtaposed sensation that it feels like forever and a day since we went about our usual routines. Time is relative, which simply means that when you’re waiting for something you want, it doesn’t come soon enough, whereas the opposite holds true for something you want nothing to do with.

I have read that the sense of smell is the strongest of our five senses in prompting a memory. It’s also—if memory serves me—the most accurate.

A quiet pause in NYC 2018. Photo credit: R.A. Centeno

Scientifically, that may hold true, but for me, sound and image are stronger drivers in resurfacing a memory. Music has a way of putting you back in a time and place with an immediacy that’s uncanny. “Wow. I remember when this song came out.” There may be some inaccuracies about say, the year or even the place, but whatever was important then, resurfaces as part of your remembering. Pieces may be foggy, but as other pieces emerge from that fog, the memory works to become a bit sharper.

There is a hint of nostalgia in all of this. I do wonder about the new normal and what it means not only for me, but for people I care about. I think retrospectively, of how moments in my past somehow provide a lift. The thoughts, the sensations, or whatever visceral vestige flows free from memory, are but markers of what has been, or what might’ve been.

Whether you sketch, photograph, perform, paint, sculpt, watercolor, write letters, fill a journal, fill a scrapbook, to be memory reliant means you need to be confident with your recollections. Doing any one of these activities, produces an invaluable form of connection. It’s why I love to write [journaling and letters] and to take photos [iPhone, various cameras] because these all help to anchor where I’ve been and to some degree, where I might be headed.

Indeed, cherished memories are important for our overall wellness, but let’s remember to do things now, to remain connected yet in touch, so that such moments become screen clips thoughtfully stored in our memory albums.

Signs and Signals

Winter Warmth

Though overcast, there’s a familiar brightness to the grey overhead. It looks and feels like snow is in the air. Forecasts notwithstanding, we’re expecting to get clobbered here in the northeast with record-cold temperatures.

Winter is en route.

Yet, in spite of this aura of grey that spills over the city, if we look close enough you can find various levels of warmth. Many of the objects seen, displayed and taken for granted in the roteness of our days can hint at or suggest a touch of warmth.

And while warm colors, hues and even some words or phrases can suggest some attribute of warmth, cold weather, specifically very cold weather, adds a bit of insouciance.

If you’ve spent most of your life in the northeast, a good number of you then understand finding this warmth. As the saying goes, “If you don’t like the weather, just wait a few minutes.”

Modern Colonies

When I look at buildings—especially tall buildings—my thoughts bloom in ordered chaos. I’m immersed with a roster of details, the majority qualitative in nature.

How many companies are in there…? Love the bronze-colored curve separating the floors….It’s close to 6:30 pm and a lot of office lights are still on. Who’s staying late and why…? Who packs a lunch every day or buys it…? Wonder what the employee with the longest tenure does….Wonder what the annual cost is for water, electricity, insurance, taxes and health benefits…What’s the ratio of happy workers to unhappy ones…?

Those glass panels look so flat, but the reflections appear distorted or wobbly looking. And in most cases, a lot of those panels appear clean, at least from my viewing area far below on a sidewalk.

The one thought that bookends my wanderings is the thought that a bunch of talented workers had a lot to do in the creation of these vertical colonies. I can just hear a philosophical remark from either one of my two favorite protagonists—Charlie Brown and Linus van Pelt—“Could you imagine what could be achieved if every member of society collaborated with a baseline of common good and purpose for everyone….?“

Countenance-2

Countenance

In 2005, PBS aired a series entitled, “American Masters” which showcased the work of legendary if not ground breaking artists. I enjoyed watching the series, but one program struck a chord: Richard Avedon: Darkness and Light.

One comment in particular stuck with me. Essentially, Avedon mentioned “the landscape of the human face.” Lines, creases, smooth or rough, dark or light and every combination in between, a person’s countenance says a few things about an individual’s life journey and current life stage.