Signs Around Town (Excerpt)

Another self-induced India photo flashback after a long work day reading and writing at the computer with breaks only for shoveling snow and for eating and cleaning up.

We were traveling on the bus when I saw the Durga temple (the fifth photo–the one with the white glare and flat sky, but an incredible Durga).  I suggested to my seatmate that he take a picture with his better camera.  I recall it quite reasonably and correctly being pointed out to me the flat, white heat of the midday, humid sky and the glare off of the window would make it impossible optimally to show the intricacy and vividness of the temple.

I snapped a picture anyway.  I was seeing things at angles coming and going and with whatever the light was at the moment.  I likely wasn’t ever going to be there again and certainly not any time soon.

Sometimes the bus would pause in just the right place for a perfectly composed shot, but mostly it didn’t.  In this, the act of taking these photos was much like other aspects of life and practice.  Our path is not always certain.  Sometimes it is hard to see because there is too little light or too much.  Sometimes we have something obscuring our vision.  Sometimes we are going too fast and only notice just before it would be too late for that turning.

But even with vision turned or obscured, we are always experiencing something.  How can we make the best of each moment of experience?  For me, it is meditating and bringing the spacious awareness of meditation to what I am witnessing.  Taking photographs helps me witness in a certain way, too.