The Beauty Of A Moment

I am visually stimulated. Snapshots from my daily life trigger my imagination.

I probably would have made a successful gunslinger in the Old West as I can spot something and draw my iPhone from my ass pocket to capture the moment before I even blink. Indeed, I don’t think, I just see something that registers as “that’s cool” and before I know it, snap. I have it in my iPhone, captured for posterity.

As you know, The Three Witches of NoCo are a favorite subject of mine. Yesterday evening, as I was retrieving my mail from my roadside post box, I just happened to glance westward up the road and the glow rising behind them instantly reminded of Sauron’s Mt. Doom in LOTR. Snap.

A few days before, the same trio – Maiden, Mother Crone – captured my eye with their snow capped majesty. Snap.

And something about their perch on the western horizon itself suggests the mystical, like in this captured moment from this past weekend standing before Casa Claire where the clouds appeared like vaporous white fingerlings reaching eastwards across the azure sky. Snap.

Earlier in that day, as I was returning from my rounds, my highly developed peripheral vision registered a movement, Smokey hiding behind Mark Pan (named after my most impish youngest son – Go NYPD Blue).

And a moment later, assured it was me, Smokey approached. Snap-snap.

Given that I spend so much of my time isolated from humans and around the creatures of Casa Claire, it is no wonder that I capture so many of their photos for my blogs. I will not trot them all out here.

But, as an example, yesterday I was coming down from the Tower and I captured Blue doing Yoga in the Living Room. Snap.

I cannot fully appreciate the same color pallet that most others see, so, I am drawn more to shadows and and lines, and sometimes movement. But even still life triggers me in an Andrew Wyeth way.

And the allure arises not because this is some major event being captured. Its beauty, for me, derives from the fact that it is a moment from my everyday life. Just an instant where my mind focused on the present, and appreciated its aesthetic. A moment when I feel blessed to be alive. Snap.

When I write, I try to convey those little moments in the characters lives, those mental snapshots where something otherwise innocuous captured their attention and fixes them in their present. I believe it is those little things that we don’t even realize we are noticing that invites the reader into the stories of The Claire Saga.

Well, this mornings moments are escaping me, so I must get a move on.

Assuming I can overcome my chronic technical challenges, Lisa and I will be attending our first Zoom funeral later this morning. Sean Sullivan will be commemorated at a Catholic mass at St. Maggies before being interned with just about everyone else I knew from Riverdale who has crossed that veil at Gate of Heaven Cemetery located at the appropriately named, Valhalla, NY.

So, I better get to it. I have kitties to cuddle and rounds to make.

And maybe a photo or two to capture.

You fine, five readers take a moment today and look for that otherwise innocuous visual right there around you that gives meaning to your lives. Snap.

And no matter what else we do, let us make today a great one.