"Strange are the uses of adversity"

[zyzyly]

"My point here is that you never do know the actual nature of even your own experience. Or perhaps it has it has no fixed and certain nature."
--Gilead, Marilynne Robinson

I thought about these words for a while last night. It's true, mostly. We really don't know how the moment we are in will eventually play out. Even the things that seem certain to bring joy or pain never quite end up where we think they will. Unexpected blessings appear in the midst of sorrow; joy is tempered by the realization that it cannot last.

And what of those moments in-between? The ones that are seemingly neutral, or leaning ever so slightly in one direction or the other? Where will they lead?

These are the moments that fascinate me--the ones where I am aware that something is happening, but not quite sure what it is.

I look across the table at you, and our eyes meet. Will this moment be forgotten? Or will it be something I will remember forever--the beginning of something life-changing? We can only know in retrospect.

Comments

[daisydumont.livejournal.com]

this is the first post i've put into my Memories in a long time. it's all so true. and that photo looks gorgeous on my desktop!

[myasma.livejournal.com]

It's one of my favorites from my trip this summer.

[watashi.livejournal.com]

Truer words were never spoken with more eloquence. Beautiful.

[myasma.livejournal.com]

thank you

[weaktwos.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't say we never know, since knowledge is justified true belief. We know something one moment, and we'll know something else at another moment. What we don't know is what states of affairs will occur beyond our control or within our control that change what we "know" or "don't want to know".

For example, I worked with a boss of mine who by all accounts was a very likeable decent fellow. I worked with him for a year and a half. My experiences during that time supported my knowledge that I liked him and liked working for him. I also felt that I knew I could trust him with my children, if I had them. He was well liked in the community and at his church, and by others who did outside activities with him.

Then one day he was arrested for picking up male child prostitutes and purchasing child porn. I suppose I still liked him as a boss, but perhaps I wouldn't leave him with my child, if I had one.

[myasma.livejournal.com]

yeah--true that. I actually changed the wording a little to reflect that we can only really know in retrospect.

[saladbar.livejournal.com]

beautiful and scary and powerful and lonely all at the same time!

[myasma.livejournal.com]

ya--all those things.

I really like that user icon with the umbrellas.

[firni.livejournal.com]

Marvelous and oh so truthful.

And that photo brings to mind the few years of childhood I spent in the midwest... I'd see clouds like those in the upper right corner and head for the basement. *shiver*

[myasma.livejournal.com]

Shortly after I took this the back window of my van got blown out by a freak storm.

[donquixote.livejournal.com]

i LOVE that photo.

[myasma.livejournal.com]

it's one of my favorites from my cross-country trip

[creactivity.livejournal.com]

Love this.

[myasma.livejournal.com]

thanks!

[pinkroo.livejournal.com]

wasn't Gilead good? *sigh*

Is this perhaps describing an actual recent event in your life?

[myasma.livejournal.com]

I'm still only about halfway through it, but it is another one of those books that makes me stop and thing about what I am reading--my favorite kind of book.

it is about an actual event.

[pinkroo.livejournal.com]

yay.

[darksheik.livejournal.com]

I can smell that photo.

And though we just had our first scent of spring rain in New York, I'm sure it smells so much better there.

[myasma.livejournal.com]

I know just what you mean about being able to smell it!

[zhenzhi.livejournal.com]

what's on the rain mix?
we were expecting rain today but instead the skies are blue and the sun is bearing down on us in heatwaves.

[myasma.livejournal.com]

lots of good songs about the rain--I'll send it to you!

[zhenzhi.livejournal.com]

cool, i'd like that!

107 Byangum Road,
Murwillumbah. NSW.
Australia. 2484.

:-) :-)

[wantedonvoyage.livejournal.com]

That reminded me of a not-totally-unrelated but fairly-random thought:

My dad once said, "What if none of this is actually happening... what if everything we think of reality, the whole course of history as we know it, is all in the course of some being's daydream?"

My God, what happens if the doorbell rings? We're doomed!

[myasma.livejournal.com]

haha!

[pasticcio.livejournal.com]

Initially I wanted to write something in response like "Ahhh, our eyes meeting was a pretty magical moment. I won't forget you and think you're pretty special too, sweetie!"... but nahh, I changed my mind :)

[skippers.livejournal.com]

What was the location for that photo?

I like it a lot, and the way all the elements converge; the position of the road, the camera-point angle of the telephone poles running parallel, the green and yellow grass around the grey pavement, then the color and shape, and dimness of the clouds and horizon. The most important part--that all of these things make it multi-dimensional. It's a good spot along the roadway to stop (or hold the camera up while driving) and take a photo of the countryside and end of the horizon.

[myasma.livejournal.com]

It was in South Dakota, in the badlands.

I like the way you analyzed it.

[(Anonymous)]

Sometimes I wonder if many people have the same reaction I do to open lands like that in the mid-west--places where you can be on an interstate or casual road, and see the horizon and lands unmarred by human hands for miles around, and find it more perfect than their usual living locales.

The Dakotas, Nebraska, Wyoming and Montana all hold special places in my heart, when remembering my trips through there.

[skippers.livejournal.com]

whoops.

=)

[myasma.livejournal.com]

I think that is why the prairie was my favorite part of my trip--for those very reasons.