Monday, April 2, 2012

Reliquary / Contemplation / Namaste

















(Chalk pastel drawing from 1983, "Composer," by am)

"When I look at the pictures and hear the songs I also see and hear the story behind them. A still photograph morphs into a home movie and a scrawl on a page evokes a scene in a room or on a street. I hear a laugh coming from somewhere off to the side...

... A song, a poem, a book, a film, an exhibit are simply representations of a period, a place, a person. And because memory is the joker in the deck I try not to take the representations of the past too seriously. Life goes on for those who live it in the present. Nostalgia, cheap or otherwise, is always costly.

I see history as a reliquary—a container where relics are kept and displayed for contemplation. So much has been written about the sixties that the more distant those years become, the more mythic the tales and the time seem to be ..."

(from A Freewheelin' Time: A Memoir of Greenwich Village in the Sixties, by Suze Rotolo)



Today's view from the porch, with sounds of spring:



Namaste:

4 comments:

Taradharma said...

poignant excerpt...could apply to anyone's life...the stories of our long-ago youth take on epic proportions....

a lovely scene from your porch.

I see you are wearing white -- was that for April 2 Support Women? Today was the day.

Namaste to you, am. Namaste.

Anonymous said...

Reliquary is such a beautiful word. We are the relics of that particular era. I am relieved to have come of age in a time that now belongs to myths.

am said...

Taradharma -- Your post moved me to put on my one white blouse!

robin andrea -- It is a beautiful word, isn't it?

The Solitary Walker said...

A very nice sequence, am. Love that Rotolo memoir, as you know.