hours of work, minutes of result

the mundane can block the sublime

there is a paradox:

after the very efforts of mind and body

to get the soul to a beautiful spot—

a place from which energy can flow back into you,

those efforts can so consume your attention

that they can clog your receptors

and much of what is around you

can be lost in the backwash

of movement over stasis,

the doing over the being,

product over process,

mud in the stream,

after hours of hiking I finally get to Charlies Bunion,

and my sense of the “eureka” swells for a moment

and then diminishes back to the mundane:

annoyance at trash left, at sharing neglected,

so much of me lost in my sandwich,

my camera pulls me back out into the scene

to hold the moments

so that later on 

I can be more fully here in retrospect,

I particularly like to captures images of glory

surrounding my students and friends,

all too soon it’s time to trudge back,

more hours of work that frame minutes of physically being there,

I work so that my psyche might remember that source of energy

and let it flow in shivers down my spine.

by Henry H. Walker

May 17, ‘16