Well it has arrived - the final posting!
I'm not sure of my emotions today. Partly sadness as this year long blog has captured my imagination more than I thought it would. Partly relief. There have been times when either grabbing an image or being stimulated to write have been wanting. On the whole though I have enjoyed it. I've enjoyed the rigour of having to do something each day (although sometimes they needed to be done in blocks to catch up). But yes, above all it's been tremendous fun. I had planned today would be a resume of some of the posts, but in the end one stands out more than others for me, May 8th http://365-2-50.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/may-8th-2014.html and my thoughts on a flowering holly
On May 8th I ended my posting with .... the Wheel of Life, of which we humans are part of, revolves imperceptibly. This morning I passed the same holly bush, a bush I walk by every day. 138 days after writing about the flowers I stopped and looked at the bush again, this time resplendent with newly ripened berries. The same leaves were there, the same branches, yet those flowers in May are transformed into a red extravaganza. It's the same, yet it's different.
People walking to work passed by me probably wondering what I was up to. No one stopped and asked me, and that is a salient point - in our daily rush to succeed many do not stop and stare, do not enquire, do not wonder. Every minute of our lives has to be filled with activity. Yet we miss the obvious, the everyday, the mundane. One day though it will be gone, and us with it. Today it was announced that September 2014 is the driest since 1910, and the 4th or 5th warmest depending on which information you read. Certainly at 19 degrees at 6pm, its warm indeed. It is also a day when the Worldwide Fund For Nature highlighted 50% of species have declined in the last 40 years due to man's influence. Sobering thoughts and not one for discussion in my last posting, but!
And the but is, we must make time to stop. We have to value the whole not the item. By that I mean we should look around, observe, listen, feel, experience, not just the high days but the mundane properties of our time on this revolving rock. I can remember beginning this blog and it really does feel like a few weeks ago, not one year, not 1/70th of my life, not a full wheel of the natural year. And that is my message as this blog drifts off into terminal hibernation. I have a record of my 50th year and most of the things I did, mostly mundane though important at the time. But what of tomorrow, next month, next year? They'll be here soon enough and unless we grab the moment we may regret times passing. Like this sandwich I had for lunch. Use by date October 1st, that was the future, the first day without a blog entry. Yet like the blog it is now shown on, it now no longer exists, the moment has passed. History.
And the book? Well that arrived in the post at work from a trade internet book supplier. A 1921 publication by CRW Knight one of the pioneers of wildlife photography. Inside the cover is an inscription "To Dear Daddy, with much love from Dennis. Xmas 1921" A Christmas gift then, bought and inscribed 93 years ago, 43 years before I was born. Daddy and my guess Dennis are no longer here, yet their love for wildlife shines through in a few simple words. Daddy presumably liked wildlife, and Dennis his son wanted to give him a present he would appreciate. A simple inscription passed down through time therefore closes this blog. We can learn a lot from the past, the present is but a single heartbeat, They are both finite and known. It is the future we have at our disposal, the future is infinite and to do with, as we wish.
Carpe Diem
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