sorting through the past

Tags

memories, negatives, past, photos, sorting, spring cleaning, throwing out

The other day my sister gave me a big green box filled with photos and negatives I had left at hers when I moved over to Ireland many, many years ago.  Once upon a time the box had been organised and sorted but now it was a jumble of places and people.

So yesterday I took the time to sort through the photos. I didn’t want to keep them all so I decided to only keep those that fit into all of three categories:

• I could remember the name of the person(s) /place
• the image was not blurred or otherwise unpleasing
• I thought I would look at it again

I was amazed how many photos landed on the ‘to-throw-out’ pile. Many were because I really didn’t remember the name of the people in them, faces of people I spent short amounts of time with but who had dropped out of my life, or I out of theirs. Even more of the photos where of places that I couldn’t quite identify so out they went too. And then of course there were lots of photos that where just not great, too light, to dark, blurred, off center or ‘what was I thinking’ bad.

The third time I went through the photos I sorted out all of the ones I knew I would never look at again, really how many photos do I need of the same thing? So two out of three went into the bin. After all I was keeping most of the negatives (although a good few of unidentifiable blobs did have to go too) so I can always reproduce if need be.

After I had sorted through my past a small stack of photos and an envelope filled with negatives was left and somehow it felt like I had spring cleaned my memories, freeing up space for new ones, good, forgettable and maybe even blurred.

be rather than think

Tags

future, in the now, mindful living, miscellaneous, past, present, psychology, quotes, random, thoughts

As I was walking into town yesterday to see a a preview of the film called “Now is Good” my mind started thinking about what that actually meant. While I pondered terms like now, past and future I found my mind skipping backwards and forwards but rarely staying just put.

Living in the moment is something we humans find quite hard to do, we are always looking behind us at the past and what it holds or toward the future and what it may hopefully bring. The odd thing is though, that we only really have control of what is happening right now, we can’t change the past nor can we predict the future, but we can influence what we hold in our hands today.

That said being mindful, living in the now, is so hard to do because we are constantly bombarded with information telling us; who we should be, what we should do and who we should be with. If it’s not doing that the world is asking us about who we were, where we came from and why we do what we do.

So what can we do to stop chasing shadows from the past or trying to catch fireflies of the future?  That is a  very tricky question to answer, but the first step is to just look around you and see what it is you are actually doing. See if it makes you happy, is it good for you and what can you change today. The paradox about doing this is that you can only make it work if you get out of your head and be rather than think.

As I live in my head, have it furnished and fitted out for all my needs, and tend to get lost in the corridors of my mind, dwelling out dusty thoughts of things gone by or steep forever in pools of dreams of things I’d love to be, I often find it hard to clamber down the ladder of my thoughts and take hold of my hand of action.

But in those moments when I succeed to be right here, right now I always discover what a good place it is to be.  I feel less stressed, more happy and content, I often experience joy, can breath and somehow worries melt away, changing form a mountain into molehills. It doesn’t mean that all the problems that orbit around my life disappear but it does meant I see them one at a time and in more manageable portions.

So with today still beginning I will be mindful of myself and what is happening around me, take  a new look at all things I on my to-do list and just take each one a tick at a time.

In today’s rush we all think too much – seek too much – want too much – and forget about the joy of just being.

Eckhart Tolle

the now of my windowsill

PS: just remembered a great talk about time I had with my friend visiting from Memphis … so this post is especially for her! I hope she likes it 🙂

past, present and future

Tags

black and white, family, future, letters, love, memories, past, photos, present

A lovely, nosy friend of mine told me yesterday that she loved Post (traumatic stress) Syndrome but felt a little let down that she never found out, what was in my two surprise parcels. Some questions that are asked deserve answers and the answer to this one is, hours of escapism and a journey into the past.

As a free-lance writer I do reviews every now and then and for some reason a lovely, small Irish publishing house mailed me a book to read, unprompted and happily received. A rainy afternoon in the near future (in Dublin they are always near) is already saved.

The smaller package was the bigger surprise, filled with something I never expected to own, yet I was thrilled to have. My aunt who lives up North sent me some old black and white photos of my father and his family, ones I have never seen before. As they fluttered out of the padded envelope my eyes grew wide, my heart made a tiny quiver and a little tear appeared in the corner of my eye to enjoy the view. My father died quite suddenly last year and as my parents have been divorced since I was ten I do not know very much about him growing up in Northern Ireland. The photos show a side of my family tree that I have yet to discover, tickets into the past for a trip I never thought I’d take.

I have always thought that my father in his twenties had a striking resemblance to Harold Lloyd (a black and white comic actor) and the new photo evidence only supports this. But the two photos that caught my eye are of my grandmother and great grandmother. One is from the 1930’s the other from the 1950’s.  What I find so interesting is that they are wearing such similar clothes (a long, six buttoned, knee-length coat with one large rever) and holding themselves in such a similar way. Hands by their side, face on to the camera, straight back and a small fixed smile. And an another odd similarity is that the men by their sides are not their husbands. Labeled as uncle and great-uncle on the back of the photo I can only presume that these more casual looking men (one is wearing flamboyantly patterned socks and knickerbockers) are their brothers, as both women were widowed early.

So, as I wander down a memory-lane that should be mine but is new to me, I can’t help but think about all the memories I keep in boxes: photos, clippings and keepsakes all jumbled up together and only important to me. We all know how pictures, sounds and even smells trigger thoughts of special times, places and people from our pasts and we need these prompts to keep our memories alive, form a puzzle of our history into its very own unique picture. So while adding these new, old photos into the kaleidoscope of my life, I am grateful for this unexpected present of the past that I’ll even enjoy in the future.

Photos and memories