The Picture and The One Thousand Words

It happened again. I have no idea where today’s ramblings originated, but I am staying on the path.

“A picture is worth a thousand words”, she said.  I’ve heard this expressed more times than I can count.  I understand it to mean that one could talk (or write) for a very long time and never reach the level of comprehension, love, empathy, joy, sorrow, or even hatred that one well-crafted image will convey.

Think about these random pictures. You probably have hundreds of beautiful photographs in your own image library so any of those would do as well.

When you look at each image, imagine that you took the snapshot.  Think about the feelings experienced and what it would take to describe them to someone else.  

Shadow of Change

 A fleeting shadow. 

My head immediately snapped up from monitor-focused typing. What I saw as the dawn silently filtered through a blinds-closed window-frame forced legs to action while hands grabbed a cell-phone-camera. I was desperate to capture this image.  

An eternity (nearly 5 minutes) in wait produced no repeat performance. This window of opportunity is lost to the shadows, to write full of pun.  

I made an attempt at manipulative invitation thinking that if I placed a few bread crumbs on the outside windowsill, I could duplicate the image.  Offering the enticement of food is effective in a lot of our interactions, right?  

This short video is the only reproduction relevant to the imagery that held me captive a few moments earlier.  It's clearly not the share I'd like to promote.  

Just yesterday, I was thinking about the reasons that I write while lamenting a bit about the situation we find ourselves in this year.  It was much easier to discover 'stories' that created God-awareness when I was actually moving around in the world.  

But today, the world came to me in the form of an opaque bird.  I have no idea what kind of bird nor do I know if it likes bread crumbs but at least it returned to explore.  A 'fleeting' image is all you'll see but my disruption this morning was due to a full wing-span produced shadow that took my breath away.