Behind All Seen Things

(3 images)

I have been a man of few words recently.

And for seven weeks—until recently, that is—I didn’t even have it in me to post a picture. For this entry, it is oddly fitting that I strain to express myself, try as I might, as a wall of white pixels mostly stares right back at me.

If you have been paying attention to this blog (hi!), my dive into minimalism (broad sense) after a little absence is a bit off; I have been rather lost, cast aside by self and identity as certain issues swirled about and unbalanced me, and left me reaching out for something to grasp.

A rucksack, hiking boots, and a map were what I found in that grasp as a part of me came back to life while climbing a mountain today. As mountain climbs go, it was as much a mental, as it was a physical, test—one which I managed despite the challenge the weather threw at me.

Now as I head home on the bullet train passing Kyoto I recall more than anything else the clouds—those clouds above me that, after a day of sullen overcast and stormy skies, finally broke free as I descended the mountain. They danced above a rich, green valley glistening in sunlight. I take this as a good sign.

But I ask you, kind reader, to bear this onslaught of minimal (broad sense!) a little longer. It is all I can manage, really.

“Behind all seen things lies something vaster; everything is but a path, a portal or a window opening on something other than itself. ”

―Antoine de Saint-Exupéry:
Wind, Sand and Stars