Last week, Australian photoblogger Lignum Draco hosted the popular Photo Challenge over at The Daily Post and offered a rich theme for exploration: time. Here’s a selection of powerful images inspired by the challenge, along with some of our favorite posts on the subject of temporality and the passing of time.
Browse the archives for past Photo Challenge topics, or look for the most recent one at the top of The Daily Post homepage. Challenges run Friday to Friday — you can still participate in this week’s challenge!
Putting Off Tomorrow
Sarah at Extra Dry Martini wrote a moving post about the connection between grief and procrastination, and how they both make us feel as if time alternately stands still and accelerates.
I don’t need anyone to tell me that all we have is this moment, this one, right now. I already know.
And yet. As I sit here, writing this to you, I am – at this very moment – procrastinating. I am putting off doing things that are important to me. Even after I resolved that I wouldn’t, I am still finding ways to stall. I am making excuses. Why?
The Red Sands of Mars
Astronomer Shane Larson’s job requires him to ask questions about cosmic time, which stretches infinitely beyond our Earth-bound experience of days and months. In a recent post at Write Science, he talks about his desire to explore the vastness of space — which will remain unfulfilled, because he was born a few generations too early.
But when I think about Mars, when I imagine even just a few moments of being able to shuffle around in the light gravity, to turn over a stone scoured by a billion years of Martian weather, to let the red, red sands sift through my outstretched fingers, the longing for that experience is almost overwhelming.
Time, Tree Planting, and Commuting with Birds: Hymn to Suburbia
From the trees in her neighborhood to the streets she passes on her morning commute, Katherine Price wrote a beautiful meditation on the different timezones we all occupy in our daily lives.
This year I have lived a full half century. My children have grown up and left. For the first time in my life I’m living entirely on my own. It’s bloody lovely, this freedom, but I do find myself staring into space. A lot.
[…]
Rooks can live up to twenty years and jackdaws up to fourteen. This year it struck me that I could have been sharing my commute with some of the same birdy individuals for the last decade and a half. That possibility lies tenderly on my heart, like a bruise.
In Praise of Nowstalgia: The Sadness in Happiness
Sometimes time folds onto itself and invites us to focus on one single instant. At Pioneer Perfume, Emily Grosvenor tries to do that as she observes her kids playing — only to realize how hard it is to enjoy the split second during which a memory is created out of a lived experience.
My boys crouched down together and snatched two tiny frogs out of the grass. My older son dropped a half-inch long slimy frog into my younger son’s soft palm, and in the crisp sun of an Oregon mountain summer, the world stopped for me.
I got that feeling again. It’s a feeling I can’t help but notice more and more in these hazy, long afternoons of summertime: Nowstalgia.
Nowstalgia is what I call that split second when I can sense that a memory is being created, and instead of being happy for the calamitous beauty of this moment, I’m already nostalgic for how much I’m going to miss it years from now. It’s a truer version of the term bittersweet, an idea far better for capturing how quickly a life passes and how intimately we feel the passing.
Looking for more? Check out more entries from the Time Photo Challenge, or browse our Nostalgia, History, or Memoir topic archives.
Love your pictures!
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I come from New Zealand (though i live on the prairies of the Midwest) your first image went straight to my heart – we always took a bottle of water when we visited the dead ones, or went to a tangi, for washing not drinking. Thank you.. c
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Love the pictures. Life is fleeting and very fragile, but the memories we experience are truly intimate. It’s important to hold onto what is dear to you and to cherish the fond moments spent with others who have positively impacted your life.
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Time is relevant; therefore, it actually does not exist. I love your pix, absolutely timeless.
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A wonderful reflection on something none of us have any control over.
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This was beautiful. Really made me think about time and all of what makes time into the flowing motion of life – as we often see it. Thank you for this post!
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Pictures are extremely cool..😊
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Good stories to reflect about and awsome pictures!
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beautiful pictures and the captions simply amplified the story behind each picture 😀
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Really meaningful pictures.
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I love the pictures…
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Fabulous selection Ben. Thanks for the recap!
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