Bella and Baba Photobombed

As Bella and I were making our contribution to the Blipfotoforever project, a neighbor came along and bombed our picture. We decided we liked it. Note it was Bella who pressed the shutter button.

I watch these Blipfoto forever photos go up and appreciate the simple physical gesture, hearts open and arms stretched wide, faces full frontal and fully exposed (in most cases). There is a vulnerability and a good-heartedness in that. Courage. Thanks to each fragile, now-breathing, impermanent person bringing their flawed body to the moment of solidarity.

As Blip goes through its changes and we struggle with ideas like “monetized” and “maximize,” thinking of ourselves as either assets or liabilities rather than human hearts and minds, I think also of this poem:

The Oven Bird
BY ROBERT FROST  

There is a singer everyone has heard,
Loud, a mid-summer and a mid-wood bird,
Who makes the solid tree trunks sound again.
He says that leaves are old and that for flowers
Mid-summer is to spring as one to ten.
He says the early petal-fall is past
When pear and cherry bloom went down in showers
On sunny days a moment overcast;
And comes that other fall we name the fall.
He says the highway dust is over all.
The bird would cease and be as other birds
But that he knows in singing not to sing.
The question that he frames in all but words
Is what to make of a diminished thing.


May we go on blipping singing and blip sing our hearts out for as long as we can.