When life gets in the way

Contemplation is healthy but not altogether always a very simple process. One's life becomes a diary full of dates and times and places to be. Tasks, to-do's, never wanting to waste those precious minutes. Efficiency, etc.

Similarly, you buy new things which are new and shiny, whereas the emotion-laden objects of old are swept away. You walk past the same set of photos everyday but never register the feeling, the eternity of that time when you took that photograph. Birthday cards, christmas cards are collected into a shoe-box to be hidden under your bed. 

As one gets older, time seems to fly and hard work becomes more commonplace. You become more functional, robotic in the sense that sentiment hardly registers a heartbeat. In all this time, the clock is ticking away, with the seconds hand seemingly going slightly faster than you want it to. Salaries and mortgages - head down, getting on with the job. 

The 'Shard': looking to an urban and technological future 

With the new orderliness of personal space and rigidness of professional time, one wishes they had time to write - to be more accurate, think and then write.

As an advocate of the thriving blogosphere, it is with a sort of melancholy that I look at blogs which haven't been updated at all recently. It reminds me of photos depicting the lost world of post-mining, post-industrial rust-belt regions in the U.S. Excited by opportunity and technology, a place (whether that be tangible or not) is infused with soul, and then it is abandoned.

Old and new memories, old and new objects, old and new experiences - these are indeed eternal struggles.